A Look Back

 

The old Forbe's Crossing depot now doing service at Holden on a temporary basis. Maybe a little repair work on the roof would be in order.

     While rumaging around my railroad room the other day, I came across a depot I built back in the 1990s. It really wasn't lost as it was sitting at Holden as a place-holder for the real depot to be built sometime in the indefinite future. Originally, the depot served the community of Forbe's Crossing on my Moraga Springs Northern Railway when I lived in California. I built it from a Period Miniatures kit and then detailed the interior. On that MSN, the structure was right up front and it was easy for visitors to look at the interior. Now, it sits back about two feet away from the aisle waiting for a location.

   

Interior details are by SS Ltd. and others. I think it needs a couple of passengers, maybe an agent.

 

The depot in its old location of Forbe's Crossing on the Moraga Springs 

Northern.

I took the time today to take another look at it and snapped these photos. It looks pretty much as I remember it from about 25 years ago. It needs a better home than it has now. The town of Ione on the narrow-gauge Stockton & Ione RR needs a depot. I think that it where it should go. I need to get that part of the railroad operating anyway.

     

     

New Packing House Arrives in Holden

A California Fruit Express refrigerator car awaits loading at the new San Joaquin Fruit Growers' Association packing plant.

The San Joaquin Fruit Growers' Association packing house in Holden is now complete and occupied in Holden. Refrigerator cars ship daily with apples, grapefruit and other produce. In other words, I have completed another structure for this town.
    It started life as a Walthers packing house kit. Usually, I don't use standard kits, not because they are not good, but because they seldom look like structures in the part of the country I am modeling. In this case, the Walthers kit looked like a frame packing house would like in the 1890s. The kit was assembled per the instructions with little being done. The signs for the building were custom printed.
     The stacks of fruit crates were constructed by wrapping wooden blocks with a printed wrapper showing stacks of fruit crates. This was done by first selecting end labels which appealed to me (there are numerous photos of these labels on line) and then reducing the image to HO scale. The label was then duplicated in a stack-like formation. The same thing was done for the sides of the crates and the top. These images were organized to form a wrapper which glued to the wood block. The individual crates were obtained from Shapeways (https://www.shapeways.com/product/X7NBJNAAQ/orange-shipping-crate-set-ho-no-lids?optionId=59187209&li=user-wishlist). They come in both open top and closed top configurations.