A Pair of Warehouses

Waverly occupies a lonely place in the San Joaquin Valley with nothing there except for the P&D warehouse.

In taking a break from engine terminal project, I was looking for something which would improve the railroad but not take a lot of time. I found it in two grain warehouses, one at Waverly and the other at Charleston. The Waverly warehouse "vacant lot" had bothered me a bit since it's about the only unscenicked portion in that particular aisle. I decided to do Charleston at the same time since it would be about the same size and construction.

   

The doors on the left side of the building were used to unload wagons. Similar
doors trackside were used for car loading.

 Peterson and Dake owned the grain warehouse in Milton and also operated the Waverly warehouse. I had a bit of information from insurance maps and railroad records but no photos so I freelanced the building from what little I knew. I used board and batten siding (Evergreen) with a shingled roof. Loading doors adorned both sides of the building for the loading/unloading of wagons and freight cars. For the roof, I chose to use up some of my pile of Campbell shingles just to have a slightly different look from my usual Minuteman Models variety. The Campbell shingles are gummed but I knew they would not stick to styrene so I opted for an illustration board roof I bought from the local Hobby Lobby. I also opted to save my tongue in the moistening process and rigged up a damp sponge. The shingles went on nicely and, while they do not have the newly-applied look of the MM shingles, look like they've been on the building for a while. The structure was then painted to match the Milton structure and similar decals were printed and applied.

     

Grube's Warehouse is the only industry at Charleston and is butted up against the backdrop.

Over at Charleston, the only information I had was the dimensions of the building. The available space required a slight shrinkage of the building but it is in keeping with the siding length. Evergreen grooved siding was used with Grandt Line doors and the Campbell shingles-on-illustration-board roof. The lettering was freelanced.

   

 Both of the areas still require scenicking to finish the sites and that will be completed in the next week or so. Waverly also has to have a small oil loading facility to service the new Waverly tank car a friend of mine donated to the railroad. 

Stock Yards and a Finished Warehouse

Howe & Smallwood have opened for business and are employing a number of Oakdale's citizens.

  At last, with all the delays, the Howe & Smallwood warehouse is finally finished. Alongside of it is a new corral so that the ranchers around Oakdale can ship their cattle on the Stockton & Copperopolis. As has been seen in previous posts, I cut one wall away from the building due to lack of benchwork space. This made cutting the roof trusses very interesting and necessitated all of the grain sacks but I think the effort was worth it.
 

These steers will have a while to wait to be loaded as there are presently no stock cars available for shipment.

 The corral was put together with pieces from a Walthers corral kit. If you look at the layout plan, you can see that the loading chute is just about right at a track switch. For corrals, that is not that bad. Corrals can be located on odd sections of track because cars are not usually spotted there long enough to matter. You can't load a carload of steers and let them set so the train has to be ready to leave town when the cars are loaded. How long does it take to load a car? I will be setting up a sound module with a recording of mooing steers. When the sound stops, one car is loaded. Spot the next car and do it again. Right now, I don't have any stock cars on the railroad so that traffic will have to wait a bit.
 

Jake, the foreman is exerting his authority to impress Mr. Howe, lounging in
the background.

Quite a number of figures were needed to complete this scene. The cows were prepainted by Woodland Scenics while the cowboys started out as unpainted Preiser figures. The boys in the warehouse were a combination of old cast metal Lytler & Lytler and Gandy Dancer figures that I have had forever. It was time to use them.
   Of course, wagons full of grain sacks had to be brought in my the farmers so I built up a couple of kits that I had in stock. The green wagon is a Lindsey which is made in the United Kingdom while the brown wagon was made by Imagine That Laser Art (www.imaginethatlaserart.com). It is laser-cut wood and very easy to assemble.

Farmers delivering grain are guided into position by warehouse workers.

New Warehouse Nears Completion

The white substance is unpainted Sculptamold which will eventually be covered with dirt and growing things.

Running out of shingles can sure put a damper on a model's progress. I thought I had enough to finish the new Howe and Smallwood grain warehouse but I did not. Even though I ordered more, it took a few weeks to get them made and in my hands. The material I use is from Minuteman Scale Models (www.minutemanscalemodels.com) and is a very good product. I have used them on several of the buildings in Oakdale and elsewhere. They come in strips and have a peel-off backing so the strip can just be stuck down on the roof of the model. I highly recommend them.
 

 Casting the grain sacks to populate the warehouse took a bit of time as well. I used up the last of my casting resin which, fortunately, was enough to finish the job. In the 1890s, before forklifts, warehouses generally only stacked things about eight feet high. That was as high as a man could reach. A few hand trucks completed the interior.
   The terrain on the warehouse site was not quite level so I used some Sculptamold to fill in the low spots. It still needs to be painted and have dirt, etc. applied. There's still a bit of scenery work need plus a wagon or two delivering grain to the building.
 

An 1885 bird's-eye map of Oakdale yielded this view of the warehouse. With the side of my model cut off, I could only show one door and one window.

 The prototype of this warehouse was built in the early 1870s and was a brick building like the model. It was 400 feet long while my model was cut back to 200 feet. They must have moved a lot of grain in those days! By 1895, the building was gone, probably due to fire although I have found no confirmation of that. I would probably have to go to Oakdale and read through the Oakdale papers to see if there was any mention of a fire. Although the prototype building at this site was one of the Stanislaus Warehouses, I used the name of another warehouse in town just to give some variety to the scene.

Another Grain Warehouse

The Howe and Smallwood warehouse sits at the south end of the town. Adjustments to the ground level will have to be made before the building can be permanently installed.

Oakdale was a town with several warehouses for grain. After all, that was the major commodity carried by the S&C in the '90s. The Howe and Smallwood warehouse sat on the west side of the main line at the south end of town. On my model, that puts it across the tracks from the Oakdale Lumber Company. The prototype structure measured 50 x 400 feet which is way too big for the space I have. I cut the length down to 200 feet but left the width the same. This posed a dilemma since the benchwork was not wide enough to accommodate this width. I decided to slice off part of one side which would result in a model with one wall open. Of course, this meant that I had to provide an interior for the building which was pretty simple since it would be more stacks of grain sacks.

A trackside view shows the loading door and a window. The office door and window are on the building's end at the right of the photo.

   The open side also meant that I would have to construct roof trusses. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon building these trusses using a jig I built. It was not difficult except for the time spent waiting for the glue to dry so I could take it out of the jig. Thirteen trusses later, I was done and assembled them to the building and the way oversized ridge. On half the trusses, part of them would be cut off where the wall didn't exist and they would be supported by this ridge which wouldn't be visible once the roof was on anyway.

The partial roof trusses can be seen in this view. Now I need to fill up the place with grain.

   Today, I'm spending a lot of time casting up more grain sacks to fill up the warehouse. Some workers and hand trucks will be added to complete the scene and then I will attach the roof, shingle it and add exterior details.

Stacks of Sacks

While the Stanislaus Warehouse looked good to me, it needed some product (sacks of grain) stored on its loading platforms. I could not find any commercially made sacks that looked right to me so I decided to make my own. In looking through my scrap boxes, I did find some sack stacks of that looked right. I don't know who made them but Walthers doesn't carry anything like them so I imagine the company is look out of business.






Using these as patterns, a rubber mold was made using Alumilite molding rubber. Bragdon casting resin was poured into the mold and, a few minutes later, I had stacks of sacks. They were painted Floquil Rail Brown which seems to be a close color to the coarse material used in the prototype sacks.

The finished castings after painting.

The now-finished warehouse looks pretty good to me and I now have the capability to make more as additional grain warehouses are built along the route of the S&C.

New Warehouse for Oakdale

The construction projects at Oakdale progress with the addition of the Stanislaus Warehouse Company building. The prototype was built in 1885 and remained standing until the late 1990s. I was fortunate enough to measure and photograph it before it was demolished. Originally used as a warehouse for grain storage, it went through a number of other uses through the years. My model of the building will remain as the original, a warehouse for sacked grain. It was reduced to about 3/4 of its length while retaining the same width. The huge loading platform was originally at the south end of the building but I moved it to the north end as it better suited the available space.

In the 1990s, rail service to the warehouse had been discontinued.

The ground scenery around the building still needs to be applied but there is paint to buy and dirt to sift before that can be done. That big loading platform must have been filled with stacks and stacks of grain. Those will have to be made and cast in resin before I will consider the job done.