Recreating Rob Mountenay’s Merkiomen Valley Branch – Part 3

The pleasure of recreating Rob’s layout is largely derived from reverse engineering is creative decision through the lenses of my own art of model railroading. Such a blatant case is the coal dealer shed. This little structure, on the edge of the layout, if a very common prototype found across North America. It isn’t special in any way, shape or form, hence making it more attractive to me.

After a lot of online research, I was able to discover the kit used on the Merkiomen Valley Branch was none other than an old Mil-Scale craftsman kit. It wasn’t a fancy one, but rather something quite basic as would be expected from a product designed in the 1970s. I was able to locate the original drawings on WorthPoint and to guesstimate the dimensions out of pictures.

Big enough to fit a 40ft hopper

From what I gather, the building was big enough to shelter an entire 40ft long coal hopper, making it quite compact. Looking at the kit pictures and comparing it to real prototype pictures of coal trestles, I became convinced it was kind of wrong. The kit didn’t provide any ties for the rails and they were glued directly on diminutive stringers. To my architect eyes, it didn’t make any sense and I decided to redesign it in a more realistic way. To accomplish this goal, I had to make the shed slightly higher to accommodate the extra lumber.

Old white paint still visible

Soon, I decided to make my own lumber from a weathered spruce picket from my garden and some half-painted scraps of pine. My idea was to use reclaimed wood to obtain a much more realistic texture before final weathering. Everything from posts to planks was cut on my table saw, textured with 60 grit sandpaper and sanded with 180 grit paper to remove the fuzzy fibres. I made sure to keep some old paint and weathering here and there. The wood was then stained with a mix of India ink and alcohol. I hadn’t used that recipe for a long time, preferring oil paint washes and AK products, but honestly, I can see me reusing India ink more often in the near future.

Reclaimed wood is varied in appearance

To build the structure, I created a cardboard template that would ensure the general dimensions would be right whatever the lumber discrepancies. Each frame took about 20 minutes to build.

 

A template really takes away any risk of errors

Planks were then glued on to create partition walls between each coal bin. I then proceeded to create the trestle deck. Once again, using a template. A pair of stringers were glued on evenly spaced long ties to form the holes in the deck where coal would pour.  Smaller ties were added to support rails and planks were installed to create the gangways for crews. The model was ready for assembly.

 

Poor quality lumber is used at the gangway ends

At this point, the deck was inserted between the 5 frames, creating a 3D structure. Then I cemented the distressed and pre-weathered styrene novelty siding on the long side. At that point, I knew the structure was both squared and braced.

Waking sure everything aligns

Other styrene sides were added until the basic structure was done. Pieces of wood were glued inside to simulate gangway railings. I kept the last bay without any railing thinking I could later on install an access ladder there. I also added horizontal beams on each side walls to complete the structure and a wooden buffer was added to stop cars.

Inside view before adding end buffers

Finally, I used my worst pieces of lumber to add planking at the bottom of the long back walls. These planks would be ultimately half buried in the scenery where they would have started to rot away slowly due to humidity build up.

 

Small yet effective!

As completed, I really like the way it turned out. The reclaimed wood really added a touch of realism to the visible structure. It has that color and quality of old barn wood. As for the dimensions, I quite like them. It’s both imposing yet small enough to not overshadow the entire scene.

 

Ready to pick up some coal!

I will probably glue the structure to a plywood base, add texture, ground, vegetation and coal before setting it in place permanently on the layout. The roof will be added only when most of interior details will be done. I've yet to decide if the structure will be painted white, grey or red, like Rob's model.