05-16-10 The Warehouse Part 3

The brewery warehouse is finished for now. I added the covered dock and roof details.

I decided to use the computer to design the odd shaped dock. I wanted the platform the trucks back up to angled 45 degrees off the back of the building. I also wanted to incorporate the stairwell from the kit. I measured the widths of all the doors and the distances between them. I drew them into the design software. I designed the dock to fit with the door locations and stairwell location. I created a mirror image of the dock and printed it out. I glued it to the back of the styrene plastic sheet so I would not have to worry if the glue left any marks when I removed it later. I used a nibbler tool to cut out square chucks of plastic while following the template. I had use a file for some clean up and to get the stairwell to fit correctly.

I cut some styrene strips and glued them perpendicular along the perimeter. I attached four thin tapered styrene pieces to the back of the dock. These will cover the voids below the dock doors where bumpers were to be attached. Next, I glued the stairwell in place. I decided to use the stair rails from the kit too. I glued them in place and added some additional rails to each side of the dock. I spray painted the entire dock structure with gray primer. After that dried, I applied a couple concrete colored washes to the dock surfaces. I left the rails the original gray primer color. I painted yellow safety stripes along the dock sections not protected by railing. I used masking tape to mask off the strips I wanted to paint.

Next, I worked on the dock cover. I found two side pieces left over from another kit that would fit. I cut out the cover from some ribbed styrene. I glued the side pieces to the cover. I added a thin styrene piece along the front for some detail. I painted it with a dark gray color.

Next, I had to glue the dock cover to the building. I applied masking tape to the warehouse along the outside edges of where the cover would attach. I used a ruler to make sure the tape was straight. I used a file to remove the paint just along the inside edges of the tape. I removed the tape and glued the cover to the warehouse. The dock is not permanently attached at this time. I may glue it place once I make the foundation.

The last step was to attach the roof vents. I cut eight vent sets from the sprues. I cleaned them up and painted them a light gray color. I glued the sets together. I scraped paint away from the areas on the roof where I wanted the vents to go. I glued the vents to the roof. I applied some black paint touch ups where needed around the vents and air conditioners.

I still need to create a covered conveyor to connect this building the bottling plant. I cannot do this until both buildings are sitting on their permanent foundations. Since the buildings in the brewery complex are together now, it looks like I will be moving back to scenery for a while. I still have an area on the other side of the layout that needs scenery applied. I need to rehab the scenery on the original NTRAK module. I can also start laying out the brewery complex foundations, roads, parking lots, and sidewalks.




• 05-16-10 The Warehouse Part 3