Large Scale Central

Free Buildings

General Discussion
#1

My neighbors must really be unhappy with the complete lack of structures on my outdoor railroad. Three, or so, years ago my neighbor across the street gave me an entire collection of Paola buildings - most in pretty good shape. Some are in use on the Indoor division while the remainder await Americanization for use outdoors. Then two years ago, the father of a down the street neighbor dropped off a crate full of LGB and Pola building parts. This same person dropped by today with more - a hand made (not by him) 6 foot long cedar engine house; a small station missing some doors and an LGB Mill missing the wheel and other parts.

The engine house has some issues but I think it’s worth restoring…

And the station just needs a few doors and some TLC to bring it back to life. For now it is standing in as an abandon building…

The donor didn’t give me his full name; just Ralph. Thanks Ralph!

#2

All my neighbors have left in my yard was empty candy bar wrappers and bags of MickeyDs trash.

#3

Free is good.

#4

most often “free” comes with some kind of obligation…

(the donors want to see their junk used)

#5

Hopefully not Korm. I told Ralph that if I couldn’t use them I’d give them away to friends. It’s never a problem giving away stuff at the York show.

Thinking about the engine house; I think it is too small (height wise) for my Fn3 stock; so a change to single door and a foundation to raise it a few inches might be a good plan. Also thinking of lining the sides with clear acrylic to give them strength and glaze the windows. Once reinforced, the small rot areas can be cut away and patched making it look old, but maintained.

I guess my bridge build has been put off again. How is it that whenever you are ready to start a project, a new project comes along messing up your plans?

#6

Jon, How nice!

I like your idea on the engine house, but when I first saw the picture, it looked like a covered bridge; it is quite long. :wink:

I think a stone foundation would be perfect for that, although that would probably raise the windows a bit too high; you might be able to enlarge the window openings to compensate. I’m not sure if you could move the horizontal pieces very easily. You could custom make some windows or just use some hardware cloth.

The acrylic would be perfect to act as a liner.

#7

That’s funny. Marilyn and I both thought it was a bridge too when it was on top of Ralph’s car. Looking closer, the fact that it has no deck and the two door openings led me to “engine house” and Ralph agreed. I have no idea how he used it - I’ve never seen his layout.

#8

Free is good. Jon you can use some of that stone mosaic from Lowes for a foundation. Other then that I would leave it as is. It will look good as an old engine house from back in the day.

#9

That’s a cool engine house! Do you realize how much work it would be to achieve that ancient, abandoned look? Set that in just as it is!

#10

Tom Ruby said:

That’s a cool engine house! Do you realize how much work it would be to achieve that ancient, abandoned look? Set that in just as it is!

I pretty much have already done that! I need to pick up some cheap pavers to set it on so the wood doesn’t have direct contact with the dirt, but it may just stay that way for a while.

#11

I put the tape to the engine house tonight and plugged the numbers into the scale calculator at 1:20.3. It’s not bad. Height at the peak of the smoke jack is just under 30 feet and the length is 135 feet. Windows are about 7’ tall by 4’ wide. The existing doors scale to 15’ tall by 11 feet wide.

For now I’m just going to build it a level base and park it until fall. but it looks like adding just an inch or so of door height will work as a two bay.

#12

Further discussion of the Engine House has moved to This Thread