[b]The Old Mill Lumber Co’s mill at Port Orford doubles as an online car storage shed, the fourth and last on the railroad.
A medium sized enclosed mill it’s the biggest employer in the tiny hamlet of Port Orford.
Hollow inside the structure accommodates two concealed tracks.
The rafters are cut from PVC and are solid for strength. The front side is also PVC while the rear is rough cedar simply painted without detail as it won’t be seen except for access.
Here more PVC has been used for the sub roof. The holes are for access hatches in case of derailment or to shoo out lil’ varmints.
The hatch is made to simply drop into the holes in the rooftop. As long as there is a close fit I’ve had no trouble with wind lifting them out thus far.
Bottom view. The metal brackets help to guide the hatch into place and their length helps to secure it.
The hatches in place. They simply overlap the regular roof and this method has worked very well keeping the rain out although a small amount wouldn’t really hurt. I was quite surprised when after a rather heavy and windy rain on the older lumber warehouse/storage which also uses these hatches that everything was dry as a bone inside.
The transom windows were made from a strip of clear acrylic to which prepainted styrene strips were glued with plastic cement.
Here it is installed.
And with the sub roof. It looks a bit “blocky” here but once the finish roof is installed the thickness will merely look like fascia around the edges. Good strength and durability for outdoors as the POC’s structures are outside all year long.
Looks different with the cedar plank roofing. I use 1/8" thickness for most wood siding and here for the roof. It’s a good compromise between looks and much needed outdoor durability.
It takes a lot of siding for a structure just under 11 ft. long. Cedar strips 1/8" x 3/8" all primed a light grey on both sides and lemon yellow (Krylon) on the facing side. Just the siding for the front and two ends used most of a 10’ and a 4’ 1x6 cedar board. Made a lot of great sawdust and the leftover sided the building.
Siding installed. The tape is the initial masking for signage.
With wax paper protecting most of the building the lettering colors are painted on and were left to cure for almost 3 days. Then vinyl lettering was carefully applied and the “background” colors were sprayed over everything, background and letters.
Another day to dry and the vinyl letters were carefully peeled off with tweezers revealing the painted letter colors beneath. While I letter a lot with vinyl lettering leaving it in place I prefer painted lettering over individual boards as they expand and contract somewhat independently of one another loosening the adhesive on the backs of the letters. The painted letters age right along with the siding paint and thus look good even when weather beaten.
With the help of a friend the structure was placed on the benchwork outdoors over the two storage tracks already installed.
A lean to was installed over the log loading area. I took a bit of license here as I didn’t have room for a proper cold deck. I think it looks reasonably realistic and the roof hides somewhat the faux opening. The roof was built as one unit as was the upright section. Then they were brought outside and attached to the mill side wall and each other. A couple of additional boards were added on each end and the structure is surprisingly strong.
Next we needed a removable end to allow access for car storage. I decided to put up a bumper on the end with illuminated warning lights.
Inside are little shelves to hold everything. A 9 volt battery powers the lights and is attached to a battery clip which has one wire soldered to a toggle switch and then to a connector clip and the other wire direct to the other clip. The wires from the two bulbs come up trough a hole and one wire of each bulb goes to the connector clips. The tape is to hold the bulbs full up into the lights. The lights themselves are cedar blocks with holes drilled for the bulbs. A red lens and reflector from a set of Ozark 7/8" scale marker lights finish it off. Typical homemade stuff you’d expect from a cheapo lumber company. hehe!
The structure holds 14 cars, seven on each track, and provides a valuable bit of scenery background as well as an industry to switch for the railroad.
I’m looking forward to completing the other structures on this ebd of the railroad so I can fill in the terrain and properly plant the mill.
Hope I didn’t put too many photos in one post but I didn’t want to split them up to avoid half of the post getting lost.[/b]
