A packing shed for Shumala

I have long intended to add a packing shed to Shumala, inspired by the existing shed of Phelan and Taylor at Oceano (you can see its present state at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/11/visiting-area-you-model-part-2.html ). When my layout was in Pittsburgh, PA, I used a simple, undecorated cardboard box to stand in for this shed, at what was then the town of Jalama. But with work underway on the addition of my “Shumala extension,” as I described in a prior post (http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-shumala-extension.html ), it was time to consider a proper shed model.
     I have admired the Showcase Miniatures model of the San Fernando Lemon Association packing shed at San Fernando, California, for some time, kit 2009X. You can see information and a photo of the model at their web site: http://www.showcaseminiatures.com/smph.html . I went ahead and purchased this kit, which is the by-now-familiar laser-cut wood design, with parts engineered to fit together neatly.  Here are a couple of the sections with parts pre-cut. The windows are at lower right.

     One can begin such a kit by painting the exterior side of all parts the desired body color, in my case white. But because I was also going to paint the trim boards at building corners the same color as the body of the structure, it made more sense to assemble the body part-way before painting. The same point can be made for this particular kit because of the way the freight doors are set back into the wall thickness—best to paint the whole thing at one time.
     I like to use yellow carpenter’s glue for the main structural parts of a wood building like this, and use heavier pieces inside the corners to strengthen them and keep them square. My favorite clamps for this kind of assembly are old wooden clothes pins, with the sides reversed to make a kind of parallel clamp.

I used these kinds of clamps to attach corner strips on the inside of each corner, looking something like this, using scale 8 x 14-inch stripwood.

The structure assembly is continuing, and I will report further on it as I reach milestones in the process.
Tony Thompson