To add a small machine shop, I had several goals in mind. First, to make the addition look like it was intended to fit with the style of the main building. One way to do this is to match the pitch of the roof, which I set out to do. Second, I needed to include space for a loading dock, and thus wanted to offset the addition back from the track on that side of the building. And third, I wanted to cover up the large window opening in the wall section from the kit, which was intended to sheath that part of the building wall. Last, I wanted a reasonably symmetric building.
To accomplish all this, I began by tracing the kit wall section. It’s shown below as the black outline, including the kit window openings. Then I experimented with roof heights for the addition, to cover the kit window opening and to accomplish an offset. The cross-section of the design I ended up with is the red outline below.
My plan was to use the two kit windows originally in this area, the black outlines above, but to relocate them appropriately in the shop structure.
To make the walls for the shop, I chose Evergreen Novelty siding, material no. 4083, which has the same board width as the main Banta kit structure. I cut the three needed walls (the fourth abuts the roundhouse and can be plain), and another of which can be blank, since it will face the backdrop on my layout and will not be visible from anywhere in the adjoining aisle. I do need a small piece of that abutting wall, where the red outline, above, juts above the black outline at right, and I used some of the leftover Banta scribed plywood for this.
I then laid out the door and window openings needed, as follows. I located the two windows originally meant for the roundhouse end, in the end of the machine shop, along with a man door. For that door, I chose a Tichy part, their no. 8032. I also chose to add one more window on the loading dock side, a Grandt Line no. 5030. Openings were then cut in the usual scribe and snap fashion.
I assembled the three sides into a structure, using Evergreen strip no. 166 (roughly HO scale 8 x 12-inch section) in the corners. For stiffness, I made the fourth side from heavier material, using some Evergreen 0.060-inch sheet (this part will be invisible inside the structure).
When this assembly was done, I airbrushed the exterior boxcar red, to match the rest of the structure. I then added the door and windows, along with the same black trim strips as on the main structure, scale 1 x 6-inch wood. I also added a triangular support at the back, matching the front profile, to support the roof. At this point, the shop looked like this.
Now I completed the main structure by adding a styrene strip foundation, slightly raising the building so the line of the structure base would match that of the roundhouse.
I decided to make a metal standing-seam roof for the machine shop, so that it would be different from the main structure. Evergreen makes a nice material for this kind of roofing, their part no. 4523, so I cut and assembled two roof sheets, duplicating the overhang of the main roundhouse in doing so (except over the area of the loading dock). You can see the foundation here also. Eaves still need to be given trim boards.
The photo below shows that this shop fits against the rear of the roundhouse, as it was intended to do, and you can see the matching roof edges of the machine shop and boiler house, so that there will be a roof over the loading dock. The dock itself remains to be installed.
I wanted to represent a little more of an engine facility than an engine house alone, which is the reason for adding the small machine shop. Many older SP roundhouses just dedicated a stall or two to machining needs, and this small shop is the same kind of idea.
Tony Thompson
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