Tumbarumba Goods Shed

One of the satisfying aspects of building a model railway layout, is that one finds a use for many of the purchases one has made over the years.  Such is the case for the Tumbarumba Goods Shed.

 In March, 2000 according to the sales docket (17 years ago), I acquired the Bergs NSW G1b goods shed kit, and it remained unopened, and largely forgotten until 3 weeks ago, when I stumbled across it whilst looking for another kit.

If you have built a USA craftsman kit, then the contents and construction style will be familiar.  The kit consists of some thin plywood, a selection of stripwood sizes, a scribed sheet for the deck, some styrene resin and brass parts, a few sets of corrugated iron, and 6 pages of instructions and plans.

The first stage was to cut out the door, and vent opening in the plywood, and reinforce the ends with heavy stripwood.

The next task is to cover the plywood with the corrugated aluminium, and trim the excess.  Assembling the walls, and floor makes up the box.  Note the metal ruler used to prevent the corrugations from being squashed by the peg clamps.

Fitting the floor joists  is the only real problem area of the kit.  Enough joists are provided for the full width of the shed, however, the shed construction has the rail and road shed sides extends below the floor level.  I am not sure that building the platforms and glueing them to the shed sides as recommended by the instructions is strong enough.  So I created  some gaps in the lower walls to get some of the joists through.   If I build another shed, I will make some amendments.

 Bearer beams, trim, and walls edging cut and fitted.  I have also painted the walls with Floquil grey primer

The roof is removable.  Thus created another set of problems - the first was that the awning support struts have to be positioned as such.  Both the kit, and the Greg Edwards plan show only 2 whimpy struts, where my photograph shows 6 longer struts.

Small details were next,  After struggling to try and make up a set of steps, I decided to use the Walkers Models step sides that I had surplus from the Ladysmith goods shed kit built earlier.  I made up some steps from stripwood, and later reduced the height by one step.  I do not know if someone makes the steps,  but it would  be a neat 3D printed item.  The water tank stand is fabricated from stripwood provided, the resin tank painted, the water tank awning constructed fully from styrene sheet, and strip, rather than the kits wood parts.  Lastly, add the stumping on my heavy cardboard base.  The latter requires these stumps to be cut from dowel, and getting each stump base square, and each stump the same height is problematic.

After fitting the timber guards, vents, doors, painting (yes the doors are green), the shed was positioned on the base, to enable the downpipe to be fitted (as per my  Ladysmith station building blog post a few months ago).  Rather tricky, particularly as the roof is still removable.  Fortunately, I can still make adjustments to fix the unfortunate gap on my model.

Lastly, I must mention that the roof is weathered.  The shiny aluminium was painted silver, and I used pastel weathering powders for the rusty look.  I guess I will have to do something similar for the shed sides, and wood platform prior to fitting on the layout.

Detail hounds might find some differences though with my model and the real thing.  Particularly the downpipe is on the RHS (other side), and descends to the ground, rather than to a tank.   And there doesn't appear to be any timber guards.  Well in my defence, I have no photos showing the shed's LHS, and the timber guards might have been removed and repurposed after the line closed in 1974.  But in the end, it is a model railway, and I like the shed as I have built it.

Happy modelling

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NOTE.  One of the reasons for writing a blog, and describing the construction techniques, is that knowledgeable people can provide feedback, and advice.  One such advice was that Tumbarumba had a G1a goods shed, slightly smaller than the kit I used.  So, I will be replacing this shed on my layout with a new model.  The shed built for this blogpost, will still find a home as the Humula Goods shed - as the Humula track plan had provision for a goods shed about the same size as the G1b, and I do not have any photos that show otherwise.  

But why would the railways provide such a small goods shed to Tumbarumba, when other stations on the line with small, or non existant populations (Humula, Ladysmith) have much larger good sheds?

Ladysmith Goods Shed

The Goods shed at Ladysmith has been restored by The Tumba Rail group, and is one of the structures that has to be modelled.  It is essentially a NSW G2 design, although, it was built "mirror image", and the side shed, and extended platform are on the wrong side.  Ladysmith lost the extended platform, and side shed at some stage, although the evidence can be seen in the single window, and timber guards on the end.

I acquired a pair of NSW G2 laser cut kits from Walker Models.  As with the Ladysmith station building, having access to Greg Edwards Data sheets, and pictures of the prototype helps, as the kit instructions are rudimentary at best.

The first thing I did was remove the extended platform, and reverse the end wall framing, so as to get the window positioned as per Ladysmith.

An aspect of the kit  disturbed me:- this, was the thickness of the planks on the loading platform. After some deliberation, I carefully thinned the edge of the platform, made up dummy joists, and painted the "hole" black.  Once the bearing timbers were in place, it would be difficult to tell that these holes don't extend into the shadows.

The corrugated wooden overlays were fitted over the assembled shed, noting that I had to manipulate the ones around the window that I repositioned.  The overlays do not fully cover the sides, and the prototype shed has an exposed wooden framing, at this point.  But I ended up just cutting some more corrugations to cover the gap.

The bearer beams at the bottoms were heavy 10" x 12" North Eastern strip wood, I happened to have handy.  I positioned these beams by referring to the prototype pictures.

Once completed, I painted the outside corrugation with Floquil grey primer., and the wooden deck with Floquil rail brown .  

I then fitted  the timber guards provided by the kit, but on reflection, these are too wide  Unfortunately, by the time I realised it, the glue had gone off, and I would have caused damage to remove them.  Maybe the next G2 goods shed, at Borambola will have correctly sized timber guards.

The kit provides two sets of steps.  Once again, I was not convinced that a scale 12" thick step support looked any good, so I simply used the sharp knife, and the 12" became two  6" thick supports It was surprisingly easy, as the "timber": is actually compressed board, and can be cleaved with little pressure .  After gluing, and then sanding the edge, I was mush happier with the steps.

The windows on the kit are marginally undersize, but once made up, they looked OK.  However, I added window surrounds with North Eastern stripwood.

The roof was my next step.  As per my normal standard, I like to have the roof removable, so as one can access the interior for super-detailing, or simply for fitting a light.  Fortunately, the kit has very positive locking for the roof trusses.

Keen observers may notice the extended roof support angles.  These were made from 2 x 4" northeastern stripwood, glued into holes made at the appropriate angle.  A fiddly task, to get all of them aligned, and probably the reason why the kit does not provide these parts.  I also fitted some guttering to the roof.  Colours used are  Floquil Silver, Depot Buff, and Roof brown.

Lastly, there were the brick piers.  The kit provides a laser cut  integrated bearer beam, and post, which I am sorry, looks ugly.  After more deliberation (and coffee), I came up with a simple method, that used material on hand.   A balsa rod, approximately 37 scale cm square was made by cutting, and sanding, and after painting with Floquil Concrete, cut into 20 equal lengths using my chopper tool.

Whilst my Australian made chopper was bought 30 years ago, a .NSWL chopper would work equally well.  Once all the piers had been cut, each one was wrapped in brick paper - which could be printed off the internet, although mine was a commercial sheet  made by Superquick.  All the piers were then glued to a  temporary base of thick cardboard

I have not fitted downpipes, as I need to do some more research on when the water tanks were removed.  I also have the superphosphate sign to add when I can figure out how I manipulate images in Adobe Photo Elements.

Anyway, I will leave you with a few more images of the real goods shed at Ladysmith.  Happy modelling