Goods Shed Part Four

The final stage of construction my Model Train Buildings NSWGR G-2 Goods Shed, involved gluing the roof fascia and platform bargeboards to the model, and to my surprise this turned out to be one of the trickiest components to the model.

The kit comes with a spacer for aligning the bargeboards, and unfortunately there's not enough to model 3 strips of them if you stray from the plans like I did.

After leaving off the wider door frame pieces in favour of fitting the door sills in the same bug-eyed fashion that I fitted the windows, I soon discovered that the bargeboards were now too short when placed along the walls of the building. This called for a bit of improvising, and knowing that there were 3 strips of bargeboards on the G-2 sheds with the lowest sitting flush with the decking of the goods platform, I decided to leave the bottom strip off altogether and simply apply 2 strips of bargeboards. Using the spacer that comes in the kit to raise the lowest strip off the platform decking, I then had enough painted bargeboard to complete the building by cutting sections to fill the gaps from what would have been the third strip of bargeboard.

Fixing the bargeboards with glue calls for tweezers and a steady hand.

By now, the model is quite sturdy to hold in your hands to work on. After spending a few days applying several coats of thinned down Burnt Sienna acrylic to the laser-cut wooden fascia boards, corner soffits and bargeboards as I outlined in Goods Shed Part One, I could then get to work fitting them to the model. I used quick drying craft glue to fix the corner soffits first, and then glued the bargeboards in place. Next I measured the gap that needed to be filled courtesy of my ommission of the door frames and glued the final pieces in place. This was a job that called for tweezers to ensure that I pressed each piece into place correctly so as to avoid any glue smears from trying to line it up after it had touched down on the surface.

The roof fascia and bargeboards fixed in place.

Finally I touched up any join lines courtesy of my cut and fill joins on the bargeboards, and also where I'd shortened the roof line on the non-rail side with some paint. At this point, the rear of each door that is visible through the opened area of the model was also painted with the same Burnt Sienna acrylic. When dry I placed it on the goods platform to see how it looked.

A view of the finished model from the rail dock end...

The shortened roof line on the non-rail side will now enable the clear perspex sheeting to drop into the channels along the front of my layout, while still blending in with the overall appearance of a G-2 Goods Shed.

...and another view from the office end.

Apart from the join lines on the bargeboards where I had to fill the gaps, the missing third strip of bargeboard isn't all to obvious thanks to the darkened timber decking of the goods platform. From the non-rail side, the bump-planking along the delivery dock certainly goes a long way to making up for it being left off. All I need to do now to complete the model, is stain the steps, add a few strategic items on and around the goods platform and install the lighting inside the building. As usual, I'll save an article about detailing a goods shed for another day.

See also; Goods Shed Part Three and Goods Shed Part Two and Goods Shed Part One and Building a Goods Platform