Brandon Industries now open!

An 18 year long request has finally been granted, with the naming of the latest industry to commence advertising their wares on my Philden Beach layout. Brandon Industries Pty. Ltd. is now the major customer on my NSW North Coast inspired layout. And, as the sign dutifully proclaims, they are suppliers to the seafood industry since 1997.

Here's my son helping me to exhibit my past layout at the 2005 Union Pacific Model Railway Club of Brisbane's Model Train Show. The irony is that he spent 2 full days running trains with his Dad on a layout whose town was named after his sister. All he asked in return was that I name a building after him. Well... the little guy is now 26 years old, and it has only taken me 18 years to come good on my promise. (Sorry Champ).

So in a show of gratitude to the little fella who is about to grant his parents Nanna and Poppy status, he now has an industry to keep The Coast stocked with supplies to source his favourite food, seafood.

Having a credible industry on your layout provides a reason to operate.

I've long been happy with the end result on this structure, and the non-descript building had stood on this site since the layout first began its life as Philden Street Yard. For those wanting to know what happened to the buildings from my Philden Street Yard layout (see my Philden Museum page for more), well... nothing really. They are all still here, only being renamed one-by-one. So with the layout's locational move to the New South Wales North Coast, I felt the standalone warehouse needed a credible reason for its existence. Especially if you consider that the building is now pressed against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean rather than a photo montage of bland inner-city industrial buildings.

The signs were once more custom made by myself on my laptop before being printed out, glued to some plain white cardstock, laminated with some clear contact book covering and glued to the roof fascia of the kit building. The kit is the HO scale Walthers Modern Cold Storage Warehouse (kit no. 933-4069), which I first saw on the Tulsa Spur build YouTube series by Steve's Trains back when I first set about replacing my original Philden layout. Unlike Steve's job of kitbashing the structure to serve as a building flat, I opted to kitbash the structure in a smaller footprint that included chopping down the height and adding a rear dock to open up the viewing angle when viewed from the front.

Here is the warehouse pressed against the former Philden Street Yard photo backdrop....

And here's the newly named Brandon Industries pressed against the Philden Harbour foreshore.

Now for that all important question. What goods traffic will this warehouse handle on the layout? As Brandon Industries are suppliers to the seafood trade, it is all inwards traffic. Plastic fishing crates, tubs and industrial size rolls of netting. High tensile fishing wire, bouys, waterproof waders, boat anchor chains and pallets of bagged sodium metabisulphite to make of tubs of preservative to dip all those freshly caught prawns into. And finally commercial sized rolls of plastic bags and waxed cardboard boxes to pack and seal all that fresh caught seafood. It's an industry with an endless appetite, all of which is in turn sold and consumed locally by resorts, restaurants and fish n' chip shops, (more on that to follow). It's all fictitious of course, when in reality the modern North Coast railway line sees very few customers between Sydney and Brisbane.

Sounds like an excuse to run some trains. But only until I'm ready to stop for some prawns and bubbly!

Until next time, cheers!