Information on smaller US industrial brick built buildings

[flubrush]

I'm looking for pictures or details of the styles of smaller industrial brick built buildings in the US.  I've had a lot of searching around on the internet and have ploughed my way through a lot of Shorpy but haven't really found any pictures of anything that I could apply to the structures on my small switching layout.    The industrial buildings which I have found are quite large and would be out of place on my smallish layout.  I'm looking for single and two storey structures - maybe three at a push.    Any suggestions for sources of such pictures or details?

 

Jim.

Edited December 26, 2016 by flubrush

[HeavyDuty]

What region of the US, and what era?

[flubrush]

What region of the US, and what era?

I haven't really set a specific location but probably NE coast and early to mid twentieth century.  The  layout will be set in the 60s - 70s but I'm reckoning on the structures to be much older.

 

Jim.

[Nearholmer]

Try google street view.

 

Explore the post-industrial grot around Springfield, Vermont, for instance.

 

Then google the Springfield terminal railway.

 

Or, have a look around 125 Mulberry Street, Claremont, New Hampshire, then google Claremont And Concord Railroad.

 

K

Edited December 27, 2016 by Nearholmer

[HeavyDuty]

Out of my area, I'm afraid - but Nearholmer's suggestion of using street view is a great one.

[flubrush]

Try google street view.

 

Explore the post-industrial grot around Springfield, Vermont, for instance.

 

Then google the Springfield terminal railway.

 

Or, have a look around 125 Mulberry Street, Claremont, New Hampshire, then google Claremont And Concord Railroad.

 

K

 

Many thanks for the pointers,  I'll give Street View a try and see what I find.    It's more really the style of building to copy rather than any particular building - i.e. the type of doors and windows and the brick formations that were used.

 

Jim.

Edited December 27, 2016 by flubrush

[Nearholmer]

Walthers kits seem pretty accurate representations, and are easy to hack about.

 

I just made an early morning excursion to Camden, Maine, by street view ........ soooooo much easier than the process I had to follow twenty five years ago, when I built a layout based on the waterfront there, using holiday snaps, books, and magazines.

 

Kevin

[Alcanman]

Can't help you with location or photos, but I would have thought that the DPM range of kits would be perfect for your time period. They feature brick buildings and different styles of windows.

 

They are of modular construction and can be made to fit on any size layout.

 

All the structures in this pic (apart from the water tower) were built from DPM kits on this small switching layout built 20 years ago.

 

 

 

[long island jack]

Have a look at these, DPM templates and tips

http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/images/instructions/homod.pdf

 

http://div8.ncr-nmra.org/nav/files/dpm.pdf

 

City classics do some small industrial buildings

 

Find an old Walthers catalogue , plenty of ideas in them

 

Ray

[Gilbert]

Downtown Deco do some very nice urban buildings as do Monstermodel works. I've used Downtown on my Twigg Street layout and am just about to build a MMW signal tower. DPM, Walthers etc all good but tend to keep appearing on layout after layout

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/113995-twigg-avenue/

 

 

http://monstermodelworks.com/HO-Scale/HO-Kits/

 

 

and in closing...

 

http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?location=Kingsbury%20St.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Gilbert

[flubrush]

I'm sorry,  I should have stated the scale,  which is S,  so I can't make use of the DPM kits.  But their templates and tips could be useful for ideas.  

 

The layout is featured here in its early stages

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/114388-jameston-leven-river-rr/

 

...so you'll see that there's not all that much room for low relief structures along the backscene so I'm going to have to do a bit of work to get some reasonable representations in there.  I can generate laser cut brick so there shouldn't be too much of a problem to provide the base material to build the structures.

 

Jim.

[dave1905]

HABS-HAER website has pictures of thousands of US buildings, everything from sheds to steel mills.  It is a goto place for me when I am looking for buildings.  Some entries are pictures, some have both pictures and scaled drawings.

 

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/

 

Historic American Building Survey, Historic American Engineering Record

Edited December 27, 2016 by dave1905

[shortliner]

Take a look at LARC products CDs - You can browse the photos on each disc at Http://www.LARCProducts.com I have the full set and can recommend them highly. As an example Vol#4 has 200 buildings along with backdrops, etc.

[flubrush]

Dave, Jack,

 

Many thanks for these pointers.  I'll follow them up.

 

Jim.

Edited December 29, 2016 by flubrush

[Nearholmer]

Having now made the connection with your other thread (definitely a Homer Simpson moment, because it didn't dawn on me initially), can I suggest that you might also think about wooden buildings?

 

Depending upon when the "rise to prosperity" of your locale was, and given a location in the NE it might have been quite early, warehousing could well have been in wood, and looks surprisingly like similar buildings from the older harbours on the south coast of England. These wooden warehouses seem often to have had three or more floors, but each floor was not very high, maybe ten feet, so they don't look overpowering on a layout.

 

Which state are you in?

 

K

[flubrush]

Having now made the connection with your other thread (definitely a Homer Simpson moment, because it didn't dawn on me initially), can I suggest that you might also think about wooden buildings?

 

Depending upon when the "rise to prosperity" of your locale was, and given a location in the NE it might have been quite early, warehousing could well have been in wood, and looks surprisingly like similar buildings from the older harbours on the south coast of England. These wooden warehouses seem often to have had three or more floors, but each floor was not very high, maybe ten feet, so they don't look overpowering on a layout.

 

Which state are you in?

 

At the moment my thoughts are for some form of engineering enterprise with a heavy-ish crane/hoist extending out over the track and a jetty next to where the car float berths,  allowing unloading of heavy items from railroad cars or a ship/barge when the car float isn't around.    I'm looking to get some depth into the low relief buildings to try to get away from thin low relief buildings between the track and the backscene.   I might even wrap the building around the end of the baseboard to add a bit more depth with the spur disappearing into it.

 

So I might have to make the buildings a bit more sophisticated than you suggest - and I've also got a laser cutter to put to good use to make some brickwork. :-)   My rationale might be that the industry arrived on the scene after the harbour and rail head appeared and would have been early 20th century.

 

I haven't thought of a state - just somewhere in the east of the continent that has a navigable river.

 

Jim.

Edited December 29, 2016 by flubrush

[Nearholmer]

How's about this?

 

The premises of the Maine Narrow Gauge Railway Museum, Fore Street, Portland, Maine, courtesy of street view.

 

Very modelogenic.

Edited December 29, 2016 by Nearholmer

[flubrush]

How's about this?

 

The premises of the Maine Narrow Gauge Railway Museum, Fore Street, Portland, Maine, courtesy of street view.

 

Very modelogenic.

 

Now that does look excellent with that large door to provide an exit from a loading bank alongside the spur and plenty of opportunity to add to what's there.   I've also got a style of brickwork to copy.  I get the impression that US builders liked to get a lot of relief into their brickwork and I would prefer to copy a known style rather than concoct something which may look a bit dodgy. :-)   I'll start blocking something out - maybe model it in quarter scale - to see what I can fit in the space available.    Many thanks.

 

Jim.

[Nearholmer]

It's got some history, by the looks of it.

 

I read the second storey of the part on the right to be an addition, above what was probably a single-storey portion of the original building. That big doorway is a further alteration, with a huge steel frame to take the load of what is above it.

 

It's worth looking at the entire building in street view, because the two-storey part on the left has also had a bit added on top, to make a third storey, and it is done in a most ramshackle fashion.

 

K

[flubrush]

It's got some history, by the looks of it.

 

I read the second storey of the part on the right to be an addition, above what was probably a single-storey portion of the original building. That big doorway is a further alteration, with a huge steel frame to take the load of what is above it.

 

It's worth looking at the entire building in street view, because the two-storey part on the left has also had a bit added on top, to make a third storey, and it is done in a most ramshackle fashion.

 

K

 

I dug it up in Streetview and eventually found the bit of the building in the picture. :-)    There's a fair bit of interesting architecture around that site which could come in handy.  I note that all the brickwork seems to be Stretcher bond so I assume that the buildings might be steel framed with brick facings.   That third storey does look interesting.  It would be good to get some closer pictures of it to see what the construction might be,  I assume that the pipe which features in the picture above might just be a soil pipe. :-)

 

Jim.

[Nearholmer]

The MNGM is moving from there very soon, because the whole area is about to be gentrified, but I reckon that if you emailed them, and told them what you are up to, one of them would do a quick photo survey for you.

 

K

[dullsteamer]

It's got some history, by the looks of it.

It's got history alright.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Company_Marine_Complex

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[flubrush]

The MNGM is moving from there very soon, because the whole area is about to be gentrified, but I reckon that if you emailed them, and told them what you are up to, one of them would do a quick photo survey for you.

 

 I thought you might be interested in this

 

 

...based on this

 

 

There's more on the Emblaser thread here

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/108310-darkly-labs-emblaser-affordable-laser-cutter-review/page-38&do=findComment&comment=2953749

 

I actually did a form of photo shoot using StreetView and got a lot of information to base my models on.  I've given up trying to emulate the brick bond. :-)

 

Jim.

[Nearholmer]

Cracking stuff!

[flubrush]

Cracking stuff!

 

Many thanks for the pointer.

 

Jim.