EUGENE FREIGHT HOUSE

During this period of "encouraged" shut-in, I have continued to fill blank spaces in the Eugene and Springfield areas of my railroad.  The current gap-filling is with the Eugene Freight House.  The freight house was located near the Eugene passenger depot and train order station.  Back in the days of extensive railroad less-than-carload and express service, the Eugene freight house saw daily service.  Indeed, a regular baggage-express run had a car come down from Portland to Eugene for set-out at the freight house and then return to Portland in a subsequent First Class train.  By the 1950's, this service was provided by the Klamath, Trains 19 and 20, the mail and express train on the Shasta-Cascade Route.  

I struggled with a design for this freight house for many years.  A Walt Paschelke photo published in the Austin and Dill Southern Pacific in Oregon Pictorial showed the office end of the freight house and a narrow-angle view along the mainline track side.  The subject of that photo was a steam-powered relief outfit train on the main, but it also revealed important details of the freight house.  My search for additional photos or information kept drawing blanks.

Motivated by a presentation that was to have been made at the Eugene convention of the Pacific Northwest Region of the National Model Railroad Association, I decided to simply plow ahead with the modest information I had on hand.  This included the published photo, standard freight house planforms published in Henry Bender's Southern Pacific Lines Standard-Design Depots book, and various plans for SP Common Standard depot structures.  This last point provided a common architectural style with which to interpret both the photo and the freight house planforms.  

Using the Walt Paschelke photo of the office end and sighting along the trackside platform and a boxcar spotted at the freight house, I could estimate dimensions.  I chose a building 25 feet wide--a common SP standard for wood structures such as this freight house and combination depots.  I estimated the eave height at 18 feet.   Common Standard depot plans gave me a roof pitch at a 30-degree angle.  Those plans and the freight house planforms in Bender's book suggested freight doors spaced at 37 feet, which proved convenient for the length of building materials I was using.  I chose to model four freight bays and an overall building length of 160 feet which included a 25-feet long office.

Basic construction was relatively straight-forward for me using styrene.  I obtained a 24-inch long sheet of V-groove siding from Evergreen Scale Models that I cut out the sides from.  The ends were cut out from a similar sheet of more readily-available 12-inch long sheet.  Interior partitions were cut from 0.040-inch thick styrene sheet.  These helped maintain wall and roof geometry.  I used long sheets of 0.040-inch thick styrene for the sub-roof panels, but had to splice them for my desired length. 

Basic freight house construction.  The long interior walls are braced at the top and dock level and ridge-line bracing will support the roof.  The loading platforms were estimated at five-feet depth.  The sub-roof panels have been spliced to get the desired length.  The office has interior walls and the floor section, painted brown, is off to the right.

As usual with what appears to be a "simple" project, the "devil is in the details."  Easiest was the use of Tichy windows and the personnel door for the office.  I selected Tichy parts that were similar to SP practice--a tact taken with a number of commercial structure kits.  Looking at freight section ends of various depots, I decided I could use a long window high in the gable of the freight end of the building.  I pieced together four windows cut from a Tichy horizontal sliding window.  The office chimney was a Tichy part.  I added interior walls to the office section and even a floor with the office counter on it (the brown square to the right of the depot in the photo above).  I braced the walls and the ridge line of the building with 1/8-inch square styrene.

I chose asphalt shingles for this structure--a common choice as seen in photos of SP company structures in Oregon.  I used JTT Architectural Model Parts #97440, marketed by MRC.  One package with two 7.5 x 12-inch sheets was sufficient, although I did need to splice these for my full roof length.  Although the embossed shingle sheets were styrene and the sub-roof panels also were styrene, I chose to laminate these parts together using contact cement.  This gave me the working time I needed to position the shingle sheets on the sub-roofs.  

As seen in the Walt Paschelke photo, the roof overhang was cut down on the mainline side of the building, but left intact on the street side.  I used a five-feet roof overhang on the street side and for the ends.  I made simple eaves brackets from 0.040 x 0.060-inch styrene strip.  These were painted and added after the main building paint was applied, as they appear to be painted SP's trim brown.

I painted the structure using TruColor paint.  This was my first use of TruColor, although it handles very similarly to AccuPaint which I used several decades ago.  Water-soluble Floquil Polly-S acrylic paint is no longer available and my personal stash is growing thin.  I will reserve use of that stash for other areas of the layout that have structures painted with it already.  My Eugene and Springfield area is self-contained, so I will use TruColor for company structures in this area.  TCP-153 SP Colonial Yellow lives up to its reputation an excellent rendition of that color.  My judgement is reserved on TCP-164 SP Trim Brown, as I had difficulty with that color.  I blew right through the single bottle of it I had before I had even half of the parts I needed painted that color.  I wanted to keep this project moving along, so I switched to a suitable Polly-S color I had.  Taking a cue from Tony Thompson's "Modeling the SP" blog, I faded the TCP-154 Moss Green with white at about 4:1 when I painted the roof.  This matched well to my previous use of Polly-S Depot Olive.  One consequence of using TruColor paint is its gloss finish.  I needed to apply a flat finish to the mostly complete structure before installing the windows with their clear glazing.

I have found with SP structures that it is useful to paint the trim separately before applying it to the main structure.  Fortunately, there is very little trim on this freight house, especially for my desired 1950's appearance.  One item with considerable contrasting trim was the freight door design.  I painted the basic door sections SP Colonial Yellow.  I subsequently built up the trim which was painted brown, attaching it with canopy cement.  In concert with others (including Tony Thompson, from whom I got the inspiration), I find canopy cement a very useful adhesive.  It works like white glue, including its working time.  That was very useful when aligning trim boards on the freight doors.  I also applied the door frame and other trim to the main structure in the same way.

Trim strips being built up on the freight doors.

A final detail for this freight house was the roof-mounted "Southern Pacific Freight Station" sign.  I could just make out the end edge of such a sign in the Walt Paschelke photo.  Looking through Southern Pacific Lines, Pacific Lines Stations Volume 1, published by the Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society, I found Salem, Oregon, had a similar freight house with roof-mounted sign.  This made sense, as both cities were sizeable and had competition from the Oregon Electric (Spokane Portland and Seattle).  Indeed, the Oregon Electric Eugene passenger depot was only two blocks away from the Southern Pacific depot complex, so a roof-mounted sign identifying the SP made sense.  

I made a sign on cardstock using a standard font in PowerPoint.  I might have been able to find a more exact match to the type-face used on these signs, but what I have is close enough.  It appeared that the sign was white letters on a black background, framed with trim brown.  I laminated a pair of the signs printed on cardstock and then added styrene trim painted brown.  using the mounting system seen at Salem, the sign is supported on round posts (styrene rod on my model) above the roof ridge.  Diagonal braces formed with brass wire on my model lead outward on the roof.  Mounting and attaching this sign proved a bit challenging, but I eventually got it done. 

Completed Eugene freight house with roof-top sign.

The Eugene freight house, ready for business.  As with most of my Eugene scene, the freight house was built as a mirror-image of the prototype building.

I still need to weather my freight house and set it into the scene--much like the rest of my structures.  Still, I am enjoying having a structure with distinct SP common-standard architecture and standard SP colors occupying an important piece of real estate on my railroad.  In this case, I will even make a rare exception for me (an Oregon State graduate!) and accept the similarity of the SP colors to those of the state-rival institution in Eugene.  <wink>