Construction Update #9 - Redbanks Depot Loading Dock and The Redbanks Fruit Company Packing House

 

Redbanks Depot Loading Dock

Jaunuary 20, 2025

 

I started the Redbanks Depot, aka the Paso Robles Depot, several years ago by combining two AMB Southern Pacific depot kits along with a couple of scratch built additions.  Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, somewhere along the line the parts to finish the structure including the roofing, loading dock parts and some windows were lost. 

The depot was originally painted with Floquil Armour Yellow lightened with reefer white for the body and Floquil Roof Brown for the trim.  While I still had a bottle the brown, I didn't have a bottle of Armour Yellow.  Instead I used a mix of True Color Union Pacific Armour Yellow, white and brown to get an acceptable match.  All the components, except for the floor were painted before assembly.

One thing I forgot to consider was the length of the freight house portion of the depot.  Parts from a second kit were used to lengthen the original freight house by about 40 scale feet to better match the Paso Robles Depot.  In other words the loading dock was too short.  Stripwood, from my "leftovers" bin, was used to extend the length of the dock.  I was careful to make sure the joints would end up under the trim.  Strip wood was also used to supplement the laser cut trim provided in the kit.

Other than the added length and some additional bracing, the loading dock was built per the kit instructions.  The deck was stained with Silver Wood and weathered with craft paints.  I am still looking for additional AMB 3-Tab shingles.

 

 

Several people have inquired about the depot's prototype. Here are a couple of pictures of the prototype Paso Robles, CA depot with it's bathroom addition on one end and the second story addition.  Why the Paso Robles depot?  I spent several years living in Paso Robles while I was going to college.  At the invite of Sam White, the depot's 8 pm to 4 am operator, I studied for school in the charming confines of the old depot's office two or three times a week.  I normally arrived around 9 pm and hung around until the passing of #'s 373 and 374 about  1 am.  #'s 373 and 374 normally passed through town about 30 minutes apart.  Sometimes they met at Paso when #373 was running late.  Both were  "hot" timetable freights that sped up and down the coast between Los Angeles and the Bay Area on a expedited schedules.  The first time I ever saw #373 was at GEMCO in the San Fernando Valley around 1966.  At that time in ran with solid sets (6-8) of passenger FP-7's.  By the early 70's, in Paso Robles, it was storming through town over powered with 3 or 4 big 6-axle EMD's and the occasional 6-axle GE.  Sam referred to these trains as "The Zippers".

 

Here is a picture of the now discontinued AMB SP depot kit(s) used to build the model.  Any one having one of these or the Type 23 depot kits laying around, I'm interested.

Redbanks Fruit Company

January 21, 2025

Back on January 8th, I cut out the basic components that would make up the Rebanks Fruit Company packing house shown below.  At that point, construction came to a halt while I waited for the laser cut brick material to arrive from Monster Model Works (Larkspur Laserart).

 

 

The laser cut brickwork was painted with a combination of craft paints starting with a gray mortar color followed by several shades of red and finally white.  The panels were all cut to the same size and the pilaster between panels 1 and 2 was cut to length and glued in place.  This was followed by the next panel, pilaster, panel, pilaster, etc until panels 2 through 6 were finished.  Then panels 1 and 7 were cut to size.  While the pilasters were glued in place, the brick panels were not.  This way, the panels can be removed while the rest of the wall is pained a concrete color.

 

 

Here is the end result with the "Sunkist" sign panel temporarily set in place.

January 24, 2025

The office portion of the Redbanks Fruit Company is kind of a "what it could have been" addition.  It's a pretty simple addition using the left over brick material, an entry door from a Walthers kit and Evergreen styrene.  The warehouse doors are from Tichy.

 

The pre-cooler building on the east end of the building was built with Evergreen sheet and strip styrene.

The total length of the structure is 44".  The packing house and pre-cooler building portions are 1.5" deep.  The office portion is about 1/4" deep.  I'll get it painted and post a picture of  the structure on the layout in the next post.  The Redbanks Fruit Company packing house is the last major structure on the layout.

As always, your comments, questions & suggestions are welcome.

sdepolo@outlook.com