American Fruit Growers Packing House

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are a great help in locating industries alongside track, mostly with the name of the company occupying it at the time of the drawing.

In my case it just said "Vacant Warehouse" and wood posts which means that the warehouse sits on some kind of platform, also mentioned on the map (Freight platform)

I ordered a couple of pictures from the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society, showing the different sides of the warehouse which was actually the AFG Packing House. With the footprint dimensions and the pictures on hand I was able to start my scratchbuilding project.

On the map the packinghouse was standing next to a spur track, but on recent photographs it was at amore recessed location and an annex with a sawtooth roof was added.
Some of the photos showed excavating work and new supports so my guess was that the original warehouse was moved sideways and a new annex was added as well as a second spur track.

On the right picture we see workers standing in the excavation prior to the moving of the warehouse

The warehouse had corrugated walls and roof. I used Evergreen .040" plain styrene sheet for the sub wall and laminated Plastruct corrugated sheet on to the subwalls.

I scribed the corrugated wall to represent single sheets as per the prototype.

The structure measures some 52 scale feet wide and 176 feet long. The actual length was around 200 feet.
I used triangular pieces of styrene to brace the corners and square styrene strips to reinforce the walls. A structure this long wobbles without braces.

I also included some intermediate supports to lay the roof on. Due to the shape of my track layout, the warehouse does not fit straight against the backdrop making several test fittings necessary.

Although the loading doors will not be visible after the annex is added, I nevertheless modeled them. I'm a strong defender of the idea not to model things you cannot see later, but here I did not like a long bare wall. The doors and guides are only glued on the corrugated siding, so it did not take that much skill to add.

For the elevated platform on posts I used Midwest wood sheets glued on 12x12 wood strips.
I will conceal the strips with individual boards. The surrounding platform will also be covered with 1x8 boards.

One half of the roof was glued and fixed with small clamps until the glue had set.