There is not enough contrast to see if the loading dock is shown

on the mock up.   The biggest problem I see with the mock up in that location is there is no parking for workers.  There is also limited access for horse drawn wagons or trucks to deliver products locally.  The building is small enough that 1 or 2 boxcars would seem to meet the needs of the industry, but it looks like you have 3 spurs serving it.

Proportion

There is no loading dock yet. It's not apparent in the picture but there is space between the front spur and the building where the loading dock would be at boxcar door height. The front most spur isn't for this particular building. I have consideration of it more as a team track with a loading dock and access in the vacant front area. There is also room for something small between the back of the mockup and the rearmost spur.Trucks and wagons would have access to the front / side on the left via a loading dock there. I made another picture with a Boxcar in place for comparison but something is still messing with my sense of proportion. Perhaps the high roof but that would be necessary for the second story "loft" in the building.

I do feel a little better with the boxcar in front of it. Perhaps the entire area shown in my first picture could be occupied with a various amalgamation of buildings to indicate a larger industry that has grown over time.

@Michael What is "big?"

Hi Michael,

Your use of "big" bothered me. If big applies strictly to the size of the building alone, I would say it's just fine. A roof that steep would most likely only be built in deep snow country, and could easily be justified.

However, it is not common to find a commercial building bounded closely on 3 sides by track, leaving most access only to one side. I'm sure there are a thousand exceptions to be had. It is simply not common. Loading doors/docks on 2 sides perhaps? Then what is the function of the building? I remember one such owned by the railroad where one side was standard gauge and the other was narrow gauge, but even then only on 2 sides (close). Are some of the tracks going to be paved over maybe?

I did something like this on my layout many years back, and every time I looked at the building I tried to imagine how people and materiel got to the building when the train left! 

Nonetheless, have fun!    It's your layout!
Best regards,
Geoff Bunza

Roof

I think the steep roof is throwing it out of proportion.  I would suggest trying another mock up, that is a two story building (two floors) with a much shallower roof.  (Its a mock up you can make more than one.)

Or a one story building with a shallower roof. 

If you want to show the "attic" is occupied, put on a couple large dormers.  Or put one wide dormer towards the track with a big door in the dormer end and a ridge pole that sticks out over the loading dock for a block and tackle to get stuff up the second floor.

It also might change the proportions if you lowered the walls by the roadbed thickness and then raised the building level with the track, instead of being at the bottom of the ballast section.

One other option is to hit the roof with a can of black paint and the walls with a can of primer red (if you have them handy).  Sometime the bright colors make a building stand out more than the building really does.  When making the mock up, turn the cardboard over and use the plain side as the outside to avoid the issue.

Too big?

 Hi Michael,  What is the industry, that would have a lot to do with determining how big the building should be? Generally a building that manufacturers and ships  industrial products by rail would be many times larger than a boxcar.  A packing shed for produce might be just a couple of times the size of a reefer due to not having to make and store their product. Your mock up looks to be a good size for the typical small town freight house in the steam era.....DaveB

More pics

The high roof came about for the very reason that I was trying to get a more spacious looking building via a second story. My neighbors house has a high roof like that and what many people would consider an attic space is actually a loft area. I could also justify it as Geoff says as this is considered to be an area of major snowfall in my imaginary world. Here's a couple of more pics to give a general feel for the area. The entire area could be "paved" over and the third spur could also be removed without much difficulty if necessary. My thought is there's a loading area on both sides of the building although I likely would not model anything on the backside since there's not anything visible from normal viewing angles. Again, the whole area could be one big single industry with several buildings. This whole idea came about because the box, without the roof, looked a good size for a building to me. There's nothing lost if I don't use it. I am going to spray paint the thing here in a bit and see what that does for me visually. The little building in the photos is just a leftover rear shed from my Hotel kit that made it too deep to fit where I needed so it's looking for a home.

...

I don't think it will be a problem.  

"See Rock City"

All I can think of now...I'm showing my age too... 

Out-of-scale

I think Russ brings up some good points.  Without knowing anything about the industry that building is supposed to represent, it seems kinda out of place with the scene.  The building itself isn't the issue here.  It's generic enough to work in a variety of situations. Instead of using all three spurs, it appears your industry is using only two car spots. The rest of the trackage simply appears to be wasted space. Of course, I'm sure you'd still find ways to use the tracks which are already in place, but there would have to be some interesting compromises to the logic of the scene.  I'm not saying that your arrangement is bad, but you might consider other options.

One option no one here has brought up yet would be to model a "half" building up against the fascia about where that brick garage is in the last photo.  The way the tracks are angled would mean you could build a structure where one of the front corners could be cut off, exposing a fully modeled interior to viewers.

The advantages to this change are many.  For starters, you'd have your scratch built or kit bashed building front and center in the scene.  The rest of the layout shows off your trains, but here you've built something that is going to be special and a bit personal, so why not make that structure the star of your scene?  Another advantage is that instead of having another mid-ground structure that tracks flow around, you've introduced a non-railroad object which demands viewers' attention. Having a corner of the structure cut off at the fascia would invite people to take a closer look.  Cutting off direct view of the trains in a few places naturally makes scenes look deeper.  Another advantage worth mentioning is that having the "anchor" structure so close to the front of the layout means that support structures, entrances, employee parking lots, etc... could be hinted at along the fascia without having to actually model them.

The only real disadvantage I can think of is you'd have to put more work into that building to pull it off in the scene because now, rather than just being another building on the layout, you're drawing special attention to that particular structure.

Just another option for you to think about.

It goes without saying that

It goes without saying that everything shown in the pics is open to change. Getting this layout to base level scenery was a goal that I set and reached but it's easily altered and I've changed several areas already, including busting out a bit of mountain to get another building in elsewhere. It would be kind of hard to arrange the front two spurs in any other way but the third spur that some folks question could be pretty easily removed all together. Most of the track in the area isn't even ballasted yet. I've just had the box sitting there awhile and today I decided to put a roof on it to see what was what.

Right now I'm inclined to try the dormer idea and I may mock that up tomorrow.

James, I take your point about the half building with detailed interior but I just don't have the time to put into that right now. Still too many other areas with little to no detail in them yet. 

Two tracks

Any thoughts on having the building cover the track behind it, or a portion , that would be an unloading or loading point.  Stuff comes in on one side, is processed and goes out the other side.

roof slope

I think it tends to look a bit out of scale because the roof is very highly sloped, making the whole building tall, and the mountains behind the scene (the modeled rocks, not the backdrop) are relatively short. That kind of roof slope is unusual  outside areas that get huge amounts of snow.

I think you'd be better off with a slope of about 1 in 3 (i.e., if the building is 6 non-scale inches wide, the roof should rise up only an inch in the middle. 

...

It's a high sloped roof because it's snow country...

My mom's house is a lot like this, a giant barn like structure added on to her little prior existing house.

It looks to me like a large building with a lot of interior space.  The dormers might have a nice effect, but I wouldn't; sweat them.

Unfortunately

Yes. Take an overall look at that first photo and the proposed building looks out of place. These kind of anomalies do occur in the real world so you can justify its proportions and build it but it will always look odd in the context of a model railroad layout that is by definition an excersize in compression.

 The roof angle also doesn't help....... snow country or not. None of the other buildings echo that kind of roof slope.

That said.......it's only an opinion from someone who is a structure fanatic but also really likes your modeling and sure as heck is glad to see you around again! So whatever you do.......go for it, it's your joint.

. . .

I think the bright red colour and the big pitch black roof  pull all the attention making it very difficult to judge the effect.  It makes the buildings off to the right look to be in a different scale.

The pic with the smaller building does not draw attention and it fades into the background. 

M2C

Marc

A quick fix for visualization

Some people are having difficulty with the bright red sides; a quick fix would be to slit the tape holding it together, turn it inside out and draw some proposed openings with a felt tip marker on the plain side of the cardboard, and tape it back together. Perhaps mock up a quick loading dock from cardboard as well, maybe drop some foam cubes covered with brown tape as crates on it as well to give a sense of the scale of goods that will be moved in and out..

Personally, I think adding an upper half-story with a shallower roof pitch and a dormer that has a full height freight door in it over the loading dock might bring it back to the proportions you are looking for.  Certainly, it's not too big given the size of the boxcar in front of it.

Janet N.

...

The roof slope is identical to the roof slope found on the depot.

It looks like the size of building that would justify rail service.

People won't get it until they see windows and doors and all the little details added to it.

 

Lean-to loading dock roof?

You could reduce the impact of the roof size with a lean-to? lower-sloped, and covering the loading dock and track in front? just a thought
This is an interesting discussion, following:
Douglas

Let's get a quick measurement

Benny brings up a good point.

 Michael, could you please measure the building in question and the depot to get an accurate roof pitch comparison? That would go a long way in helping the discussion.

Relative Scale

I toned down the mockup some more by painting it gray and it makes it a little easier to focus on what bothers me and I think it's the large size of the building and the fact that it's in the foreground which causes everything around it to shrink in comparison. The best way I can put it is, it's the relative scale. It's looks correct with the boxcar next too it, it certainly isn't "too big" in that sense but when you take in the surrounding objects like supposed "mountains" it seems to shrink them. This has been alluded to in the comments and I think it's the correct diagnosis of the problem.

I'm thinking the only way it works for me in this configuration is with the addition of the dormer as dave1905 has suggested. I will make a comparison photo with the depot for the roof pitch but the size difference is pretty good and the dormer idea with a lifting mechanism to suggest that second floor kind of gives me an idea of a business that handles bigger freight than what the depot can accommodate. It still may end up looking too big though for the reasons stated above.

I envision a brick building because I have brick sheet on hand and this is budget modeling. I'm open to ideas as to how to treat the whole area too. There are two other spots that could have structures...or not. I can model empty space too. There was another good thread on that here lately.

Size comparison

Here's how the mockup compares to the Depot and the Hotel as well. It looks like a pretty stark difference until I remind myself that the actual building will have scale elements of windows and doors and maybe that will bring my sense of proportion back in line with those visual clues. It is about the right height for two stories if you judge by the Hotel.

Overthinking

The problem with lowering the pitch of the roof is that the size reduction makes the already thin justification for all the spurs harder to maintain. The problem with removing the third spur is that it kills one, maybe two car spots. So that's where I am. No clear direction seems to be appearing yet. My "dogfood building" has brought me to overthinking...ughhh

You have shown 4 other

You have shown 4 other buildings,  the adepot, the shed up front and the little building and the big building in back. And of these two have a steep roof.  The depot and the mock up.

So this is not helping.  Add in that the building seams out of scale (O vs HO kind of thing’) because the height of the building is not obviously two stories,  the Size of the roof and the size of the building give a proportion that looks like the depot but in O scale.    With Doris and windows mocked in I think it would look different.

I also think it needs a could of dormers or something to break up that large roof.

Perhaps if you covered the end and front side with white paper and crudely filled in windows and doors with a marker it would be easier to understand.

That being said.  I don’t think it is to large for the scene.  It may not be a well proportioned building (hard to say from the mock-up) but it is not to large.

Doug M

The other thing I noticed is

The other thing I noticed is that it is rare for a non residential building (read house) to have a roof taller then the walls of the building.  This is tossing the proportions off.  
The depot is close to that and as such has a VERY prominent roof.  But usually commercial/industrial buildings.  The side walls are taller then the roof.  This is even more an issue with multiple story buildings,  About the only two story buildings with roofs as tall as the building is a house.

What roof pitch are you using?  X inch of rise over 12 inches f run?  It is rare for buildings in the US (other then houses) to have over a 8”/12” pitch.  And typically they have 4.  In heavy snow maybe 6.

Depots (little ones such as you show) tend to be built like houses.

The issue with steep pitched roofs on large buildings is the take up a lot of meterial so cost a lot to buy and a lot to build.  They also cost a lot to maintain and the have a large wind load as the roof acts like a sail.

The other issue is finding timber’s long enough to make the roof out of.  They did not used to build trusses like we do today back in the early 1900s.  And it is a pita to splice a roof rafter.  This is why barns had the change in pitch the usual had (well one of the reasons) as they would but a support under the location the pitch changed and basically build two different roofs.

Most people don’t “know” this but they have seen so many structures that they know what is “right”. This is why when in a foreign country everything feels a bit strange as the road signs and the buildings and such all look “wrong” compared to what you are used to as normal.

This is probably in part why the building looks odd.  It is not typical.

-Doug