Wayne Feeds

Here is a repost of the Wayne Feeds build to date.

When planning my layout one of the industries I wanted was Wayne Feeds. Wayne Feeds was located at Davis and Main Streets on the near west side of Fort Wayne, IN and serviced by the Grand Rapids & Indiana RR (GR&I).

Several years ago I hosted an open house so instead of just having track work, I built some place holders out of foam board. This ugly thing was one of the place holders and it’s time for it to go.

Here are some photos of the prototype that I took in the 1980’s when I lived in the area. Looking at Google Satellite images the main structure has been demolished. It was a foggy / rainy day, but when the opportunity arose I was out photographing it.

This is my favorite view of Wayne Feeds from the elevated grade of the GR&I as their bridge crossed main street. There is also an approach signal as the GR&I joined the PRR about a half a mile to the south.

Another view of the south side of the structure, here you can see a covered hopper car waiting to be unloaded. I don’t have the space to include this feature so I will have to pass on it. There are 8 doors that can bee seen on this side of the loading dock. This along with two track under the cover gave it a capacity of 24, 40’ boxcars. That’s a lot of sacks of feed that can be shipped.

Looking south you can see the two tracks under the loading area, along with the track track on the outside. One of the features I find unusual is the loading shed roof extends out over to the approximate center of the outside track to protect the product being loaded from the elements.

This is the truck and trailer loading dock side of the facility adjacent to Davis Street. Again this loading area has a large canopy to protect the product being loaded from the elements.

Several years ago a saw a YouTube video where a fellow modeler was building his structures with a wooden core. While this structure is to large to be solid wood, I decided that I would use 1/8” Baltic plywood as the substructure. Baltic plywood is a very stable plywood with no voids in the different ply’s. Construction of this structure is different in that I use a lot of wood working techniques I have developed over the years. I began by ripping down plywood to the different lengths and heights for the three sections of the building on my table saw.

I am using City Classics windows for the mill, so I needed to know the exact dimension for the window openings. I ripped a strip of plywood that matched the height of the windows. I used this piece and cut pieces to length to give the proper window spacing. I taped the pieces into place along the main body of the mill.

Looking closely at the window area you can see the different pieces of plywood. I also used my calipers to make sure that the window openings were exact.

Another small width of plywood was ripped on the table saw and cut to length to make reinforcing strips on the backside of the joints. I use Tight Bond II wood glue on the wood. A disadvantage to this is that the glue takes several hours to set up and dry, so it takes a bit more time to put things together than the normal styrene on styrene.

Since there are numerous pieces I wrote on each piece it’s purpose.

The plywood panels are then covered with .040” styrene. I cut the piece oversize by about 3/8” to allow for overlap to trim the piece to size once it’s in place. Contact cement grabs instantly and it’s next to impossible to remove two pieces that have been stuck together.

I purchased a quart of WELDWOOD Contact Cement. The cement requires 15 minutes of set time before placing the pieces together.

I placed some scrap strips of plywood to separate plywood and styrene until I was ready to place the two pieces together. It’s important to work from the center out towards the edges.

Here are several pieces that have had the windows cut out, some of the openings have been filed square.

Until next time.

Wayne Feeds Pt. 2

Since my last post on this build I decided that I didn’t like the massive blank walls of the main mill building with only the windows along the top, so I made some modifications. I decided to add windows to the end wall facing the road. This necessitated creating a new plywood end.

I ripped down some of the 1/8” plywood left over from another project, hence the green, to the proper width of the end wall. This was then cross cut to give the top and bottom pieces. I ripped down three more pieces of plywood to give me the end verticals, the middle vertical, and the filler pieces for the windows. I used my T-square and triangle to make assist in squaring the pieces as I put them together.

Everything has been glued together however, the glued butt joints are very weak and will not make for a durable structure.

Before I added bracing I used masking tape to hold everything together, flipped the new end wall over, and glued and clamped the braces in place.

A new front with the customer service dock was made, here it is with the styrene face applied, and the windows cut out.

I also added onto the main building adding a row of windows. After the windows were added to the main face, I began assembling the main building by gluing the floor in place. Clamps and speed squares are used to make sure nothing shifts while the glue is drying.

This is the small shipping / receiving dock at the end of the building. Numerous clamps hold everything in place as the glue dries. The same procedure is used on the main building and the mill section at the front of the complex.

The almost completed shipping / receiving portion of the mill

I set the mill in place to get check and see if it fit in it’s home, which it did. I couldn’t resist adding a few boxcars to get a feel of how it would look. While it’s not near as large as the prototype, it does have the mass necessary to look like it can sustain rail service.

Until next time

Wayne Feeds Pt. 2 cont

Here are the comments received for this post

Sat, 2021-09-04 14:15 —  Rick Sutton

I'm REALLY enjoying your blog. Plywood and Titebond.......gotta love it! I too find that thin plywood is a great way to put a model structure together that will hold up to all the handling and "remodeling" that goes on with a scratch built project like a mill.  

Sat, 2021-09-04 14:27 —  Steves VR

I need some large buildings on my layout so following along. I'm more comfortable working with wood than styrene, do you have a particular technique for trimming the oversized styrene sheets ?

Cheers,

Steve.

My reply to Steve

Steve,

I purchased a 4x8 sheet of the .040 styrene. I trimmed it down into 2x4 sheets using a 4’ drywall T-square, scoring it with a utility knife, and snapping it like you would a small piece of styrene. A 4’ level would work for a straight edge if you don’t have the drywall T-square.

Don Hanley

Sun, 2021-09-05 06:07 —  Steves VR

for the reply, however I should have been  a bit clearer.

My question was in regards to trimming the oversized sheet ​​after it's been laminated to the ply to enable the corners to joined neatly.

Regards,

Steve.

My reply back to steve

Steve thanks for the clarification.

When I make the wooden shell I choose one set of sides or ends to be the inside, and the other to cover those edges, the outsides. After laminating the styrene to the plywood sides I trim the edges flush with the outside plywood. The inside pieces of plywood I let the styrene extend well past the edge of the plywood. When I glue the pieces together then I have extra styrene to trim flush. I have included a drawing that should help.

Sun, 2021-09-05 17:05 —  Steves VR

that Don. 

I thought that you were probably butt joining them.

Given you have a table saw there was a possibility that you mitred the corners, which I feel would be not worth the effort.

Cheers

Steve.

And now this thread is up to date.  A new post should be arriving shortly as progress is being made.

Wayne Feeds Pt. 3

Since my last post I have continued moving forward with the project. There is not as much to post this time around since the vast majority of my time was spent working on the windows. Windows are one of those details that are important to the over all look of the model. Done well they enhance the look of the building. Done poorly they are a distraction. However before I attacking the windows in this post I finished up some details on the buildings

After gluing assembling the three sub sections of the mill, I added styrene to the inside of the walls above the roof line and the top to cover over the plywood. For this process I used Gorilla super glue in the gel form. I cut the strips wide and then sanded them to the proper width as needed.

I initially planned to have concrete platforms as can be seen in this photo. However I just wasn’t liking the look, so I made two wooden platforms, for the rail service and the individual service at the front of the building. I left the concrete platform at the rear shipping / receiving dock which I rationalized was added latter as trucking became a larger part of the shipping operations for the mill.

The docks were made from .040 styrene scribed at 12” intervals to represent the planking. The planks were roughed up using an X-Acto saw drawn along the planks. I used 4 x 10’s as the stringers and made 8 x 10’s for the posts by cementing two of the 4 x 10’s together. In the past I have used MEK which is a great solvent for styrene. However I can no longer get it here in Nevada so I used MEK substitute. It works as well as the MEK, just not as fast.

I added 2 x 8 diagonal bracing. This served two purposes, primarily it acts as a view block allowing me to not place all of the posts in the rear. Second I like the look. I painted the underside of the docks black to hide the lack of detail, and then I added a dark brown as the base color.

Windows

When I began this project I made the decision to use City Classics Factory Type industrial windows. I like these because they are a ubiquitous industrial window. The key is not limiting yourself to the size they come in.

I got three windows out of each each piece. I cut the ends off giving me two large windows and then trimmed off the mullions on the sides to give me a single small window. Needing a total of 16 small windows I cut apart three more of the City Classics windows taking the center section of each one.

I panted the windows with Testors Model Masters Japanese Army Navy Green, and cemented .010 clear styrene to the frames, trimming off the excess clear styrene. Next I lightly fogged on some Model Masters Sand. Elevators and mills have a lot of dust that accumulates over time and washing the windows is rather low on the totem pole as far as maintenance items go. This also has the added benefit of hiding the blank interior.

Remember in part one of this thread how I said that I measured the windows so I would have an exact fit....well it didn’t work out exactly as planned. I had several openings that were too large. I added styrene filler strips on two sides and refiled the openings. Fortunately I had checked a couple of the windows and found the error before I painted the buildings. On my next project I will have to come up with a slightly different way to accurately build the window openings.

I found that I needed to do a bit of filing on most of the windows to get a nice snug fit, not to tight. I cemented the windows into place with Gorilla gel super glue. The windows turned out just as I had imagined.

Until next time

Don, I moved to Fort Wayne in

Don,

I moved to Fort Wayne in 1997.  I cannot get over your pictures of the Wayne Feeds mill.  The main building was already gone when I moved here.  I had no idea it was this big.  I've been struggling to come up with a Penn Central themed layout but one of the things I've been considering was the Pennsy through Fort Wayne and the GR&I up to Kendalville circa 1974ish.  Do you have any other pictures of this area?  The Mayflower Mill across the street?  Any other Fort Wayne pics along the Pennsy or other parts of the GR&I?

Thanks,

Jason Cook

New Haven IN

Mayflower Mill

Jason

Here is a couple of photos I have of Mayflower Mill.  I spent a lot of time photographing the Rights-of-Ways of the PRR, GR&I, NKP, NYC, B&O and what was left of the Erie in the 80's. Unfortunately it's all on 35mm slides which I haven't transferred to digital. With over 10k slides it's not going to happen anytime soon either. Wayne Feeds is just to the rear in this picture.  Mayflower Mill was serviced by the NKP

 This is the north west corner of the mill.  Wayne Feeds is located behind the mill

This is the last view I have of Mayflower Mill.  When I took these pictures the mill no longer had rail service. 

Hope this helps

GR&I and Mayflower Mill

Don,

Thank you for posting these shots.  I have a similar issue regarding slides.  Thousands of them and none converted to digital yet.  It's on my 1,000 item 'to do' list.  I moved here just a couple of months after the GR&I/NKP diamond was pulled.  Finding pictures of the GR&I or even anything Pennsy related is tough.  Especially anything showing customers along the Pennsy.  Most Pennsy related shots online of the Fort Wayne area seem to be focused mainly on the roundhouse and locomotives.

Jason

This is a great blog

Thanks for posting. Will be following on new forum. I suspect you will be transferring this. If not, a great loss.

Wayne Feeds Pt. 4

Roofs, signs and fire escape.

It’s time to put some roofs on the buildings. Since I had previously cut the blanks for the roofs, it was a simple matter of adding the roofing material. Since the buildings have flat roofs it was simply a matter of gluing 150 grit sandpaper for the roofing material.

I cut the sand paper with an X-Acto knife and a T-square. By placing the sandpaper face down I was able to make the blade last longer. After gluing the sandpaper to the roof, I sprayed them flat black from a rattle can. Once the paint was dry I glued the roof’s into place.

I wanted to include the under roof loading and unloading shed that the prototype has, so I built the shed. I used two of the City Classics windows to mimic the prototype shed.

 I found this picture on the internet of how the gain was unloaded. As you can see in the picture I have added a concrete pad with grain doors to unload grain.

As you can see in the picture I have added a concrete pad with grain doors to unload grain.

There’s very little detail here since it’s under roof and will be difficult to see much detail. I have yet to add the vertical columns, but they are coming.

The Wayne Feeds sign on the mill in Fort Wayne was basically a bill board sign at the top of the main building. As I was doing research for my signage, I came across this photo.  Since I am not strictly following the prototype I decided to include it on the model. I found a photo of the sign style that I wanted and using Affinity Suite I made my signs. This program is very similar to Adobe Indesign, but is purchased. I purchased my three modules on sale for $25.00 per module.

I did a couple of sample sizes on paper and taped them into place.  My favorite was the larger sign, however, trying to place a decal that is 5-1/4” square is a real challenge. After a couple of attempts I reduced it to 90% of the desired size and got it to work. The decal was a little damaged, but that’s OK since I plan on fading it and weathering it.

The prototype has a fire escape down the front of the building. I could have rationalized that the fire escape was on the hidden side of the building, but this was another feature I wanted to duplicate.

Prior to installing the fire escape I clamped and then screwed the front of the mill and the main body together with 4 #6 x ½” pan screws.

I use the Walthers modern fire escape across the front of the building. These fire escapes are a bit of a bugger to build, align and install. It takes a bit of patience, but they really add to the feel of the structure.

I have temporally set the mill in its home, but have a few more details to add and weathering before it’s ready for final placement.

Until next time.