THREE SHEDS

Shacks, sheds, lean-tos, outhouses — in my opinion, rare is the layout that couldn’t use more of them. The Shack Pack from Bar Mills (available in both HO and N scale) includes laser-cut wood kits for three such small structures. I used all three on our module.

The largest (right) became a maintenance shed at the yard. I stained the wood before assembly, then drybrushed it with Polly Scale New Gravel Gray (now discontinued) to come close to the blue-gray color editor Eric White had chosen for the railroad yard buildings. I let the paint taper off down at the bottom of the building to simulate old, peeling paint. A pile of ties and a few junk piles alongside the building established its workaday purpose.

I hinted at the former purpose of the brick Syzdek factory by placing behind it a concrete berm surrounding circles representing the former bases of four removed tanks. I placed the second Bar Mills shed, the one with tar paper sides, next to it as a pump house (below right). I elevated it by gluing cast-metal concrete blocks underneath and making steps out of more concrete blocks and stained stripwood.

I placed the third shack near the yard to represent a tool shed, signal maintainer’s shed, or the like (below). As with the other two shacks, this one came with self-stick roofing meant to represent tar paper. To keep the sheds from all looking the same, I made corrugated roofing for this one. I cut a strip of heavy-duty aluminum foil 8 scale feet wide, pressed it between two pieces of corrugated styrene siding, then cut it into 4-foot-wide pieces. I glued the pieces to the shack’s roof with wood glue, then heavily weathered them.

The Bar Mills kit came with self-stick rolled roofing for use on all three sheds. To make this tool shed look different, Steve made his own corrugated metal roofing from aluminum foil.

Behind the shuttered Syzdek factory, Steve added the bases of removed oil or chemical tanks inside a concrete berm. He used the third Bar Mills shack as a pump house.

Steve used all three of the sheds in the Bar Mills Shack Pack on the layout. The largest became a machine shed in the yard. Junk piles, a workbench, and a figure carrying a box make it look busy.