I wanted to have a Sunkist Packing House on the new extension of my HO layout where reefer cars would be loaded for shipment. The prototype for the model was located on the PE island operation serving the San Fernando Orange Association, that was an older wooden constructed building.
Good pictures of this Packing House were found in the article about the PE's "Branch Line Orphan," in Issue 67 of the SP Trainline, Spring 2001. Photos from the article and the one above gave me enough information to draw up a close representation of the the railroad side of the structure. The prototupe structure was very long, so I only modeled the freight car loading dock end as a low-relief structure. Model trees will be used to obscure the low-relief ends of the structure.
While making the drawing of this old 20s style packing house, I noticed that the two loading dock doors were only 9 feet, 6 inches high and 8 feet wide. The doors were too small for a forklift to be used, because when the building was built forklifts had not been invented. All loading into freight cars was done with hand trucks.
The depth of the low-relief model is 10 feet not including a 5 foot wide loading dock. The prototype loading dock was made of Like the other model industrial structures that I've built, they have the same depth for placement on my layouts spur tracks being laid at 3 1/8 inches from the backdrop.
