Just One More Change...

I promise it'll be the last one. Well, maybe. But there can't be very many more, as the layout is coming along quite far quite quickly; many buildings are now permanently installed. Indeed, I'd just glued down the cattle pens, and was contemplating doing the same with the factory next, when things ground to a halt.

The set of storage tanks were sitting in place but thankfully not yet glued, because when I dropped the factory down next to them, I began feeling as though things were just a bit too crowded; there wasn't enough room for an access road to the factory loading dock (oh, those pesky access roads!). So I reduced the tanks from five to three. Not good enough. Three to two. Yikes! There really wasn't room for any tanks!

That's when the accident happened. Not a bad accident, mind; I'd simply placed the tanks temporarily in the empty space on the other side of the track, where the lumber yard would go, just to get them out of the way... "Hmmm... I like that." And I liked it even more when I brought it back up from two to five tanks. Which is how I came to decide to not include the lumber yard.

It was one of the hardest decisions I'd made about this layout. John Allen's lumber yard was one of the first structures he built—it actually pre-dated his first Gorre & Daphetid layout (above, seen in a photo diorama). And it shows up in the same location in every photograph of his layout—save for one, when he'd temporarily relocated it to help disguise some unfinished business as he expanded the G&D into Version II. Thus the lumber yard was something of a permanent fixture—a rarity, as it happens.

But... in my mind, it wasn't iconic, not like the Gorre station or the wooden truss bridge. I've said time and again, I'm doing an adaptation, and I was having problems visualizing it on the layout. I'd tried all sorts of substitutes—some of them can be seen lurking in earlier construction photos; I have a drawer full of half- and fully-built kits and various kitbashed thingies that ultimately just didn't do it for me.

The principal problem I was facing had to do with size: a faithful rendering of the lumber yard building would have been quite tall, which would diminish the hill behind it—I'd already dropped the wooden factory that I'd originally built for the siding for that reason. And a secondary issue had to do with time: I've already invested far more effort in various aspects of the layout than I'd originally planned.

The storage tanks solved all of the problems at once: they were low-profile; they were in keeping with precedents set by John Allen (above); and, perhaps most significantly, they were already built! I only needed to add a little office shack, inspiration for which was drawn from a similar little building next to John's lumber yard (below). For this I tossed together a GCLaser tool shed (#5201), which took all of about ten minutes.

To finish the scene, I need only paint the office shack, and add some plumbing and a catwalk to the tanks, and the whole industrial siding will be done, done, done! What I like most about the final effect is that the area isn't crammed full of stuff; it has some air. This creates added space for little detailing touches such as vehicles, villagers and vegetation.

Original Gorre & Daphetid images courtesy of Peter T. Prunka.

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