Gavilon's Pump House

I finally made a decision as to whether or not I was going to load or unload the tank cars at Gavilon. Since this is a smaller distributor of fertilizer, the tank cars would be unloaded.  With that in mind I added a concrete pad next to the siding with two little boxes where the hoses would attach to.

One red hose one black hose?  The siding will hold two tank cars.  I have four storage tanks, so there will be two types of material that'll be unloaded here.  Two of the tanks will hold one type and the other two will hold another type.  Simple.

For the pump house, I looked at scratch building one, looked at using one of the BLMA utility shed, but couldn't find one.  Then I thought what about an old boxcar?  A 50' car was too big, but a 40' looked pretty decent?

So I started out with a WM version that I found.  Doug M. suggested that I install a personnel door on one side and a roll-up door on the other side instead of using the actual car door to give it some character.  I also added a couple of vents to the top.  

Joe A. said to give the boxcar a coat of paint to suggest that Gavilon has tried to keep it maintained due to the equipment that it housed,  instead of weathering up as if it's about ready to fall apart.  But I wanted it aged.  So I first wore down the logo before I painted it with a gray acrylic and then gave it a White Wash to fade it a bit.

Once painted I tried several methods to give the paint a weather worn appearance.  I finally wound up using a medium stiff paint brush and 70% alcohol to slowly eat through the gray paint.  If you look closely you can see the Western Maryland fireball and reporting marks peeking through.

With this done I can now proceeded with some piping to carry the material from the cars to the pump house, then to the tanks.