The Docks and Warehouses

The most difficult part about doing something like this is deciding what to do next. As you might have observed there are three primary stage areas to this layout. From left to right they are (See inset in illustration 4 below):
G – A Piece of Brooklyn
H – The Docks and Warehouses
JJ – The Float Bridges and Car Float (Barges)

In envisioning the outcome of this project I have really focused on G and JJ simply because I figured that that is where most of the action will take place. Incidentally I say JJ because the Fulton Harbor features two float bridges each labeled “J”. In deciding about what to do next I realized that I had never given much "detailed" thought about the middle area. As a matter of fact I had put more thought into the background, and what goes behind the warehouses than what the foreground of the layout would look like. In deciding what to do next I thought to look at the area I had nearly forgotten about.

Figure 1. The Docks and Warehouses (*1)

Take a look at the figure 1. One of the most prominent features of this photograph are the warehouse buildings. I am fairly certain that the photographer is looking north while standing with the float bridges to his left. In other words he was standing in area JJ. As a point of interest also notice the intricate track work in the foreground. I am certain that once I learn to lay my own track this will be a fun part of the layout to build. Next notice the proximity to the Brooklyn Bridge in the background confirming the location of the layout.

Back to the building, the initial thing I thought fascinating were the arched doorways at every level, which would lend itself well to interesting “shadow box” modeling. This means that when building the model you include interiors that are visible to the audience. In N-Scale these interiors will be rather limited in scope, but you can still add in a great number of small dioramas, giving the illusion of activity on a grand scale.

Add to this the fact that I saw a similar warehouse reasonably priced in N scale in the Walthers catalog (Figure 2) I figured I was off to a good start. As a matter of fact there are a great number of similarities between the two buildings’ photograph and the model kit. I am not yet sure what to about the warehouses in the background. But if you look closely at figure 1 you will notice a slightly taller set of buildings exhibiting more rectangular detail than these buildings in the foreground. I will have to do some more digging to find out what these buildings look like.  

Figure 2.  Warehouse kit, Walthers #244-2010

I did spend some time designing the track work in the foreground, which was slightly tougher than I thought. The hard part was that I was trying to condense about 16’ of modeled real estate into and area of between 7 and 8 feet, but as you will see I managed. 

Figure 3. Detailed Map of Fulton Harbor and Docks (Click to enlarge)

Using the map shown in figure 3 I was able to figure out some basic distances. For example the overall length of areas A through E was roughly 2600 feet. At 1:164 scale that is equal to 15’ 10” (I will apologize to my metric friends in advance, but this is an American Blog) I also figured that the areas of absolute importance would be A at 283 feet (2’ 4”) and D at 466 feet (2’ 10”). It so happens that the warehouse shown in figure 2 is 28 inches long (2’ 4”) so that was a given. I also liked area B and ended up including a smaller version of it with a possible track going into the building. I will deal with Area E later as I work on section JJ. Area C was all that was left and I figured since that section included 1250 feet of parallel track it was where I could easily do most of the cutting.

Something you can't quite see in Figure 3 is that each of the structure blocks is labeled to indicate how many stories it has. The building in section A is a single story building. The building in section B has 6 stories. Section C has 5 stories, and section D has 4.

Figure 4. The Dock and Warehouse Front N-Scale Layout.

Note: the large letters in the inset identify the following areas
G – A Piece of Brooklyn
H – The Docks and Warehouses
JJ – The Float Bridges and Car Float (Barges)
So here you have it, a model N-Scale layout of the Dock and warehouse area. The inset shows you how this whole section is situated. Since at this point I have not fleshed out the details and track work in the car float area things may still change, but I think we have the important elements nailed down.

*1 Photo of figure 2 is used with permission from the author of the Yew York Dock website http://www.trainweb.org/bedt/indloco/nyd.html   The original photo was located online in the Life Magazine archives and was taken in 1943. This photograph was part of a series of three all of which pertain to the Fulton Terminal.