GTR/CNR Freight Shed

The Grand Trunk Railway/Canadian National Railway freight shed is a major car destination on my layout due to its two tracks, nearby ramp and runaround track. But having the room on the layout for a 290 x 40-foot wooden frame building (including 30 x 40-foot office) that would be over a hundred years old if it was still standing? Selective compression led to selective selectivism! I used a structural flat I already had from previous iterations of my layout (below). In Winnipeg, it was Crescent Fruit Co., then the Fisherman's Co-Op in Vancouver and Passumpsic Produce in Vermont!

Being a structural flat, the scale depth/width of my freight shed might 15 feet! Narrowest freight shed ever, also lacking a rear wall. The prototype's roof was sloped, but mine was flat so I kept it that way but kept its awning to recreate the roofline. I cut a piece of basswood to fit the track side, added three boxcar-unloading sliding doors, covered one door to recreate the office (door and window) and got out a boxcar-red acrylic paint to deepen the colour. There are steps too, just not in the photo! Update: steps in, CN sign and other details on and scenicking done. Sure, the freight shed is narrow, but it fits the space available and leaves room for the all-important tracks on this layout peninsula. I did remove the facing-point ramp track and the runaround track it necessitated, leaving in place a through track to CLC and the waterfront.

Looking from the other direction. That grey building from the left will be Canadian Dredge & Dock.

 Trackside:

 Wellington Street side:

The Grand Trunk Railway bought up land in the Place d'Armes/Wellington Street area in 1912. The long, one-storey unheated building, approximately 300x50 feet, had its office nearest Place d'Armes. It served as CN's main Kingston freight depot from 1923 until closure in the 1960's. Operations were relocated to the Outer Station site, and the freight shed was demolished in 1970. At the time of this 1951 flooding photo, the freight shed was clad in tin. Notice the low doors with window skylights over each one.

Below, see the 1963 insurance map showing the freight shed and accompanying paired tracks. Boxcars were usually spotted exactly parallel at freight sheds so that portable platforms could be extended between cars, to allow freight to be unloaded into the shed from the second track out, through cars spotted on the nearest track. Team track sidings were also paired to maximize room for vehicles.

Photos from Gordon Smithson's excellent book A Bend in the Road Kingston:

South end views with Insulbrick (above) and GTR/CNR lettering: