Industrial Challenge - Garamond Pridemark Press

[wm3798]

I started developing this project before the Challenge was announced, but I'm really excited about having a healthy dose of "Peer Pressure" applied, since it's really been dragging up to this point.  I started planning for the structure back in November, and have plodded along through a couple of sub-assemblies, but I'm nowhere near finished.  Hopefully the judges won't penalize me for my head start, especially since it will likely take me ten forevers to finish it at my current pace.



The model is totally free-lanced, but will represent a small commercial print shop that does not receive direct rail service, but can be included on a waybill via the team track in Canton.  The industry takes the name from a printing company that existed for many years in the Candler Building, an industrial loft building in Baltimore where I worked on the maintenance crew when I was in high school and college.  I also later worked in the printing industry as a salesman, so I became pretty familiar with the workings of the business.  I will be installing this on my Highlandtown, Canton and Fells Point layout when it's done.

Building a small urban switching layout creates some interesting opportunities to develop odd parcels of real estate.  My layout is basically a contorted figure 8, so there's lots of curves in the track plan, which is overlaid on an urban street grid. 

This results in some parcels that are narrow and long with a curved boundary on one side and a straight line at the street.  Since the figure 8 also includes an over/under gradient, some of the lots also have some strange elevations to deal with, especially when planning for driveways and loading docks that are to at least look functional. 

I want to fill the scene up with as many useful buildings as I can, whether or not they are served by rail.  Again, this one is not.  I'll catch you up on the progress so far in the ensuing posts.

Lee

[wm3798]

Planning. 

While there is a certain liberty in doing a freelance industrial building, there are also some challenges.  I don't like models of industries that just don't make sense.  Creating something plausible is important to me, even for my relatively theatrical little switching layout.  So I put a lot of thought into how I was going to use this oddly shaped parcel at the front edge of my layout.

First, I wanted to establish what kind of building would more or less fit the space I had.  I want something that has a reasonable amount of mass, since it will be located near a fairly large rail-served industry.  But I wanted it have some view lines that didn't block the scenery behind it.  Especially from my main vantage point, which is from my work chair.  (The layout sits next to my desk on a counter, and I like to run a train around it while I work...not unlike an aquarium.  A little motion, some background noise, the occasional flash of a headlight between the trees...)

To determine the general size and shape of the building, I carved up a scrap piece of blue foam, first to fit the general footprint of the site, then to see the height of it.



This was the mock up.  From the track side, it would be two stories, but the slope of the street in front of it would allow it to have three stories, with one below grade on the track side.  To keep the building from blocking too much of its surroundings, I cut down the ends, leaving a central section that's the full three stories, with a flanking section of 1 story at the down hill side, and 2 story closer to the front.  This will make some challenging assemblies, but will make for a much more interesting building.

Also, because of the curvature of the track at the rear of the building, I stepped the back wall in at the ends, as you can see in this view of the floor plan I came up with.  (More on that later)



Once I was satisfied with the look and feel of the mock up, I used my scale ruler to figure out what the actual dimensions of the structure would be.



Once the sketches were laid out, I put the plan into my Chief Architect program so I could figure out the rest of the details of the plan.  In addition to general floor plans and elevation drawings, Chief also lets me create very detailed color renderings, one of which you saw in the opening post.  Here's a couple more that came from the finished design...





Now that I had the building designed, the next step was to figure out how the floor plan would work so I could realistically determine what kind of industry would want such a property.  I'll work through that with you next time.

Lee

[wm3798]

In order to have the exteriors make sense, I laid out a floor plan for the building.  First floor has the main lobby, a cafeteria space to the right of that, and production floor to the left.  Two elevator shafts and the bathrooms occupy the center, and there's a press room, the bindery, and the shipping area behind that.  A boiler room supplies heat and other utilities to the building, with a smokestack that rises on the outside.  There will be a truck dock at the far end where this floor is at grade.  (The other end is below grade as the roadway goes uphill.



The second floor includes the elevator lobby, shafts and bathrooms, with another press room.  The back provides space for the receiving bay, which is located near the freight elevator shaft.  A store room for inbound raw materials is behind that.

The third floor houses the offices that run the operation, including production, sales, accounting and the big boss in the corner office.



I find that putting some thought into how the building functions and how it might be used by the tenant helps to make sense out of the details I add to the outside.  For example, locating the main stairway and elevators determines where the head house will be on the roof.  Locating the boiler room dictates where it makes sense to put a chimney.  Also, since I'm using large banks of windows and plan to light the interior, I can actually install partitions to create a more realistic interior.  I can also utilize the elevator shafts to run my wiring up the center, and if I choose, detail an open elevator door that will be visible through the lobby window.





Next installment, we'll start laying out the walls.

Lee

[C855B]

Be advised - with one exception, the multiple large printers I have worked at did not have pressrooms on anything other than the ground floor, even for smaller presses. The one exception was an operation we had in lower Manhattan, for obvious reasons.

If that's your (second) story and you're sticking with it, two words: freight elevator, and it needs to face into the pressroom.

[wm3798]

All of the printers I'm familiar with, at least from the days before digital technology, were located in loft buildings, and none were on the first floor.  The Candler Building in Baltimore, where I worked in high school, was built in 1912 as a continuous concrete pour.  It was built to house the original Coca Cola bottlery in Baltimore, plus numerous other businesses. 

When I worked there in the late 70s/early 80s, George W. King printing was on the 6th floor, and ran a 6 color press, and Garamond Pridemark was on the 7th, with 7 color behemoth.  In both cases, the presses were delivered at street level, then craned up and through the windows to be installed.  I believe both were cut up for scrap when they were moved out 10 or so years later.

You could literally stand on the floor below those monsters, and not hear a thing.

I later worked for Harbor Printing on Key Highway, and we had a 2 color Ryobi press up on the third floor that did our precision work, and a small fleet of 1 and 2 color small presses.  Freight elevators were available in both cases.  (I ran one of the 10 manually operated freight elevators in the Candler Building.  There's nothing better than taking a nap in an elevator on a hot August day while all the air conditioning from 12 stories above washes down the elevator shaft on you!)

Lee

[C855B]

East Coast metro density vs. everywhere else, evidently. I was responsible for converting hot-metal typesetting operations to early digital. Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Jacksonville... only the Manhattan operation on Varick St. had presses not on the ground floor. I can't imagine crane-handling a 7-tower big press. I guess that's why they paid riggers the big bucks.

OH! That's what you're missing! The pre-press department!   You have the bindery. They have to make the plates somewhere, and pre-press took a fair amount of space in all of our plants.

[DKS]

If that's your (second) story and you're sticking with it, two words: freight elevator, and it needs to face into the pressroom.

Um... the second floor press room is right next to receiving (street level on that corner).

[wm3798]

Yeah, I had to cut one corner.  I figure platemaking could be in the production office.  At Harbor we had an estimator and production manager who shared a long countertop desk, and the rest of the room was stripping etc.  There was a dark room off in the corner...  Probably can convert the ladies room into that and make the remaining head unisex!

Lee

[C855B]

Um... the second floor press room is right next to receiving (street level on that corner).

I saw that, but the issue there is anything from the pressroom will have to go to a bindery unless the shop is palletizing for outside bindery. It's possible, but is a logistics kink for anything needing cut-down or trim on-site if the guillotines are all in the bindery and there is no freight elevator.

(Sorry - you guys are making me re-live a prior life. Printing had its fulfilling moments, but I'm still glad I'm retired. Beside, I know entirely too many ex-printers... I got out of the biz seeing the collapse coming.)

[Chris333]

Our press is 2-stories tall    But yeah it and all the previous ones were in the basement.

Anyways I work on the building and just say there is "stuff" in there.

[DKS]

My only memories of the printing industry are of a small print shop I was hired to manage. We had three single-color AB Dick presses, one of which never worked right and became a source of parts for the other two, and a bunch of used bindery equipment; we went outside for platemaking. There were two other employees, but when the owner discovered I knew how to do just about everything, the cheap SOB fired the others, then tasked me with building a darkroom so we could do the platemaking in-house. At one point I did 4-color process on a single-color press. It was a nightmare. I quit when I discovered the owner had actually stolen some of the stuff he supposedly bought for the darkroom.

I do find it interesting how many members here have experience in the printing industry.

BTW, I like freaking people out by explaining that I worked my way through college as a stripper...

[Philip H]

BTW, I like freaking people out by explaining that I worked my way through college as a stripper...

@David K. Smith wins the Internet this week folks!  He's here all week.  Try the veal, and don't forget to tip your wait staff!

[DKS]

True story! But folks in the printing industry will get the gag.

[wm3798]

The stripper at Harbor was a cute little blond girl.  When I hired on and they introduced her as such, I confess my enthusiasm for the job ratcheted up a few notches...

Lee

[wm3798]

So, with the 3-D mock up and planning done, it's time to start building.

I printed out my plan in 1:160 to begin the process, and laminated the drawings to some sheet styrene to form the basis of the model.



Next I carefully trimmed out the window openings while the walls were still all on one sheet of styrene.  This makes those cuts a lot easier to manage.



Always make sure you're using a sharp blade!

Next I trimmed out the wall sections to get them prepped for assembly.



I then tacked the walls together to mock up the finished building, to make sure it fit in the foot print, and that the elevations worked with my undulating terrain.






Once I was satisfied that it fit and would look good doing it, I disassembled it, and started laying in the braces I'd need to install the floors and roofs, and otherwise get it ready for the first sub-assembly.



Another test fit for the floors, and we're ready to go to the paint shop to apply the first coat of paint to the interior to provide a light block.



This is where the project is at the moment.  After I get the interior painted, the next step will be to work on the interiors and install the lighting.  Once those areas are completed, I'll permanently install that front wall and begin detailing the exterior.

Onward and upward!
Lee