The warehouse (seen here being inspected by a passing partridge!) was fairly quickly put together last autumn out of lengths of ply I had spare from other projects; which explains may things like why it's not quite symmetrical in section, and why one long wall isn't 18mm thick but 9mm with bracing.

Some months including a winter later I've had time to note my mistakes, and fix the worst of them. 

It was always intended to clad the ends in embossed 'brick' but time and distractions meant I never quite got around to that so the ends has a quick coat of paint.  In addition, to get a matt rendered look I'd used an odd tin of masonry paint lying around.  On the whole this has been 'ok' but one end section was either not well painted and/or was of less weather-tolerant stock of ply (both, I suspect) and essentially came apart.

None of this was helped by the sealant I used to plug the gap between roof panels being utterly useless. Now, that sealant was supposed to be external and waterproof so quite what happened there I'm unsure - other than to reinforce my suspicion of the efficacy of anything in a squeezy tube'y thing.

The windows are those from the cheap 'build a house with bricks' kits I picked up from the local garden centre.  In this version they were glazed with some simple offcuts of plastic glued in behind.  The round 'windows' at the top at either end are essentially to lift it on and off with (that's a two-person job! - or one with an 8-foot reach!)

Over the winter I'd brought in most of the bits and pieces on the station platform but had left the [Brandbright] station building,a seat and a few bits and bobs. It was a bit of a concern however, when I uncovered it, to find a degree of damp and mould on most things - including the inside of the warehouse (which I'd not paid much attention to protecting - big mistake).

Basically I'd made the major combined errors of 1. thinking making it waterproof meant making it sealed and 2. sealing the sides, but not the roof. Stupid stupid stupid.

On fixing said mistakes...

And so to the fixed, or indeed just completed, version.  The coming-apart end section was replaced with new, and less limp-looking ply and the whole thing given a decent coat of decent paint - Dulux weathershield (which, ironically, was also lying around in the same shed as the original plywood).

In the new 'end' I've cut a bigger circular lifting hole / vent, and added a couple more windows - and removed all the glazing. In addition, I'm adding some small feet just to lift the whole a touch off the ground.  (Normally, especially when viewing OO exhibition layouts, I am deeply depressed by buildings that have gaps between building and ground. However, this isn't a building, right?)

The ends are clad in Brandbright's brick embossed sheet which generally I like but it can be variable in quality.  It's major 'selling point' for this job is that it was wider than the building whereas everyone else's sheets were not.  Thus I could do the whole width in one sheet, though needing two to do the height. It's attached with impact adhesive.  The cladding too got a coat of paint (the sheets are black) - the paint also helped to seal any edges.

The trip to Stoneleigh saw me returning with a carrier bag full of Brandbright's corrugated sheets for the roof.  This beast took 12 sheets (!) - so the lower price per sheet wasn't irrelevant.  Again this was attached with impact adhesive, although using timebond this time to give a little bit of manoeuvrability - also I find it easier to apply.  Unlike the pot-and-brush of the 'instant' impact adhesive this was in a paint-tin-type tin, gelatinous, and a doddle to spread with an old credit card.

When well set, I painted the roof with a small amount of grey enamel.  By small amount, I'm talking under three tinlets for the whole roof.  I used three different greys poured into a larger tub and deliberately not well mixed.  Using a large paintbrush I painted very lightly and thus left variable amounts of the black plastic visible.

On top of this, when dry, I used a few drops of a rusty brown and orange and an old washing up sponge, to rub on some 'rust' colouring in patches.  Not very sophisticated but it serves well to break up the mass of roof.

Locating the building.

Clearly, for this 'box' to serve it's protective function it needs to not move on impact by footballs (just to be clear the footballs are rare, but one impact with resin buildings would be one too many).  Therefore there needs to be some way of positively locating it on the station 'plinth'.

This is done by having something lined up with each corner (actually just three of the four) - but you want something that doesn't look like a lug - at least at the front of the area.  The solution has been a stack of wood at one corner, and a 'milk churn' at another.  Not strictly a milk churn  but something loosely reminiscent of same.  What it actually is is one of my son's empty asthma cartridges, drilled through top to bottom and screwed into the plinth. A fairly simple lug locates the rear corner.



This rather otherwise-questionable photo (to the left)  just happens to show those points quite well.  Wood at the nearer end, churn and lug at the far end. The churn is joined by others in the photo below - which also reminds me I really ought to finish that station building off...