determining the era of a building


Its a wooden building so early days of railroading onward sound about right for me. Not exactly the most common item in more modern times, but old wooden buildings do still exist of similar styles.
 
Greetings Joe,

I went and looked at the picture of the building you sent and there is some conflicting components of the building itself, the windows and the double doors with the windows above them look to be from one era but the style of hanging lights look too be from the 1940s too the 1960's , how do I know this... because I was raised by a master electrician and got to handle many odd and old lighting components growing up and I remember this style due to the fact that we had installed them over our garage when they were replaced from a job site with more modern ones, since the home we were living in was built in the 1940'3 my step Dad wanted to use the correct style of lighting from the same era as the house...BUT the style of the windows could go as far back as the late 1800's so I'd say that the model would be one of around an 1880's style building with updated electrical lighting from the 1940-1960 era.
Good luck.
Jess Red Horse.
 
I think Jess nailed it. It appeared to me to be a turn of the century building, updated with later lighting. I estimated late '30's or later. I think it would fit in from there to the current era.

Rotor
 
Joe- The good thing about a structure with such a wide useful life is it's easy to modify for other eras.
For early 1900's, give the building a fresh coat of paint, remove the lights, and put a wagon with mule outside the stairs.
For 2007, heavily weather the siding, board up a couple of windows and put up a new sign saying, "XYZ Corporation, a Division of ACME Industries".
Just like with women, you can really change the looks of a structure with a little paint and some accessories.
Welcome aboard to a great forum!
 
Well, it's not a cannery for sure! This is one of those generic trackside buildings that can be kitbashed into almost anything. As has been pointed out, just changing out the lighting and windows will back date the building to closer to the early 1900's. Some paint, either new or distressed, will also move the building back and forth in time. It's a good, cheap structure to practice on.
 
Joe said:
http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/mdp/mdp571.htm
That kit...I have.
But I dont know if its era-appropriate.
When were gas tanks like these used?
Click to expand...

No latter than 1960's era. If the manufacturer stuck to specific time period details, this would be post 1935 because of the Gulf logo, perhaps even later than that as the logo design looks very late 1940's/early 1950's. The scaffolding type tank was common during the World War II era, and into the post-war years. I wouldn't use it on anything past the early 1960's.
 
First, the model is kind of deceiving because it represents a liquefied natural gas storage tank, not oil or gasoline. To my knowledge, Gulf was never in the natural gas business. Second, the first of these types of tanks was constructed in Cleveland in 1941, so that sets the beginning date of the era. They were in common use until the early 1970's, when the floating roof LNG tank was perfected. This did away with the mechanical complexity and leakage danger of the older, expanding style tank the model represent. I haven't seen one of these in many years so I'd set the cutoff as about 1975. If you can find a picture of downtown Los Angeles in the 60's, you'll see a number of these type of tanks just west of Union Station.
 
No, it just means anything that was obviously not around before 1941 or after about 1975 wouldn't look right. Having a truss rod boxcar with archbar trucks next to the tank wouldn't look right because they were all out of interchange service by 1941. Having a modern GE locomotive like a Dash 9-40C next to the tank wouldn't look right because they weren't built until 1993 and those types of tanks were out of service then. Now, very few people know anything about the history of these tanks so almost no one will know the exact era either the tank or any thing else represents. Unless you're dealling with some real rivet counters, it will look fine as long as you're somewhere between 1920 and 1990. It's a huge difference in era between different things on a layout that stands out, not a few years.
 
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