Meat Market Mock-Up

Okay, just one more and I promise I'll be done with mock-ups for a long while.  I've completed the mock-up for the branch house and meat market structure that's replacing the ice factory at Ocala Springs.  

This one is different in a few significant ways.  Firstly, it's bigger; it needs to be large enough to seemingly justify handling even a small carload of meat and yet small enough to not overpower this end of the layout.  Branch houses received carcasses from a larger slaughter house and processed them into smaller cuts for distribution to grocers or even home use.  They're an ideal way to get the meat industry onto a model railroad without the brutal compression or massive real estate required for a large slaughterhouse.

I've imagined this branch house would also sell meat in a storefront as well as operate a small abattoir for butchering local animals.  The combination of functions gave me a good general guideline for laying out the structure.

R to L; storefront, processing building, shipping/receiving, abattoir and not pictured, the stock pens.

The photo above illustrates the second major difference; it's only one story tall.  This fits the overall progression of heights from the low branch house to the two story pool hall, the peaked roof and ornate brick cornice of the soda bottling plant and the three story drug store beyond that.  This is another reason why the ice factory simply didn't work here.

I had always envisioned Orange Avenue with its storefronts to be the highest point on the layout with the structures along this as-yet-unnamed street descending from it.  There are indeed hills in central Florida, elevation changes your car notices when driving.  However, on a flat layout surface I'd need to indicate an elevation change by visual trickery and this, to my eye, accomplishes that effect.

Finally let's talk about the source material.  I've got three AHM kits and one RDA kit in this kitbash.  The storefront itself is from the Ramsey Journal building with parts of the processing room and abattoir using more of its walls in addition to two sets of walls from AHM's Fire House.  The shipping/receiving section is from RDA's Delaney Iron Works, now offered by Rail Scale Models.  (Note: they also sell RDA parts as "kitbasher parts", something I've wished other manufacturers would do!)

Ramsey Journal (pink), Fire House (dark red and brown) and Western Union (yellow)

Texturally this building will be stucco, cinderblock (or maybe "hollow bricks"...I haven't decided) and concrete.  In the 1920s many slaughter houses were constructed to project a clean and sanitary look, setting them apart from the heavily ornamented structures of the 19th century.  The AHM "brick" is really large enough to be hollow brick or cinderblock so that's what it'll be. 

To disguise the structure's origins I'm keeping the quoins on the storefront walls but eliminating them from the rest.  I'm aligning the corners to "interlace" the quoins as they would be seen in real life - another reason I've chopped them off the majority of the corners.  These walls also provide ample room for painted-on signs, a feature I'm looking forward to modeling.

Operationally I can spot meat reefers of any brand at this location though in reality it would have likely only ever seen one brand; Swift, Armour, etc., as branch houses were tied to their parent company.  I'm imagineering and probably bending reality to do this but I like rolling stock variety more than prototype fidelity, in this case.  I can also spot a carload of animals at the stock pen; again stretching reality a bit but again, affording me the chance to run the occasional stock car.

Alright.  Enough mocking about.  June 1 is coming and the Summer Challenge 2026 will be upon us.  This structure stand-in was one of a handful of tasks I wanted to complete before the challenge begins and I'm chuffed with how it turned out.  Thanks for reading.