Tale of a goods shed

The goods shed at Horsham is one of a few long sheds in Victoria. The only unmodified long shed is at Port Fairy. No rail line there, as it was closed in 1977.

These were a Victorian Railways standard 20 ft wide design, timber framed and clad in corrugated iron, constructed throughout Victoria during the period of rapid expansion of the railway system, between 1876 and 1907.

At Horsham, the shed is also not original, as it was burnt down in 1890. As the Melbourne Telegraph newspaper report of July 16 stated. "The railway goods-sheds at Horsham were destroyed by fire last night. A quantity of gunpowder stored there exploded, and none of the contents were saved."

 The new shed has been modified over time with an addition at the western end to allow drive in fork lift access, while an office was built in the eastern end.

When building models from a guesstimate drawing, one is always going to have problems. The width of the model was taken from a card model, when translated to paper, some how became wider. So when I read that these shed were 20' wide I checked and found that the model was 25' wide. This actually related to an extra line of stumps underneath. Their distance apart came from a goods platform drawing.

Main structure of shed completed

I then had to decide if to leave it or to modify back to 20' wide.

 Starting with the addition section, I removed this from the main building and made the cuts to reduce its width. Next was to start on the main structure.

Walls removed and floor ready to be cut down. I will have to build a new eastern wall, as I think the windows were wrong any way.