Nuckolls Packing scratchbuild - a Meat Distributor in Telluride

I've become intrigued with an the Nuckolls Packing outlet / business in Telluride (from 1902-ish to maybe 1950-ish). There was a siding serving this location. The site itself was originally Telluride Bottling.

Anyway - this building stored refrigerated meat, shipped from Nuckolls main plant in Pueblo CO (see Nuckolls building in Pueblo). Here's a photo of a smaller Nuckolls outlet (which is handy for the signage used).

The Telluride location was built of stone, and likely had thick cork insulation on the storage portion of the building. There's very few photos of it (that I could find); just a couple distant shots in a few of the usual RGS books. The building no longer exists, but a now-tavern which was of similar construction right across the street DOES still exist, and gave me some detail on the stonework, as I assume they were probably similar materials - the Stronghouse Brew Pub. Here's a couple other photos of the prototype:

Steve Harris did a version of this building, and published his plans in a couple of articles (one in the NG Gazette and another in Model Railroader). Those include some plans, which gave me a start on the dimensions for my version. I did a lot of digging into the photos I could find, and noticed a couple details different from Steve's model - but only in certain photos! I suspect the building changed somewhat over time, and both his and my version are likely correct for certain years.

I drew plans of my version, and had a friend lasercut some Monster Modelworks Small Mixed Cut Stone walls. I used wood for the lintels, and Monster Modelworks brick sills around my windows. And then picked out a few Tichy windows to match what I saw in the drawings.

Here's the windows I selected:

So here's the beginning - the lasercut stone walls, and my own manually-cut roof ends (you'll need 4, as there are 2 roofs on this building):

The walls go together with 1/4" square stock to brace the corners, and some other bracing on the interior. For lintels, I used thin wood over the windows, and then the Monster sills on the bottom. You'll see I'm also adding the bracing for the porch at one end:

The whole thing is coming together now. To support the roof ends, I've added some bracing on the end walls.

I debated a while about how to paint this, as I wanted to pull out all the amazing stone detail. I ended up doing pretty much what I did for the layout's rockwork - a dark charcoal undercoat, then lighter colors over it - in this case a couple tans / browns (dry-brushed - to preserve the detail between the stones). On top of that, I used colored pencils (from AK I believe), and just scrubbed them over the stones. I'm pretty pleased with the results:

More later!