Sunshine, Palm Trees and a Food Industry...

Thanks Gormo.

The area to populate is very shallow, the left side has a floor area of 1" x 7", the middle area is a 12" taper, down from 1" and the right side is 2" x 5" in size. The diagram explains it better than words.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Great ideas Gormo !

As we discussed on the phone earlier today, I do have an office desk with a telephone on it which could (or will) come in handy as part of the interior detailing. I had also been thinking about the fire hose reels and a way I can make these. I'm sure a 7mm punch will come in handy for making a hose reel or two !

Currently I have installed the water mains for the fire hose reels and will add to this in due course. Originally it was to be a main line, but I think the reels will be a nice addition.

This pic gives an idea of how shallow the building is...

Water main pipe close up...

At the moment, I have given the model a base coat of acrylic white (poster paint) and will follow up with another layer at a later date. Still plenty to do yet !

Cheers, Gary.

 

I have a plan, hopefully it will work out !

Cheers, Gary.

 

Now that depends if I'm willing to put the ground and piers in underneath, plus all the associated plumbing and pipes, rats, cockroaches, alligators (well it is Miami...)

Actually, it might be easier if I do close it off...

Cheers, Gary.

 

So I have scratch built two fire hose reels...

I started with an eight millimeter hollow punch and some thin sheet styrene. I punched out more than enough circles for the reel wheels.

To this I added a small block of styrene to space the reel wheels...

and then capped them off. I rolled this across a glass sheet to make sure both sides were square (?) with each other.

A feed pipe was added to the back of the reels. I bent up some 1mm diameter Evergreen rod (#211) and glued this to the back between two pieces of 1mm square strip (#142).

Careful measuring insured that the fire hose reels would be 3 scale feet from the floor, and that the bend in the pipe would line up with the main water line above.

This was then painted red, except for the pipe below the reel. Here I used a 0.4mm bit and drilled through the 1mm diameter pipe. Some 0.4mm brass wire was bent into an L shape with a loop on one end. The longer section was passed through the hole, glued then trimmed off flush with the back of the pipe.

The spacer block between the reel wheels was drilled through with a 1mm diameter bit for it to take some thin diameter black electrical wire. The wire was feed through the hole and a small dab of CA was applied to hold it steady whilst the wire was wrapped around the spool.

Once the wire was wound on to fill the reel, the end was feed through the loop in the wire and trimmed off.

The base of the reel was then painted red. After this had dried completely, a small dab of CA was applied to the back of the reels and they were positioned on the wall of the building next to the roller doors.

Given the three foot rule, I don't think the fire hose reels look out of place.

One other job was to scratch build a fuse box and conduits.

A simple rectangular box was made from styrene sheet and had raised sides. Small off cuts of styrene rod and strip were cut and glued to the inner face of the box. A small door was made up from thin sheet and I lined the edges to form the fuse box door. A small piece of strip was used to make the handle and locking latch. The box was painted a mid grey colour and the internals were picked out in red and white.

1mm diameter rod was used to represent the main feed conduit and two pieces of 6.4mm diameter rod (#219) was used as conduits exiting the box from the top. These conduits went to smaller junction boxes and the conduits ran on from these, one to a light switch besides the roller door and the other to the deeper section of the building to the right.

A lot of bending the 0.64mm rod to get it around the large steel support beams.

The fuse box just adds another little piece of detail to the internals of the building. A small dispatch desk will go in as well as a few dispatch notices etc on the wall.

Cheers, Gary.

 

Thank you Andy and Brian.

I think I'll add some pallet racking to the scene as well. Always fun to scratch build pallet racking...

Cheers, Gary.

 

My latest upload to YouTube... Part 1 of 2 about scratch building Industrial buildings in heavy card. Enjoy !



Cheers, Gary.

 

Part two of Scratch Building with Card. Enjoy !



I did say this would be a two part series, but I am currently putting together Part 3, as I did not want long videos...

Cheers, Gary.

 

Earlier this week my friend Robbie Crouch had shown me this pic of my layout in the Australian Model Railway Magazine. It is quite unusual for them to show pics of 'American' layouts, so I was stoked to see it !

Then, last night at the Georges River Model Railway Club, I was shown this blog...

It is nice to see the media and other modellers comment about the modelling I do. For more reading, you can check out Rob Nesbitt's whole Goulburn exhibition report here : http://buildingwagga.blogspot.com/2024/09/goulburn-model-railway-exhibition-2024.html

Cheers, Gary.

 

A teaser shot of what is coming in the third video on 'Scratch Building With Card'...

Cheers, Gary.

 

May I present to you Part 3 and Part 4 of Scratch Building with Card. Enjoy.

Part 3...




Part 4...



Cheers, Gary.

 

As I had a very quiet Christmas day, I decided to embark on another modelling project...

On the new extension of the layout, I am modelling Trujillo & Sons, a food processing plant that caters for hopper cars, tank cars, reefers and box cars, bring in things like plastic pellets (packaging), food grade oils, fresh produce and other products like canning materials & cardboard (packaging) and then exporting the processed items either by truck or rail in box cars.

One of the features on the site and one that can not be missed is the large silo used for storing the plastic pellets.

This will be positioned on the end of the extension as shown here.

Using the google measure tool (which is not all that acurate when measuring height...), I then guestimated the silo to be around 65' tall, by taking in account the four bay hopper in this photo below. I used the measuring tool to determin the width, which came to roughly 12'-13' in diameter.

Some of the photos I have here are directly from the Trujillo & Sons Facebook page, which shows so much more detail than that of Google Street View and Google Earth.

Now knowing the rough diameter and height, I cut a length of 42mm diameter PVC pipe to 225mm and capped the end off with 1mm thick styrene sheet. This was then sanded flush and a vertical line drawn from top to bottom, perfectly straight. 42mm in scale is equivalent to 12' in HO scale.

I knew I had some detailing parts in my spares drawer, so rummaging I went and found plenty of detail bits and pieces. Luckily I had two Tichy Train Group safety cage and ladder sprues, and also some hand rails and steel mesh walk ways.

These ladders, walkways and hand rails are perfect for what I need !

I started at the base and worked my way up the silo with the ladder and cage. I wish there were more of the cage ring supports in the pack...

To help secure the ladders, rather than rely on the small tab on the back side of the ladder, I added small pieces of 1.5mm Evergreen angle (#291) every so often.

Next step was to cut a small section of the steel mesh walkway (landing), which I will say I had three attempts to get it near enough right... In the end. it will look okay. This too was glued into position using angle.

After this was all done, I added three strips of 0.28mm x 0.56mm (Evergreen #8102 HO scale 1" x 2") strip to the inside of the cage rings.

Two more strips of angle were added to silo wall each side of the top of the ladder cage and the landing. A strip of 1.5mm x 0.5mm (Evergreen #123) was wrapped around the landing edge and the top ladder cage ring.

I made up a small hand rail using 0.75mm x 0.5mm (Evergren #121) strip for the posts and some 0.25 x 0.75mm (Evergreen #101) strip for the rails. One end of the rails were secured to the 1.5mm angle on the silo wall.

Once this had cures, I added the curved and front side of the hand rail, again starting at the 1.5mm angle on the silo wall and bending them towards the posts, finally securing and trimming after it had cured in place.

I continued on with the ladder to the top of the silo, repeating the steps above until I got to the point in the photo below. I did add extra lenghts of 0.75 x 0.5mm strip to the top of the ladder.

The next stage was to add a hand rail to the very top of the silo and for this I used Tichy Train Group hand rails. This can be purchased as a separate item from Tichy Train Group, product #8001.

To get the plastic to conform to the diameter of the PVC pipe, I submerged the hand rail into a glass of boiled water, which help to soften the plastic. I have done this previously on the two silos I built in the past.

All was looking good until a few of the hand rails began to snap.... I'm guessing that the water had tempered the plastic too much or it cooled down too quickly...

What to do ??

I decided to take a pair of small nail clippers and remove the rails altogether, leaving a small moulded section of plastic on the rear of the posts.

I took some 0.75mm x 0.25mm styrene (Evergreen #101) strip and glued two hand rails in place.

To be honest, I am not happy with this and I think I will remove these hand rails and posts altogether and completely replace with all styrene. It will be easier to build the handrails on the bench then fit this to the silo top. I have also ordered more caged ladder kits from Tichy as two of the cage rings had collapsed/broke due to the wind blowing the silo over whilst on the work bench...

Anyhow, the next couple of steps of the silo build will have to wait as I'm about to take a week off to explore the Central West of New South Wales, catching up with family with my son Jack. This will roughly be a 2000km (1243mile) round trip. Looking forward to it !

Cheers, Gary.