Brewery complex pt 2

Construction of the brewery complex continues with the storage tanks and the older brick building.  The storage tanks are the Walthers plastic pellet distributor, and the brick building is the Walthers engineering office.  I thought the combination of these with the paper mill would make a believable brewery.  Looking at various brewing operations on Google maps, most have an older original brewhouse, a modern brewing/canning/warehouse/shipping building, and storage tanks for purified water.  I've seen the storage tanks a stainless steel color or painted, I'm not sure how I'll finish them but for now they're a flat white.  Oh that plastic pellet kit.  Walthers kits can be pretty frustrating at times but I thought nothing would make me angrier than the bascule bridges...but the piping on this kit just might.  I'm not sure I'll use the piping apparatus with the brewery or just mix it in somewhere with the steel mill.  In hindsight, I probably didn't need this kit, could've made them out of some other tubes.  But I've done that before, and it never looked as good.  As for the engineering office building, I had to do a little kitbashing to put the main entrance on the short end, since it would face a street there rather than the underpass.  I used Rustoleum spray paints again for the colors. One interesting thing I've been thinking of is how from the railroad's perspective one usually sees the back of buildings.  As modelers we think of these facing the viewer, but realistically it's more the opposite.  The back of houses, the back of fences, etc.  Something to keep in mind as I plan this.  Another thing to consider is how much space should be between tracks and buildings.  I'm trying to give as much space as I can between the tracks and the brewery but it still seems close.  Ah, no matter how much space you have as a modeler, you always wish you had more.  Having these buildings built should at least allow me to place the remaining trackage there.

Lessons learned:

1. Taking the time to paint the window sills really makes the building look better than just a straight brick color.  Though this means you're going back and forth between colors touching up spots. 
2. Be careful about smudging any glue on the plastic 'glass' inserts for the windows, it will not come off.
3. Walthers - you gave people the option of using the regular sized windows or the doors on both sides of the building, but if you're like me and went for windows on both, you didn't give us enough windows in the kit to do it.  But you gave us a whole bunch of other miscellaneous parts that have nothing to do with this kit.  Whyyyyyyyy.   I filled it in with a couple of those randomly included parts, a couple garage doors, on the side facing the canning/shipping building, no one will see them there.
4. Paints - Rustoleum Satin Fossil spray paint is a good aged concrete color, and Rustoleum Satin Warm Caramel is a good brick color. 

Brewery complex

I've completed one of the buildings for the brewery complex.  This one is the main production and shipping building, popularly known as the Walthers Superior Paper Mill.  I thought it made a very good mid-size regional brewery building.  It came with some storage tanks, but I'll complement those with the Walthers Plastic Pellet loading facility.  I still have to get an office/brewhouse building, which I think is going to be the Walthers Engineering Office.  I had to at least get this building built so I can finish the rest of the trackwork.

The kit strangely came with some extra pieces, which I deduced are one of the side walls and the smoke stacks for the Walthers boiler house for the paper mill complex.  I may be able to use that as a backdrop building amidst the steel mill complex.

Coke ovens pt 2

Here's a photo of the mostly completed Walthers coke ovens.  I haven't placed the conveyors yet, and the other tower is finished but unseen.  It's kinda more of a background building I figured I'd try to fit in somehow.  The kit was missing a few piping pieces but I improvised with some of the plastic sprues.  I haven't quite decided where to place it but it fits well right about there.  The blue masking tape is just holding the smokestack together as the glue dries.

I drove past the ruins of the old Bethlehem Steel mills here and after all these years it's cool to spot which remaining few buildings are which.  I can tell which ones are the coke ovens, which one is the blower house, etc.  It shut down when I was little and most of it was demolished not long after, but there's a little left.

Lessons learned:

1. Rustoleum makes a tan colored spray paint that's just about the same as the Scalecoat Aged Concrete.  Cheaper, more of it, and easier to cover big surfaces.  Kinda wish I'd figured that out before, but I had to know what "aged concrete" looked like first.
2. As much as these buildings are selectively compressed - man, you still need a lot of room to fit them in.

Next up - the brewery complex on the other side.  The first building for that is the Walthers Superior Paper Mill.

Coke ovens

I decided to take a break from working on trackage and wiring to build the Walthers coke oven kit.  Since Walthers doesn't give you any advice on how to paint these buildings, I just go as close as I can to the picture on the box.  I've found that using Rustoleum flat spray paints is a good way to cover a lot of plastic for not a lot of money.  Combined with the aged concrete paint I've been using, I like how it looks so far.  I bought this figuring that a steel mill complex probably needs a coke oven if possible, I wasn't sure where or how it would fit but I'll fit in what I can how I can.  I should be able to spot a few hoppers next to it but it's not meant to be one of the signature pieces. 

I figure at this point if I made it through the Walthers blast furnace kit, and two of those bascule bridge kits, most anything else is probably a breeze.

Steel mill trackage complete

I've found a lot of time the past week to work on the layout, and thus I was able to complete laying and wiring the steel mill trackage.  When you're on a roll mentally and the plan is working, you forge forward.  My wiring plan worked (as in, the track is powered and the train runs like it's supposed to).  Some of the curves are a bit tight but well, it's supposed to be industrial trackage and it's not like you would fit a 6-axle diesel in there.  Given the fact that I knew nothing about wiring before this, or working with flex track, getting to this point is pretty satisfying.

Lessons learned:

1. Building your layout high enough that you can sit upright underneath is a tremendous benefit to the process.
2. Always give yourself a little extra slack when you're cutting a piece of wire to the length you need.

I haven't figured out the trackage that connects in here to a grain elevator yet.  On the opposite side, I need to place some trackage to a printing company and a brewery (which I have to buy and build first, to know exactly where to put the tracks).  But the steel mill tracks were the tricky ones.  Any wiring project that is successful is truly cause for celebration.

Next steps: buying and building the brewery; plan the fascia side panels; start planning to paint the rails; look into photo backdrops.

Slow summer progress

Between the summer weather outside and my hectic schedule, I haven't been able to make much progress in the past couple months.  The layout gets built in spurts - it takes a while to plan for how and what you want to do, then you get the materials, and then in many cases you're painting and gluing.  And painting and gluing involves a lot of waiting - doing one part, then waiting for it to dry before you do the next.  I realized I didn't have room for the two-track trestle that Walthers gives you for behind the blast furnace, but I wanted to have something there, so I took a piece of foam, built some styrene around it, and found Scalecoat Aged Concrete colored paint for it.  I really like how it came out.  I used more foam to build up the approach to it.  It's a bit too steep for my taste but it's what I can fit in there.  In front of that I started laying the tracks for the blast furnace.

Lessons learned:
1. Wait for each layer to glue properly.  Otherwise too many things are shifting at the same time.
2. A bread knife cuts foam really well.
3. That foam is going to get messy pretty fast.
4. Old spaghetti boxes are useful for cutting up into little cardboard shims to level out track.

Another topic - hobby shops.  I'm hardly the first person to ruminate on this lately.  We used to have a couple great ones around here, but they've withered away.  One has closed and the owner died, another is a sad shell of its former self.  There's a vicious death spiral at work.  A store sees less customer traffic, so it takes the fatal decision to cut back on how much it stocks.  Customers now see less there to buy, or have a harder time finding what they're looking for, and either buy less or stop coming.  So there's fewer customers, and the store stocks even less.  The store complains that they can't compete with online competitors and proclaims they're trying while looking and acting defeated.  The customers complain that they would rather buy things locally at their hobby store but can't find what they're looking for, so they stop going there.  I've stopped at the big regional one a few times and it's just sad, they hardly carry anything anymore.  I go in with a list of stuff I'm ready to buy right then and there and they don't have any of it.  I mean some stuff you'd think would be simple, like plaster cloth or Peco track.  And I always say I'll splurge on a new car if one catches my eye.  Why bother going across town if they consistently don't have what I need, and have even less next time?  You'd think you'd count on service and expertise - one time I was there looking for concrete-colored paint.  None of them were able to recommend anything, I eventually found what I was looking for a year later online.  I work in an industry that's being disrupted by new technology, and the same rules apply: you have to try.  You have to find out what your customers want and provide it, with added knowledge and expertise.  You have to have an online component - few businesses in 2017 can do without that.  You have to specialize - you can't have a little bit of everything, you have to choose a few things and be really good at those.  You do not have a choice of whether you want to adapt or not, if you don't you're done.  I see these places that wanted to just keep doing what they always did and they're dying that way.   I want to shop locally in person, I see the benefit of having places like this, but I'm not going to keep going if you don't have what I need and you're not trying.  Oh, and why are the people who own/work at these places so cranky?  You get to play with trains all day!  No it was probably never going to be very lucrative but you get to play with trains all day.

One board

My dad had to clear some stuff out of his basement and one of those things was my old train board, which had been used since then as a storage space.  He had to chop it into chunks to bring it over (I needed the boards for something else), but I was able to look over my old setups.  On one side, he set it up for me upstairs as a little kid, I drew on that, played with Matchbox cars, etc.  When it was in the basement and I was maybe 5 or 6 my uncles set up a loop of track with a siding and a bridge over a bay.  I still have most of the buildings that my dad built for it and the Chessie System engine from a set.  Unseen in between, on the other side of the plywood, was another attempt from middle school that never got much beyond track and some buildings.  I didn't have the resources or ability to do more then.  As a teenager a friend and I got a piece of homasote, attached it on, and built another layout. It ran better than the last, I was able to do more this time, some passing sidings and more industries.  It was cool to see these old projects, realizing I really hadn't forgotten them, and how much the lessons learned played into the current project.  I thought about how much we made out of that one 4x8 sheet of plywood, it's almost as old as I am.

As for the current layout, I'm working on the industrial trackage for the steel mill area.  And finding out that things don't fit as well as you intended, but making the best of it. 

Rolling Mill completed

The rolling mill for the steel mill complex was completed today.  I glued the roof sections together during the week, and today I put together the roof vents and installed some decals on the ends.  I haven't thought of a name for the mill yet, when I do I may put up some signage.  Actually, I still have to put the slab stacks back together, the wood glue I used didn't hold.  Otherwise, I'm really happy with how this turned out.  I didn't glue the roof sections to the support girders, so I can take them off as needed to access the inside.

Rolling Mill and Passing Tracks

To know how to arrange the trackage in the steel mill area, I had to know exactly how the buildings would fit.  Thus, I had to at least start constructing the buildings.  I built the blast furnace a year and a half ago, and now I'm working on the rolling mill.  I decided to install some details at this point, since it would be easier, and since the mill would be close to the front these would stick out.  Part of me keeps wanting to be thankful for Walthers making kits of these things - it's a heck of a lot easier than scratchbuilding them.  (At least until we all have 3-D printers).  Part of me wants to curse them for how often the parts don't seem to fit right, or the directions are difficult, or for the non-existent advice on painting them.  The mill's support girders are sometimes warped, so you have to hold things in place as the structure glues.  I painted the sides of the mill Rustoleum flat primer grey, and gave a moderate spray of flat primer dark red for that rust color to the beams.  I like how it came out, I may try to do the same to the blast furnace.  I finished constructing a Walthers heavy duty crane for the inside, and this was another complication.  First of all, while the craneways on the sides are built for this, the crane beams are too long.  Hence you have to cut these, and then fiddle some more if they're not quite right.  Then glue, and putty the gaps, and install a piece of styrene to stabilize it.  Aesthetically the crane wouldn't pass under the beams, so one has to ignore that little detail.  I arranged the wires holding the hooks (pieces of thread) as practically as I could.  This was an exercise of mumbled four-letter words and trial and error, in the end I tied the thread pieces each in a loop, fit one end into the hook assembly, and looped the other ends around the holding piece.  It's not quite right but it's good enough.  And there will be a roof over it so no one will notice.

On the layout, in between waiting for paint and/or glue to dry on the mill, I put down the roadbed for the passing sidings.  I'm trying to sand down the one so it looks prototypically lower, but it's been a slow slog so far.  All those switches together are going to be an interesting wiring job in a little while. 

Planning

I've found that planning and building a train layout has a bit of a "what came first, the chicken or the egg" component to it.  It's not nearly as linear as you'd expect.  You'd think building the structures would come after the trackwork was complete.  However, I had to build at least part of the buildings so I would know where exactly the track goes.  And where things will fit.  So I started the Walthers Rolling Mill kit this month.  I chose to place the tracks all at one end, that way I'm only planning for 3 switches instead of 6.  I've assembled the mill and attached the base pieces.  I was inspired by what another person did (see link below) to include some additional details, but since it's easier to install these before the superstructure, sides, and roof are attached, I'm now in a bit of a holding pattern.  I found a company in Cleveland, State Tool and Die, that makes some steel mill details - steel coil bins and steel slabs (hot and cold).  Those are on the way.  I plan to acquire some steel coils and an overhead crane as well.

One of my criticisms so far of the Walthers kits is that they don't include any instructions on how to paint the models.  Perhaps because they expect you to leave them in the colors they're molded in.  So the modeler is left to look at the pictures on the box or do their own research on the side.  I painted the blast furnace with Rustoleum gray primer spray paint, and I'll do the same with the rolling mill.  This approximately matches the colors on the box.  I've seen photos of steel mill structures anywhere from gray to rust/iron to flat black.  I figure once I learn how to weather things, I'll add plenty of dirt and grime to these structures.

At first you think you can cram these structures closer together but their placement is defined by the tracks that feed in.  So you need enough space for the succession of switches.

http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/showthread.php?27013-FS-Built-amp-Detailed-Walthers-Rolling-Mill

Trackwork

Cold winter weather can either encourage you to work in the basement, because it's inside, or deter you from doing so, because it's cold down there.  I managed to finish laying the track for the inner mainline this weekend and started attaching feeder wires to the power bus.  You can tell by the photos what a massive construction site the layout is right now.

There are a few spots in the outer mainline that I'm not totally happy with - at some point they'll probably bug me enough that I'll re-do them.  I'm trying to balance the desire to take the time to do this right against the unnecessary expectation that it should be perfect.

Once I'm set with the wiring and track for the mainlines, the next step is to lay out the passing sidings and industrial sidings.  I need to read up on how to make the cork roadbed lower for the passing sidings.  Plus I'll have to actually make a concrete plan on where all the industries will be.