October update

 I think I'm calling the sand distributor "done" for now. I kept adding things.  Beyond just the building, I added a truck scale and the thing beneath it.  Best I can tell, they load sand into it, it rolls it around to separate out the finest particles, from which they can get a consistent product to ship.  I scratchbuilt this thing from a styrene tube, some styrene pieces, a couple pieces of corrugated styrene, and some surplus handrails and pipe.  I used a combination of Woodland Scenics ground cover, clumps, and some Heki tear apart tall grass that Thomas Klimoski used on his Georgia Northeastern layout. Like the rest of this - it's not perfectly to scale.  My aim was to get something that looks like it, rather than exactly like it. If I went a step further - I would have to build that dust collector in the process between this thing and the building. Whenever I drive past it on Route 5, I'm pretty pleased I came up with something that anyone looking at it would recognize.

At the prototype, I'm told they've been offloading the sand from lake freighters, which gets trucked across town to the Norfolk Southern yard and loaded onto covered hoppers. Once upon a time there were railroad tracks there. Apparently this is the cheapest way to do this right now.

Lessons learned:

1. Anything and everything you build looks better with some handrails/guardrails. 
2. Why did I make the circular towers so tall? Because that Walthers conical thing is that tall, and they needed to be taller based on the prototype. Don't be tough on yourself if something isn't exact. My steel mill isn't even close to the scale size it should be - but it still looks like a steel mill. Good enough.
3. I'm still annoyed that I made the shipping channel too deep.  But there's no fixing that at this point.  We have to pretend that it was a deep cut there and the freighters can onload on a higher level. Whatever.

What's next: I don't know. I'm not sure how to connect the scenery in that corner to the steel mill around the bend. Maybe it's time to do some scenery around the brewery.

Long update

I realized I haven't updated this in quite some time.  I've made some significant progress on the river channel end of the layout.

Background - I printed out a couple appropriate buildings for the background, plus a Corps of Engineers derrickboat for the channel.  I'm not sure if I printed these in the right proportion, but they look okay so far.  I couldn't really get them any bigger.  

Sand distributor - in Buffalo along Route 5, there's a sand distributor that receives loads of sand from self-unloading lake freighters.  Colloquially it's known as "the dunes" because sometimes they have huge mounds of sand there.  I tried my best to scratchbuild/kitbash something looking like this.

I used a combination of a Walthers Grain Surge Bin, a Walthers Grain Conveyor, the end building from the Walthers power station, and two pieces of PVC pipe.  I feel like what I've built, while not completely accurate, effectively conveys the look of the complex.

I still need to put scenery around there.  Piles of sand, some bushes and weeds, and a front end loader.  It fits the need for a focal point for that space, in transition from the steel mills to the river.

I hate using any of those piping things.  I built them semi-connected, because I knew they wouldn't stay that way.  The buildings are semi-secured like the houses were around 4 nails inside.  The silos don't stay that way very well.  I learned you can't really glue PVC pipe to anything, but that styrene sorta stays on.  I at least glued the surge bin and conveyor to a piece of styrene so they would stay together.  I guarantee at some point this will come un-done.

Up next:

1. Scenery around the sand distributor.

2. I bought a pack of SuperTrees - I'll have to try to make some.

3. Start scenery around the brewery.