23rd Street

[Mike_R]

Last day of building before Christow, Friday will be for packing and hopefully some car weathering. The board plant now has ground cover and I've added warning notices to the building.



The hard hat warning is for those who ignore the other warnings! There is no power in the shed so locos have to stop here, plus sun shades need closing to fit the door. Also overheight cars will not fit under the door. So if you jam a car in the door better get the hard hat on!

[Mike_R]

A view of the loading shed at the Christow Freemo meeting. I'm now thinking of adding low relief buildings to the left edge of the board, creating a bit of a canyon effect and giving a better impression that this is just a small structure in the plant.

Christow_2016 20-05-1 by Mike Ruby, on Flickr

[deanobeano]

Hi Mike,

That's a cracking piece of modelling - a real sense of reality from just one structure - it just goes to show what can be done if you've the eye for it. I also admire the way you have considered and built in the need when folding up the layout.

Looking at the photo with the green "pump"?? - is that part of an planned automatic unloading process?

Harking back to an earlier post I'm now having a play with point operation - i'm hoping that servos do the trick although wire rod / wire in tube will likely be the fall back position - N scale and "sausage fingers" don't readily go hand in hand!!

Looking forward your continuation.

Regards

Dean

[Mike_R]

The pump is a fan. I'm not sure if they are used in this case, but I do know that there is some vacuum unloading done and I have worked where woodchips were transported by blowing them through pipes with such fans. There was a circuit of about 100m of pipe which climbed around 8m from the sawdust hopper to the silo. The chips were taken to the hopper by the main extraction, two 4' diameter fans, these would suck up 2"x2"x12" wood with no trouble.
There will probably be a silo alongside it to store the chips on a small extension I'm thinking of adding to the board.

For manual point operation I've used solid rods as well as wire in tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vidkCRwQB-E

[Mike_R]

I've added the backing for the low relief buildings. I was going to make them a few inches deep, but then thought that would put them in the scrap yard when folded and being wider would not make them look much different, it would make the module wider so I just added 3/4". I had planned a fold up log deck (where logs are sorted) for the log unloading area, to save more complication I have installed a raised log deck, which the folding part goes under, I had to cut the turnout switch down to fit.

In the photo the folding board can be seen under the log deck. To the left are the where the low relief building will be, set against the ply

23rd Street board plant1 by Mike Ruby, on Flickr

[Mike_R]

I've finished the roof of Banks Boards (finally named it).

I've used the same cladding and sloped roof materials with black card to represent tarred flat areas.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/HuCzWS][img]http ... .jpg[/img]23rd Street Banks Boards by Mike Ruby, on Flickr[/url]

The hinges are covered by removable plant room covers.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/HuCzKj][img]http ... .jpg[/img]23rd Street Banks Boards by Mike Ruby, on Flickr[/url]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/HuCzzE][img]http ... .jpg[/img]23rd Street Banks Boards by Mike Ruby, on Flickr[/url]

Now the building needs some weathering.

[Mike_R]

I've started on the low relief structures of the board plant.

I made the basic blocks from foam core board, easy to cut and glue. Here they are against the profile board.



I then covered them with styrene sheets, stuck with transfer glue tape.

The first will be the chipper shed, where logs are reduced to wood chips.



Then the chip silo, where the chips are stored. The tube at the bottom is an auger to take chips from the silo to mixing room.



The resin silos, built form one chopped up Walthers plastic pellet silo.

[

The furthest building will be the mixing room, which I haven't started covering yet.

[Mike_R]

With the buildings painted and weathered, I'm nearing completion of the board plant.

I think the loading shed looks far better with the low relief structures, before it stood out as a lone building, now it is part of a larger industry.

[Gloriousnse]

That's looking excellent Mike!

[BrianMoore]

Agreed!

[torikoos]

I approve of that message


Looks very good Mike.

[Mike_R]

Next are the industries across the other side of the mainline, building supplies and scrap yard.
They have to fit in this space.

23rd Street folded board by Mike Ruby, on Flickr

[Mike_R]

Some more work on the module with the first signals going in. These are my first scratch built signals and still need to be painted, installed and wired to the decoder, hopefully for the next meeting.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/N61aA1][img]http ... .jpg[/img]23rd Street signal by Mike Ruby, on Flickr[/url]

In the foreground is the new scrap yard.

[torikoos]

Those signals look really good, well done Mike. Shame I won't make the meet to see them in action.

Koos

[deanobeano]

Hi Mike,

I'm sure if the signals are half as good as the rest of your modelling then they will be great - but am I missing something in the way I view the picture in the post? - I can just about see part of the signal post structure only?

Regards

Dean