Plattsburgh paper Mill

More kit bashing

Over this weekend I managed to spend some more time kit bashing the main paper mill building and build some of the tanks for the mill also.

As per the power station, this building was made from 2 Walters Superior Paper kits.

The building on the left is for large rolls of paper that is shipped directly into 50 ft box cars. The doors on the building are spaced for 50 ft cars but 40 ft can be spotted there is uncoupled. The building on the right is part of the main mill building and has a loading dock for cardboard products into 40 ft and 50 ft box cars.

There is a lot more to do on these buildings in terms of pipes to cover the joins, adding windows and doors to it.. But these are the basic structures.

Here is the end product.

The large white roller doors are a new addition to the building and the surrounds will be painted concrete white the long white strip will be painted a timber colour to protect the building from the box cars.

I will make a low relief boiler recovery house on the right of the mill next to the tanks. As I have used the Superior Paper boiler house for my power station I will look to make a modern (well at least for Mid 1970) looking boiler house.

Stay tuned for the next update.

Heavy duty crane revised

Some height changes to the heavy duty crane at Fair Haven plant.

After a delivery of Evergreen styrene stock was delivered today and based on a suggestion from Rod re the height of the crane gantry. I modified what I had already built by reducing the height of the crane.

Here is the updated version.

The crane is probably still a fair bit of overkill for the plant, but will see how it looks once things are painted and dulled down a bit.

Building construction continues

More MEK....

Progress continues on the construction of buildings and more kit bashing.

This weekend I made a start on a heavy duty over head crane for Ball Metal Containers in Fair Haven. Unfortunately I ran out of H beam. So onto the web to order more. Here is the structure as it is today with more work to go.
I used old Peco bridge beams, (upside down) for the top sections.

Then onto Port Henry Doors. (ignore the label on the top of the building).
This is made up of a Walters Railcar restoration building and a DPM building.

This fits into the rounded corner and will take bulk head flats with sized timber and boxcars with glass, and ship completed doors in boxcars.

Then onto an additional office building and design studio for Lay-Z-Boy chairs.
This is made from a Walthers Branch's Candy

Then onto a very large power station for the town of Plattsburgh and for the paper mill.
This is made from 2 Superior paper kits and parts for the tan building.
There is more to go on this. I need to replace the roof as the material I used is too soft and warps and is not your usual evergreen plastic so does not glue well.. I need to order a number of evergreen sheets to fix it. I also need add a covered unloading bay for the coal cars.

All buildings will be painted, get windows and a number of roof top bits and pieces once painted.

More covid-19 lock down fun next week.

Ball Metal Containers Factory

More Buildings

For my second set of buildings, I made a start on Ball Metal Containers. This was a on line customer in Saratoga Springs on the D&H. I have moved the factory to Fair Haven and made it a bit older than the current plant.

The idea being that it will receive steel in rolls, in gons and ship out in box cars tin cans for the on line General foods in Port Henry. It will also receive cardboard from the Plattsburgh paper mill.

I plan to add a large heavy duty crane out the front to handle the steel rolls.
I have the crane, but need to make the gantry..

Here is the building, complete with curved dock.

I also read the comments from my last post and modified the Corner stone modular building I made to hide some of the joins. (Thanks Jason).

Now to see if I have the necessary plastic to make the crane gantry.

Kit bashing

Time to get started on kit bashing

This weekend I entered uncharted territory and started to build buildings and kit bash others to fit into the spaces I have. I have never got a layout to this point, and never kit bashed any buildings.. So all new for me. I like large industries that look like they are the size they should be so I planned to elongate some buildings to fir into spaces.

Here are the 1st few attempts.. The freight house is basically out of the box, the other two are elongated.

The buildings are not yet complete as the windows and roof details have not been added. I stopped at this point to enable me to get the feel of the building and the size and to make it easier to paint. Then the last details can be added.

This will be General Foods. Will receive cardboard, glass bottles, and tin cans (all on line industries) and then ship out packaged food to off line destinations.

This building was a DPM trackside transfer building that I elongated and changed the platform.

The second set of buildings will be Lay-Z-Boy chair manufacturing.
They will receive timber (off line) cardboard (on line) and ship chairs (offline).

The right building is a Walthers Water Street Freight terminal. The left building is a Walters Cornerstone modular building that is 2 level at the front and 1 level at the rear..
Again they are not finished. They are shells to enable me to see how they fit and then to paint the parts later and finish assembly.

Now onto the next set of buildings in Port Henry. Port Henry doors..

More Turnouts

New possibilities

As part of the planning of industries to service and therefore buildings, I found that I had space for a flat industry in Whitehall. I could also then re arrange a few things and move the propane dealer to Port Henry on the short track and use the longer track in Whitehall for a printing works that could use paper from the mill and provide another destination of on line and off line cars. So Star Printing was born. (after a real printing works on the D&H in years gone by). This then enabled me to use a few buildings is received from Barry and John.

I also have had a old plaster very long, low relief warehouse that I wanted to use. I found a space in Whitehall and I was going to model a dis used track and warehouse. But I could not let the opportunity for another industry to slip by. So this necessitated another track that I could connect to the main. The only issue was, I was all out of right and turnouts. Given 80% of the turnouts on the layout are hand built, then making another was not a big issue. I also have long been planning on replacing a turnout on the main entering Port Henry as I was not happy with the reliability of it. So 2 more turnouts were planned to be built.

I prepared the relevant tools for the task at hand, turned on the soldering station and... Pooof.. with a large bang or pop and a large amount of smoke escaped from the soldering station.. Well that did not go to plan. It was 5:05pm on a Monday evening, so I jumped on the phone to my local Jaycar supplier here in Sunbury to procure a new station. Fortunately, they had one in stock that was the same as my old one. I have a very fine point on the iron so wanted to retain that.. A quick run down the street and back and by 5:25 I was good to go..

Thus turnouts number 105 and 106 were created. I then weathered the turnout in readiness for the install.

Here are the turnouts, ready to go.

Here is an updated plan of the layout with the extra siding at the top in Whitehall.
The top level is unchanged.

Now to install the turnouts and change a few tracks in Port Henry to enable them to align with the planned buildings.

Building rough in

Did someone say Jigsaw's?

This weekend I spent time reviewing and revising the plan for the industries on the layout. This includes the products that come and go along with the car types and the possible on line or off line destination. This then helped with the planning of the buildings. I had completed this time ago but it needed review, revision and enhancement.

Once this was completed I then searched out all the buildings that I have been hording for a number of years. This includes a number of Walthers cornerstone modular kids, 2 x Superior paper kits, other Walthers kits and a number of DPM kits.

I already knew what types of buildings I was after per the plan so set about playing jigsaw puzzles with buildings to make up what I needed.

I managed to cobble together a large power plant from part of the Superior paper kit along with a large long main paper mill building. I then used the remainder of the red brick parts of the paper mill to make a power station for the glass factory across the isle.

Some of the kits may be recognisable. Some not so much.

I wanted to use the long plaster warehouse flats that I had, so plan on adding a old unused track next to where the building is in Whitehall.

While some of the industries are correct (in name only) to those on the D&H, the others are made up based on the types of industries that were on the D&H. So not strictly to what was there and a fair bit of modellers licence. I am on the other side of the planet compared to up state New York and it is my layout..

Here are a few pictures of the building walls taped together to get the feel for them..

TOFC Facility

Ball Metal Container Co

The yellow heavy duty crane will be along the front of the building.

Power plant for the Glass Factory

 General foods

Lay-Z-Boy chairs

Lay-Z-Boy Chairs

 Pt Henry Doors

 SL Scrap

Pt Henry Doors

SL Scrap steel

 Loco facility in Whitehall

Post Star Printing - Whitehall

Cement - Whitehall

 Paper Factory. Further down the town, there is space for tank and pulp logs.

 Power plant for the paper mill

Propane gas dealer

The Glass factory will go here and still needs more planning

Now to get building..