Construction Update #6 - CEMEX & Upper Level Scenery Base

More Stay Home, Stay Safe & Social Distancing

 

Its getting more difficult to work on the layout due to a lack of materials.  I haven't been to the hobby shop in about a month but I did get to my local hardware store to pick up a few things.  In the meantime I have been jumping around from one project to another in order to keep things moving forward.

 

The CEMEX redi-mix plant at Westmoreland

 

In the last update, I mentioned that I had ordered additional backdrops from Trackside Scenery.  They arrived last week so I got busy and got a couple of them up before I ran out of Super 77 spray adhesive.  Here are a couple of pictures of the CEMEX plant in it's final configuration.  Originally the shed for unloading concrete was in the back behind the large storage bins. After a couple of days of moving things around, I realized that moving and uncoupling cars behind the fragile conveyor was going to be a real problem,  As a result, it is now out front.

Here are two more shots of the plant.  Its readily apparent how much depth the backdrop adds to the scene as compared to the photo in Update #5.  The LED rope lights also got installed this last week.  These pictures were taken without the room lights turned on; only the LED's.  I bought the rope lights off ebay... twice.  The first batch, labeled "Daylight White" were way to cool.  The second batch were labeled "Natural White" 4000 to 4500K.  Each waterproof rope, about 16 feet long and had 300, 5630 "Super Bright" LED's.  The "Natural White" LED's are just about perfect.   Four ropes and a 12 volt power supply cost about $50.00,

The small corrugated warehouse came from a Walther's kit.  I cut it in half, long ways, and placed it up against the brick structure printed on the backdrop.  There were four of these great little warehouses in the kit and I used three of them on my recently dismantled Sn3 layout.   This was one of them.  Two more small structures are on the work bench for the CEMEX complex as are several more tanks for additives and two more silos for concrete and fly ash.

Basic Scenery on the Upper Level

Grundy is directly above Westmoreland and things can and have dropped through the bench work to the lower level.  In order to protect the CEMEX redi-mix plant I decided to install some hard shell on the upper level.  On my Sn3 layout, I used about 15 4s8 sheets of 2" pink foam for my basic land forms.  But, at nearly $30 a sheet at Home Depot, an alternative had to be found.  
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I saw this method demonstrated on several You Tube videos.  I thought I give it a try.  1" Pink foam profiles were cut and hot glued in place about every 6-8"  The entire upper level will probably take two 4x8 pieces of pink foam.

The pink foam was followed up with cardboard strips woven around and over the pink foam profiles and hot glued in place. 

The next step requires a layer of painter's paper hot glued in place.  That will have to wait since I don't have any of the paper but that's OK.  I have enough pink foam and cardboard to keep me going for at least another week.