Construction Update #38

 Hill's Pet Nutrition:

 

Work continues on Hill's Pet Nutrition.  On the west end of the plant are numerous small structures, tanks, pipes, and who knows what else.  The first building, west of the elevator is a small structure and a loading dock.  The loading dock on the prototype had eight vertical tanks along with a tall rectangular "something".  Here's my version; the tanks are just stand ins from my parts box; the dock came from left over Pikestuff parts (Kit #541-0017)  The building is about 3" deep, the dock adds another 2",

 

Originally I had planned on placing this small building and loading dock right next to the elevator.  Then, I came across what Walthers describes as a vapor organic air cleaner is my parts box.  I'm not exactly sure what a vapor organic air cleaner does but I decided to add it to the Hill's complex; between the small building/dock and the elevator.

 

Originally, I thought this is what the end product would look like.

 

After giving it some additional thought, I purchased another Walthers Concrete Elevator kit (the third one) and rebuilt the larger concrete elevator to look a bit more like the prototype.

 

Rolling Stock in Support of Hills Pet Nutrition

 

Backdating my rolling stock is an ongoing project.  Some freight cars have been removed from the layout because they are not suitable for the era and/or region I am modeling.  Other highly detailed, expensive and fragile models have been changed out for cars more suitable for an operating layout.  All of the cars currently on the layout are reasonably representative of their prototypes, have metal wheel sets and most have Kadee #58 scale couplers.  In addition, most have some degree of weathering.  All of the cars shown below have waybills that include Hills Pet Nutrition in Bowling Green as a consignee.

Penn Central #888248 is a factory decorated Accurail ACF covered hopper.  It is a low cost replacement for a Intermountain Railway covered hopper.  In this case, the shipper is Consolidated Grain in Nauvoo, IL.

CNWX #109199 is one of those highly detailed and relatively expensive Intermountain Railway covered hoppers that can't easily be replaced with a lower cost alternative.  The shipper is Richardson International in Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada.

 

BN #459627 is one of three Accurail PS 4750's that replaced three similar cars from Tangent Scale Models.  I bought a 3-pack of these kits off ebay for less than the cost of a single Tangent car.  One Tangent BN covered hopper is still on the layout.  The shipper is Columbia Grain in Sweet Grass, MT.

 

Hills Pet Nutrition requires bags in a variety of sizes for kibble dog food.  Bags are received from a couple sources. In this case, the bags are received from International Paper in Conklin, NY.  I'm not sure who made D&H #25765.  I think I bought it, as is, on ebay.

 

Southern #546 is another moderately priced Accurail kit.  I bought four of these and used decals available from Accurail to renumber three of them.  One problem with these cars is the color of the doors.  The prototype car doors were unpainted aluminum.  To Accurail's credit, they painted up some replacements and sent them to me. One of these days, I may get around to replacing the doors.  These cars are used by Hills Pet Nutrition to ship dog food.

 

Southern #522771 is another "home road" car used to ship pet food.  I'm not sure where I got this car; I think it's a Athearn car.  Most of these cars were weathered using Bragdon's powdered pigments.  It should be noted that most of the shippers on the Madisonville Sub uses cars provided by parent Southern Railway.

 

Latest Motive Power Additions

 

The MBG&C interchanges with the Penn Central at Evansville, IN.  As a result, I thought a couple of PC locomotives were in order.  PC #2823 is an ex New York Central U-28B.  The PC on the nose and rear are the only indication of PC ownership.  It's a Walthers Proto model with a Tsunami2 sound decoder, TCS KA-1 Keep-Alive, and a TCS 1740 speaker and enclosure.  The trucks, roof and ends are lightly weathered.

 

The #2823, along with an ex NYC F7-A has just arrived at Preston Miller Yard in Bowling Green, KY from Evansville, IN.  PC power is normally swapped out at Preston Miller before the train continues east (south) to Chattanooga.

 

 

PC F-7A #1701 is another Walthers Proto model.  Like all the locomotives on the layout, it to is equipped with a Tsunami2, KA-1 and 1740 speaker/enclosure.  While it still wears New York Central paint, it is heavily weathered.  Most of the PC F-units were retired by the mid 1970's and a few never made it into PC paint. 

 

And:

 

It's never a bad idea to stop by your local hobby shop.  In my case, it's the Electric Train Shop in Burien, WA.  While I was there, local modeler Mark Hills dropped by with several pieces of rolling stock he wanted to sell.  Mark is an excellent modeler so I couldn't resist this 60' Intermountain flat car with a Vietnam era US Army 5-ton wrecker and grader anchored to the deck.

As  always, your comments & suggestions are welcome.

sdepolo@outlook.com

 

Construction Update #37 - Downtown Bowling Green, Hill's Pet Nutrition and Car Cards & Waybills

The Depot at Bowling Green

 

Moving the GM plant from the north to the west wall of the room opened up a lot of space for new development.  The old spurs for the plant were removed and plans are under way for the development of a scene representing downtown Bowling Green.  The scene will feature a depot in the foreground and a commercial district with some street running in the background.  A track or two will also be added in the space between the backdrop, behind the GM plant, and garage door for staging (Evansville, IN).

 

Downtown Bowling Green, Kentucky.  It looks like the Walthers series of "Merchant's Row" kits were based on downtown Bowling Green.

While I am not totally satisfied with the Walthers "City Station" kit (933-2904), it is typical of stations found in a lot of mid sized cities.  I painted most of the parts while they were still on the sprues and built the kit in sub-assemblies.  In hindsight, I think that was a mistake.  If I were to build this kit again, I would assemble most if not all of the brick sections, paint the basic structure, and then add the details.

 

 

I found the roof to be a major problem.  Without sealing up the interior, it is almost impossible to hide the seams between roof sections.  Since interior detailing with all windows is a option, I decided to live with the seams for the time being.   

The one significant change I did make was to substitute a larger asphalt platform for the brick version included with the kit.  I think the asphalt version is more typical of the 1970's  when railroads were cutting costs where possible and deferring maintenance.

My friend Kurt Boyd gave me building flats to try out behind the depot.  Those along with several photos from Thurmond, WV make up the "test" commercial district behind the depot.  The deepest flat is about 3/4" thick.  Several are mounted on 1/4" foam core while the photos from Thurmond are just taped directly onto the backdrop.  They are pretty effective especially in photographes.

 

Hill's Pet Nutrition

 

Hill's Pet Nutrition is to the east (bout 5 feet to the right) of the depot/downtown Bowling Green scene.  I built the original Hill's Pet Nutrition from a combination of Walthers kits.  At the time, it was just a "big" structure built using kits, partially built kits, and a few scratch built parts I had on hand that would serve as a destination for covered hoppers.  It's a nice structure but it looks nothing like the prototype.  The goal here was to replace it with a structure that looks and feels a bit more like the prototype.

 

 

During the Spring of 2019, Pam and I took a trip that included a couple of days in Bowling Green.  During that trip, I found the prototype and took a couple of photos.  Unfortunately, due to the lack of access, it's impossible to photograph the structure from the back or track side.  Fortunately, Google came to the rescue...  And, note that the prototype looks nothing like the current model.

Hill's currently makes 26 different dry foods for dogs.  They include combinations of chicken and/or lamb, brewers rice, meat concentrate, peas, barley, sorghum, wet or dry shell free eggs, chicken fat, and other nutritional supplements.  The plant receives raw materials in both covered hoppers and tank cars.  When these pictures were taken, there were two covered hoppers spotted next to the plant along with an additional three covered hoppers and three tank cars off spot on the lead.  

I assume the covered hoppers contain one or more of the grains mentioned above; not sure about the tank cars but here is where they appear to be unloaded.  There's no indication that the plant currently ships by rail but I have included track side roll up doors for that purpose.

Well, so much for the prototype.  Doing the research was interesting and provided a little insight in to how dog food is made but not much else when it comes to building a model that will fit in a 6" wide by 7' long space.  I'm not even sure when the plant was built.  I do know one thing for sure; our weenie dog Gertrude, who has almost fully recovered from back surgery, is now getting a lot of home cooked meals.

 

I'm not one for drawing up much of a plan.  I normally make a couple of sketches and start cutting.  I really like building structures from styrene so If I screw up, I just start over.

 

 

In this case I checked around to see what I had on hand.  I found several packages of Plastruct corrugated siding (#91509) and went to work.  If you have been following my blog, you already know that I usually start with a "core" made from styrene and go from there.  In this case, the core is made from Evergreen .080" sheet styrene and the trim is .080" by .125" styrene strip.  The doors are left overs from a Walthers modern warehouse kit.  I use Tamiya "Extra Thin" Cement for gluing styrene.

This is a large structure so it is being built in sections.  The first one, the warehouse section to the right is 41" long.  The second section, on the left is about 14" long and will but up against the existing elevator.  A third section, which will include all the tanks, sheds, etc will be on the opposite side of the elevator.

When you build a structure this long, out of styrene, bracing is a must.  The heavy strip running accross the top of the backside is .188"x.750" strip styrene.  It will also support the roof.  

As of 10/29, here's how it looks.

 

 

Here's that opening photo for a quick comparison.

 

  

Car Cards & Waybills

 

As some of you know, I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to computerize car forwarding on my layout.  I have tried two different programs and while they both work as advertised, I have drifted back to the old car card and waybill system I have used on previous layouts.  I find the car cards and waybills more flexible and better suited to the short casual operating sessions I prefer.  The use of car cards and waybills is well documented so I don't have much to offer in addition to what's already out there.

The car cards and double sided waybills were designed using Excel.  Each waybill has the following information for each destination.  There can be up to 4 destinations on each waybill.

• Consignee
• Location
• Routing
• Via
• Shipper
• Lading
  

Four car cards or eight waybills will fit on a standard sized 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper.  The car cards are printed on 110 LB Index and the way bills on 67 LB Bristol.  It should be noted that some home printers may not be able to print the 110 LB card stock.  I also found it was nearly impossible to get the double sided waybills lined up properly using the "print on both sides" function on my HP color inkjet printer.  After hours of trying, I ended up printing one side, flipping the paper over by hand, and printing the back side using the "print single sided" function.

 

The waybills are color coded for destination.  I learned this little trick during an operating session on Burr Stewart's HO Burlington Northern layout.  

 

 

For example, the yellow strip across the waybill shown below, indicates that the car will be interchanged with the Louisville & Nashville at the L&N's GEMCO Yard in Plum Springs, KY.  In this case, the yardmaster at Preston Miller has no need to be concerned with the actual consignee.  All the Preston Miller yardmaster is concerned about is getting the foreign road car on a transfer across town to the L&N before mid-night in order to avoid a per-deim charge.  

 

 

The green across the top of the waybill indicates that the respective car will be interchanged with the Central of Georgia/Southern and De Butts Yard in Chattanooga, TN.  If a waybill has a gray stripe across the top, then the Preston Miller yardmaster will have to take a closer look at the waybill.  Gray indicates a MBGC destination and the yardmaster will need to know the actual consignee so he can assign the car to the right train.

Car Cards and Waybills require bill boxes.  I made mine from .080" sheet styrene and .188" thick strip styrene.  An industry box has a minimum of 3 slots.  One for the industry (on spot), one for off spot cars, and one for outbound cars.  The one shown below is for Central Kentucky Grain in Bowling Green.  Eventually the bill box will be painted gray, to match CKG, and labelled.

As always, your comments and suggestions are always welcome

sdepolo@theinsidegateway.com

Pace Chemical Part 3, Aggregate Cars and the GM Plant

Work continues on Pace Chemical.  The roof, windows, doors and other details have been added.  Still waiting for additional storage tanks ordered from Walthers. 

 

 

Years ago I came across the Western Pacific tracks that ran down the center of a street in Oakland, California.  Along this section of street running, there sat a local blocked by a tractor trailer backed up to a loading dock.  It took crew about 30 minutes to track down the driver and get the trailer moved.  I thought a similar arrangement on the Madisonville Sub would add some operating interest.

 

The concrete pad, shown in the photo below on the right, spans two tracks that service Pace Chemical.  It was made by cutting up some roof sections, from the Walthers Modern Warehouse kit, and gluing them directly to the O-Scale cork roadbed I used for the base of the Southern Kentucky Transfer.  The code 70 flex track in this area sits on N-Scale cork so the height of the pad turned out to be a few thousands of an inch below the rail head.  

 

 

Aggregate Cars

 

As mentioned in the last post, on the 1975 era Madisonville Sub older 55 ton hoppers have replaced the more modern era 40' Ortner aggregate cars.  The 55 ton cars were all built from factory decorated Accurail kits.  Kadee #58 scale couplers and metal wheel set replaced the originals.  Several of the cars were built by my 8 year old grandson Adam. The cars were weathered with a combination of paint and powdered pigments.

Between Southern and Central of  Georgia, I've come up with 8 factory decorated kits with different number. More will be added using decals available directly from Accurail.  For $4 Accurail will send you additional numbers printed on decal paper painted to match the factory decorated kits.  Each kit has a small form to include with payment.

 

Storage Tanks for Pace Chemical

After 2 weeks, the storage tank kits finally arrived from Walthers.  I assembled and painted these along with a few others, from my parts box, to make up the small tank farm next to the main structure.  

I normally give things a or two week before I settle on the final structure and/or location.  After a couple of days, the decision was made to change out the tall structure on the left.  Two of the spurs were shortened by 3" and the tall structure was replaced with a Pikestuff #5005 multi-purpose steel building. A few details have talso been added. (This tends to be an ongoing process with me.)

Here is an overall picture of Pace Chemical as of 9/30,  The main structure is 54" long and has 7 car spots on 3 tracks.  A industry like Pace Chemical would be perfect for a small shelf style switching layout as it is only 14" deep.
 

 

The General Motors Corvette Assembly Plant

 

As mentioned in the September 6th post, the GM plant was moved from the north wall to west wall of the room adjacent to Pace Chemical.  This picture was taken back in August when the assembly plant was first moved to it's current location.  At the time the east end of the west staging yard was being reconfigured in order to support the assembly plant.  This move effectively eliminated the west end staging tracks.

A hole was cut in the new section of backdrop in order to spot cars inside the plant.

 

 

The elimination of all that west end staging turned out to be a little short sided.  The far end of the GM plant was reconfigured by rearranging a couple of wall panels and adding a new roof section.  A loading dock was also added to the inside of the new section that can be detailed at some point in the future.

The track in the foreground will soon pass through the backdrop and into a shorter 8' long 2 track staging for the L&N and IC.

 

The need to pass through the backdrop, unseen, without blocking out the view of the GM plant was a bit of a challenge.  Adding to the complexity is the angle of  the backdrop.  I built several mock ups from styrene and some left over parts from previous kit bashing projects.  The first one was much to tall and overwhelmed the surrounding structures.  The height was cut down twice to a point the mock up just covered the opening from the normal viewing angle.

 

Here is the overall result.  It effectively blocks where the track passes through the backdrop but stands out like a "sore thumb" in the photos.  It looks better in real life and should improve dramatically once painted a a subtle coat of gray or beige.  Painting the backdrop will also help.

Just for fun, I made up a switch list and worked the current L&N Plum Springs and Smith Grove portion of the layout.  I took me an hour and forty-five minutes to sort out the cars in the small L&N/GEMCO yard, and work the Southern Kentucky Transfer, Pace Chemical & the GM assembly plant.  This job also requires taking a cut of interchange cars over to Preston Miller Yard which I didn't do.  Between Pace Chemical, with seven spots, the GM Plant with six spots and the Southern Kentucky Transfer, there are currently over 20 car spots on the L&N portion of the layout.

As always, your comments and suggestions are always welcome

sdepolo@outllook.com

 

Pace Chemical Part 2 - The Westmoreland Turn

The main structure located along the backdrop behind the Southern Kentucky Transfer.  The administrative/office building has been moved from the north side of the building on the prototype to the east side on the model.  Again, this portion of the complex was built using left over parts from a previous kit bash.

Here we are a little further along. The covered loading dock is finished as are two of the tank car loading/unloading racks.  The rack in the left foreground is for loading trucks.  The roof hasn't been installed yet.  Both it, upper portion of the warehouse walls and the doors and windows will be painted a contrasting color.  Two more tank car car loading/unloading racks need to be added plus a bunch of vertical storage tanks.

I sprayed the doors, window frames and upper section of the wall panels along with the roof of the truck loading rack a dark red. 

Referring bank to my last blog, the prototype pictures illustrates a variety of vertical tank types and sizes spread around the facility.  Unfortunately, suitable HO scale tanks are relatively hard to find.  The following 4 tanks were made from the silos included with the Walthers Magic Pan Bakery kit.  They are OK at best.  I modified them by cutting off a lower portion of the silo to eliminate a door and painted them with semi-gloss paint to make them look more metal like.  Blue painter's tape was used as a guide and the cuts were made with a razor saw.  I have four more to assemble so I need to get those built and figure out where they are going to be located before I can add piping, ladders, railing and other details.

Before I can go much further with Pace Chemical, I need more tanks.  Walthers makes a couple of kits that include a bunch of tanks.  I assembled a few, figured out which ones I could use and then order more kits. 

I'm kind of at a stand-still when it comes to Pace Chemicals. I have a bunch of kits for tanks on order but they haven't all arrived.  So, I thought I would include this overall picture of the South Kentucky Transfer, Pace Chemical and the GM plant in the background.

 

The L&N Servicing Facility at Plum Springs

 

I've also did a little more work on the  L&N servicing facility.  I finally found some additional Micro Engineering Code 70 turnouts on ebay so a new spur for unloading diesel fuel and locomotive sand was added. The spur also has room to store a couple of locomotives.

The Westmoreland Turn

 

The Westmoreland Turn is a daily except Sunday local that originates out of Preston Miller Yard in Bowling Green and makes a turn to Westmoreland.  Primary traffic consists of inbound loads a aggregates, LPG and building material products.  There is also a local team track. Outbound loads consist of Portland Cement.

 

Power for today's turn consists of a FP-7A and Southern's only Alco RS-11. 

 

 On the way out of town, the turn passes by the Central Kentucky Grain elevator.

 

 

FP-7A #6132 is a recent Walthers Proto release. By the mid1970's many of the Southern's FP-7's were out of work and many were relegated to secondary freight assignments.  The #6132 is equipped with a Tsunami2, TCS KA1 Keep Alive and a TCS 1740 speaker and enclosure.  The train is eastbound between Tunnel 1 and State Line.

                                                                                 

 

Redi Gas is located on the spur that extends off to the left.  It gets switched first.  Operating rules require a couple of cars between the locomotives and the loaded LPG car.  Otherwise, the switch crew at Preston Miller would have placed the car directly behind the locomotives.  Downtown Westmoreland is in the background.

CEMEX is the largest shipper in Westmoreland. But before switching out the plant, the Turn will set out the Southern Pacific box car on the team track.  Several of the structure in this view are actually part of the backdrop.  The effect is pretty convincing.

Having dropped off the SP box car, the power backs out of  the team track.  RS-11 #11 was originally purchased for Southern subsidiary Carolina & Northwestern.  While Southern and it's subsidiaries owned a sizable fleet of early Alco road switchers, the #11 purchased in 1956, was the only 251 powered Alco the Southern bought.  The #11 is a factory decorated Atlas model.  It is also equipped with a Tsunami2, TCS KA1 Keep Alive, and a TCS 1740 speaker and enclosure.  Interestingly enough, Atlas also did a Carolina & Northwestern version of this locomotive.

The #11 has backed down to the east end of Westmoreland to access the CEMEX plant.  The company houses and maintenance yard are right outside Tunnel 2.

Outbound cement cars.

Having finished work in Westmoreland, the Turn heads back to Preston Miller.  After crossing the Cumberland River, the turn is about to pass through the speed limit signs at State Line.  The aggregate car are recent additions to the freight car roster.  The 2 bay hoppers, from Accurail, replaced a fleet of 40' Ortner cars.

 

Caboose X586 brings up the rear of the Turn.  This caboose was originally factory decorated by Walthers for Western Pacific.  I scraped and sanded off the Western Pacific lettering and redid it for Southern.  I little weathering covered up the not so perfect redo for a reasonable representation of a Southern bay window caboose.  The ABS signals here are from Tomar but new Atlas/BLMA replacements are on hand.

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome

sdepolo@outlook.com