Idaho Belt Freelanced plan

[GaryHinshaw]

Looking really good (and enormous)!  But now I've lost track a bit: which building is this in your plan?  With all the other buildings in the plant, I can't believe you still have room for something like this.

[MVW]

Looking really good (and enormous)!  But now I've lost track a bit: which building is this in your plan?  With all the other buildings in the plant, I can't believe you still have room for something like this.

Dude's obviously working with two basements. 

Nicely done!

Jim

[basementcalling]

Looking really good (and enormous)!  But now I've lost track a bit: which building is this in your plan?  With all the other buildings in the plant, I can't believe you still have room for something like this.

Gary, the new building is a flour mill; it's not part of the paper mill complex.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Paper mill is located off this capture to the bottom on a different peninsula.

The flour mill is  here in a different town, located at number 2 location on this plan. Lots of locations on the layout are designed to have one or a few large industries in a town as opposed to multiple small ones.

[basementcalling]

It looks excellent. The weathering is superb and the cyclones do not look out of place. I'm not sure if those cyclones would in reality be placed so far out of reach of maintenance people, for cleaning etc.

The roof also looks great, what did you use as roofing material?

Roofing gravel was collected dirt from the gutter out front of the house. I found a curb section with a bump that causes silt in the runoff from storms to filter out. This stuff is very fine grained. I painted the .080 styrene - buff in the old section, black in the new, and sprinkled the silt onto the paint. I then flooded it with thinned white glue and wet water solution. As it dried the gravel soaks in the color. While it was doing so, I went back and sifted on a second layer of the silt in places where the white color of the glue was pooling. It absorbed the new dirt easily. Then I used a carving tool to press down any humps left over from glue bomb craters, though there were very few as I used a tiny bottle held very close to the surface.

I went around the edges of the ducting and roof with an exacto blade to be sure the curl up from surface tension broke and didn't force the dirt up onto the edges. I used a cotton ball to blot off any excess glue still in white puddles, and then hit the entire roof with Aquanet hairspray to lock everything in place after the glue completely dried.

Erik, a couple of the details on the roof are yours. You should recognize the chiller unit at far left on the roof.

[Erik aka Ngineer]

Roofing gravel was collected dirt from the gutter out front of the house. I found a curb section with a bump that causes silt in the runoff from storms to filter out. This stuff is very fine grained. I painted the .080 styrene - buff in the old section, black in the new, and sprinkled the silt onto the paint. I then flooded it with thinned white glue and wet water solution. As it dried the gravel soaks in the color. While it was doing so, I went back and sifted on a second layer of the silt in places where the white color of the glue was pooling. It absorbed the new dirt easily. Then I used a carving tool to press down any humps left over from glue bomb craters, though there were very few as I used a tiny bottle held very close to the surface.

I went around the edges of the ducting and roof with an exacto blade to be sure the curl up from surface tension broke and didn't force the dirt up onto the edges. I used a cotton ball to blot off any excess glue still in white puddles, and then hit the entire roof with Aquanet hairspray to lock everything in place after the glue completely dried.

Erik, a couple of the details on the roof are yours. You should recognize the chiller unit at far left on the roof.

Ah, the old gutter dirt, street sand and hair spray combo
You sir are a genius!

As for the chiller, I was looking at so many details I hadn't even seen that, so cool! (pun intended)

[basementcalling]

Kilns revisited.

They are nor finished,  but with the snow flying I had time today to solve a problem.

The kiln tower is rather top heavy from the PVC details used. I needed a way to keep it from falling off the concrete base every time the layout was bumped,  but didn't want it permanently attached.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

So I drilled a couple holes in the base after measuring 5 times for where the middle legs would sit.  I also shortened the base so a spur travel van run past and have clearance.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Then I added two brass rods behind the center legs to hold the tower in position.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Works so far.  I'll paint them and they should blend in,  or I may color one black to be some type of conduit.

[basementcalling]

Another small detail update. 

Got to get the lime into the rotary kiln, so I re-engineering  a few Green Max pipe values.


Why I am not working on turnout throws,  track or wiring I don't know.

[basementcalling]

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Finally got sugary about tank placements and mace a template of the mill and kiln footprints to work from.  The above is an overhead shot of the space,  with a road coming in from bottom left towards the Rick line which is the kiln outline.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

That's the view up the "road" for plant work vehicles. The pipe bridge will sit level when the supports  are attached.

No more coming the next few days. Headed to a state board of directors meeting which will keep me busy for 3 days or so. Too bad I can't weather cars during businesses sessions like the ladies  do knitting. 

[basementcalling]

Having a change of heart about placing my rotary kilns at an angle. It just doesn't work for a lime unloading and byproducts loading spot in the space.

I'm trying to keep this area busy, but not packed, to use some open, or in this case opener, space, so the whole mill doesn't look squashed, just compressed.

Which do you all like and why?

Angled

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Or against the backdrop?

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Tanks and a road will still be in here, but my composition skills are locked up, so advice is welcome.

[TLOC]

Peter either would be fine, I like it best against the backdrop. Feels like a roomier area.

Tom

[C855B]

Angled. Emphasizes the heavy-industrial clutter.

[Erik aka Ngineer]

I'd say angled, but with a little more space between the items, perhaps with the kiln at a shallower angle (more parallel to the tracks) so you leave more space next to the track but still have that cluttered industrial look.
I found this great -albeit in Horribly Oversized scale- layout on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Chemische-Werke-Gerbisbach-in-187-180533058668875/

[Ed Kapuscinski]

What about angled, but moved to the left a bit to space it out some?

[basementcalling]

What about angled, but moved to the left a bit to space it out some?

That may work. It needs to be far enough away from the cracking tower and refinery byproducts details to allow visual separation, but still off the corner where the road intersects the backdrop, although when against the backdrop it will come to that point. It looks better off the road, I think. I have never seen a paper mill organized so that the rotary kilns are close to the warehouse. They are usually surrounded by tanks, pipes, and lost in a maze of industrial menace.

I am trying to get the front edge a bit further away from the spur, too, and leave room for enough tanks to be convincing. Already decided I probably have to scrap the idea of a larger diameter tank or two (spray bomb can caps) in the area.

This is where closely following a prototype would be far easier.

Backdrop issues continue to plague me too. I am just not good enough at editing images in photo editing software to get the results I want with the images I have. A 10 foot long print is overkill, and largely wasted by the buildings against the backdrop hiding long stretches of detail. Trying to get a chain of smaller images I can place in the gaps between the tall buildings is proving frustrating beyond belief. I wanted to have the backdrop installed already so I could add the valence and overhead lighting and move on.  I have open mountain and river valley scenes calling my name each night. They may get trees made of cacti just to keep a certain cat from wandering. She's been randomly knocking chemical tanks to the floor each night this week just to let me know I am ignoring her too much while downstairs.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Shoot me a PM, I enjoy Photoshopping stuff...