Some Detailing ...

So, with the trough made and the hole cut into the foam I had to deal with the track.  Below you can see that I cut out most of the ties between the rails of the track that would service the trough.  This is a 5-inch straight from Atlas.  I tried doing the same thing with a piece of Peco track and the whole thing fell apart.  You can see that the Atlas ties stay in position even after the center portion of the ties are removed.  Peco couldn't do that.  The straight fits as close to perfect as I can get it, sitting on top of the trough which will be inserted into the cut out in the foam.  Later I painted the foam in the trough with a heavy coat of raw umber and then used some of the dust created by sanding down the Mold-a-Scene to coat the bottom of the painted trough, as if with grain to be milled.  Frankly, I don't think anyone (other than me) is going to see that, but I like that bit of detailing.

With that settled, it was time to work on the mill.

Again, this is the Walthers Sunrise Feed Mill kit in N Scale.  I'm not a great model builder, and I've been having some problems with these kits lately.  What I discovered -- besides my bad eyesight and the fact that I have 10 thumbs -- I don't really like those instant glues; the cyanoacrylate (CA) glues.  They just run like crazy on me and they smudge windows.  So I've really limited my use of such glues.  Instead I've been using Testor's model cement.  This requires that you hold the pieces together for half a minute.  But the glue stays where you place it.  And even after it has set for a while you still have a little wiggle room to square up the model if needed.  Of course the Testor's only works on plastic, so I keep a bottle of CA around for other projects.

While the model was now easy enough to put together, I was disappointed in it.  I don't think a lot of care went into its production, at least for N Scale.  The picture on the box shows supports for the dock roof, but the model does not include any.  Nor are the pictured drain spouts, ladders, and other small building details included.  The chimney is pictured as brick, but the actual piece of plastic is not molded in a brick design; in fact the sides are kind of concave rather than square.

Now, of course, I can add the details with scratch pieces, and I probably will (most of them, at any rate).  And I'll paint the chimney so it's concrete and not brick because it just will be easier, and it fits the type of structure, too.  But the warehouse doors are not made to open, which is really restrictive when putting together a scene.  Someone much better than me could, no doubt, cut those doors away from the model and put other ones in that slide.  I don't have that level of skill.  Another problem was that the model actual broke as I was holding a couple of pieces together as the glue dried.  You can see a crack where I had to glue the wall pieces back together just under the unsliding warehouse door in the concrete base.  I really wasn't squeezing that hard.

For the first time I used an airbrush.  Couple of problems occurred but all-in-all it turned out fairly well.  I've got some mistakes to take care of, some little places I missed, and then some weathering to do.  The model should be ready by the time I'm ready to set it in place.

Before that, though, come the hill building and then the cattle pen projects.

More on that soon ...

Just Had to Make It Harder ....

When using the Sunrise Feed Mill base (2 pieces) to position the industry track I made one discovery and had one crazy idea.

The discovery was that the foam pieces on Module 2 were not as level as I had originally thought.  There was a slight dip from the main section to the extension.  Of course, I had to fix that.  So I took out my Mold-a-Scene and mixed up a small batch and troweled it onto the uneven surface.  It was really crumbly, even after I added a tablespoon or so of extra water.  After working with it for a while I got it into the shape that I needed.

You can see some of the Mold-a-Scene under the base of the model after I sanded it down.

One thing I learned about Mold-a-Scene (that even my guys at the hobby shop couldn't be sure of) is that it will adhere to foam.  But it takes a long time to dry.  Five days.  Of course I'm building this in my garage and it's winter and it's the Northwest so it is cold and damp.  But 5 days?  Well, at least it dried and it sanded well.

Then the crazy idea hit.  Feed mills like this take delivery from bulk carriers, like a car-load of corn or something like that.  Then the corn is taken by the feed mill and ground and bagged.  So how do they get that corn or whatever?  Hoppers pull up and dump their load into a trough, which leads to the mill underground.

You can see the trough being cut out of the foam.  I used a small, flat-bladed wood cutting knife I had, taped up at a place above the point of the knife so that each incision I made would be the same depth.

I'm sure there's a company out there that makes a trough that I could use but I didn't want to go looking for it.  I wanted it right now.  So I built one on my own using plastic dock parts from Walther's foundation and loading dock parts kit.  The difficult part was cutting the narrow sides to the right length.  It seemed that in the prototype the rails would need to sit on the long edges of the trough in order to support the rails.  And as we know prototypical rails are 4-feet-eight-inches apart.  That's fairly narrow in N Scale.

You can see the the finished unpainted model in the photo above and below.

There's more to do on the trough ....