Big Steel! Update Feb 15/09

[Spitfire]

Thanks Josh.

Now for a progress report.

While waiting for the coke oven kit, I decided to try making a benzol plant, part of the coke gas recovery operations. I found some great documentation on the HABS/HAER site. Here's the plant I am using for reference.



At first the building looked like it could be easily assembled out of Walthers modulars, but there are a few things that made this harder than I expected. First, on the second floor the windows are shorter, and I tried to cut up some of the modular walls, but ended up with really ugly seams.



Also, the top of the door should line up with the top of the window, so I went off to the LHS to pick up some Walthers brick sheets. There are cheaper brick sheets, but the Walthers one are an exact match for the brick on the modulars.

Here's the second attempt. Much better.



I made the shorter windows by adding a piece of .020 x .080 styrene strip across the mullions.



The next thing about this building is that the end walls do not have a brick pier running down the middle. The Walthers cornice pieces do, so I had to cut it out.





This was attached to an new end wall made from the brick sheet. I had to cut out the window openings, which was not exactly fun. Somewhere I have a tool that is supposed to punch out square holes, but of course I couldn't find it!

The modulars attach to the corner pieces by means of tabs and slots. Here I've made tabs out of .040 styrene strips.



Well, after a few days of working on this, here's where I'm at. I have one more wall to make, and then I can start working on the platform and distillers and whatnot.





Meanwhile, I now have the coke oven kit in my hot little hands as well as a 3 pack of bottle cars and one of slag cars!

cheers
Val