Looking for HO scale refinery?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hey Everyone

I am looking for an HO scale refinery.

I found a couple:
Walthers North Island Refinery (sold out)
Vollmer
Plastrust.

But none of them look like a real refinery.

Any suggestions?

2

From what I have seen, the problem is that the refinery kits are way too small relative to what a real refinery would be. Perhaps they could be a model of a process within a refinery. As far as suggestions go, I guess you could get several kits and make one installation from them, or scratch build additional refinery equipment. Another idea comes to mind as I type this; use a couple of the kits in the fore ground and have a background picture for the rest of the refinery. These are my thoughts, anyway.

3

Actually the Walthers refinery isn’t that bad, I have seen refineries in odd places that weren’t much bigger than that. Go on I-40 between Grants and Gallup NM. the Giant refinery, isn’t !! . It’s very small, It’s owned by one of the indian tribes I believe, and the gas is sold mostly at their own stations. On my layout I actually used the n scale refinery in an Ho layout just ti get the representation of a local type refinery. Some work to be done yet but it looks ok.

4

Another relatively small refinery (that doesn’t exist anymore - but I got pictures before they bulldozed it! [:D]) was the Husky refinery in Cody, Wyoming. In fact, there were many small refineries all over the oil producing lands of the west,m in the 1930s-1950s.

The biggest problem with the plastic refinery models is with the handrails, walkways and such. They’re so out of scale (the handrails are roughly a scale foot in diameter!) that they make the entire thing look toylike.

I received one of the Walthers refineries as a gift, and I plan on doing a lot of modifications to eliminate the grossly out-of-scale features.

5

Hence my logic of using the N scale refinery in HO, it really looks better overall in my setting.

6

any specific kits though??

7

Mine was a Walther n scale refinery. I don’t know if they still have it. pictures at my photobucket site.

8

kibry (volmer kit) and plastruct make refinery kits in HO…heres a pick of one plastruct and two volmer refineries that i kit bashed on my layout

9

I know that you didn’t ask this, but …

I’ve been checking into this, because I grew up in a town with a refinery and I’ve been thinking of building a module of one. It seems to me that a refinery would be extremely easy to scratchbuild. Its all tanks and pipes. Even the refiners themselves are basically really tall tanks, with various other shapes. I got Plastruct’s big catalog and everything is in there, in all sizes, including all sorts of valving. It could be a small refinery that just produces heating oil. Or a huge place that further refines the oil into various gasolines. Plus various chemical by products.

That’s what I’m going to do, anyway. It will be my first scratchbuilding, but it will be all plastic, pretty easy I think.

Hope you find your kit, though.

Greg

10

That plastruct refinery is nice, but mucho expensive, most of plastructs products are a little on the pricey side. I like your refinery CW, looks nice.

11

I hate to break the news to you, but this was the hardest modeling project i ever took on!..I had to build each individual bend in each of the pipes and some of it was harder than all get out to glue together…a lot of the piping had to be redone because it’s so hard to get a piece bent straight enough to follow the contours of each column…I even had to hold some parts together with a pair of tweezers until the glue dried so it wouldn’t slip out of position…I started this refinery in early August and got thru with it in the middle of January and i worked on it nearly every day…it’s a really hard thing to build…chuck

12

Dang, Chuck … you really burst my bubble there. [:)]

I have not done this before, so I may be way off base here. I can’t seem to find my Plastruct catalog right now, so maybe I’m wrong, but …

I thought the parts went together easily. I would pick a size of pipe (actually hard plastic tubing), such as 1/8", and I would have plenty of ready-made lengths of pipe, tee’s, elbows, etc ready to go. The peices fit together like PVC pipe, or some other male/female fit system. Things like this …

http://plastruct.com/Pages/Action.lasso?-database=PI.PRODUCTS.fp5&-Layout=Complete&-Response=OnlineProductDetail.html&-op=eq&CCode=EF-4&-Search

I thought it was going to be so easy, that I was going to connect the industrial buildings I already have on my layout with piping like this, to make it more like an old industrial complex with steam pipes going all around.

I guess I’ll have to buy just a few pieces at first , and see just what I am getting myself into.

Greg

13

My interest is in a chemical plant which features many of the same things as a refinery. I checked out all the books on chemical plants and refineries from two public libraries and a college library. I copied all the pictures, trimmed them up and fixed them to the background. I scratch built a refracting tower with a tomato stake, the ends of a roll of butcher paper, sprues and a few other things. I also made some tanks out of an unpainted Christmas tree ball, the larger end of two plastic Easter eggs, spray can tops and a few other odds and ends. I’m not very good at this sort of thing, but it came out pretty well. Give it a try. "The Route of the Appy Sou " Walter C.

14

A trip through the plumbing section of the nearest Home Depot or similar store will probably yield a goldmine of refinery type details for you. I had pretty good luck making bulk storage tanks out of end caps for 6-inch PVC drain pipe. Similar tanks can be made from unions of the same diameter (though you have to add a cardstock or sheet styrene top to them. With sanding and painting, they look great, and cost a buck or two each, as opposed to $20 or so for a kit. Toilet bowel floats (spherical) can be used for round tanks or what the chemical plant people might call “spherical accumulators”. Welding rod or brass tubing can be used for piping.

Good luck! We need more oil!

15

Cabbose hobbies has the HO NORTH ISLAND REFINERY, I have this structure and all I can say is take you time. Its not an easy build but you can add alot to it as you go. I do like it but plastic its plastic.

http://www.caboosehobbies.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?scales_name=&roadnames_name=&alpharoad=&categories_id=146&inc_subcat=1&manufacturers_id=1115&sku=09333013&keyword2=&maxrow=50&Reset=Reset!&x=0&y=0

The SKU is 09333013

$33.74

16

When Walthers first brought out the North Island refinery, I bought three of them. I was modeling the old Champlin refinery in Enid Oklahoma, which was sold a few times, eventually torn down in late 1980’s. Some old timers may remember the brand. Champlin was home owned when I grew up there in the 40’s and 50’s, and was small in size, and rather dirty.

Anyway I added some storage tanks, kitbashed two and one half of the three refinery kits, added some pieces from other sources and am pretty happy with the results. But you need a working understanding of the parts of a refinery to do one correctly, at least in my opinion. Depends on how authenic you want to be.

17

Great looking refinery, is this not the cleanest refinery in all the world?

18

cwclark,

Excellent job on the refinery!!

Dave

19

There is (or leastwise there was six years ago) a refinery very close in size to the Walthers model located on Hwy. 6, somewhere between Tonopah and Currant. It serves a small oil field there. Of course, it is way too small to give the impression of any of the several refineries located within a few miles of my home. I’d just model the car-loading area and have the rest of the refinery as a two-dimensional image on a backdrop, or imagine it being off the layout, for the typical refinery.

Mark

20

Some people will soon find, or have recently already found, a new or reactivated oil well operating in their neighborhood.

Mark