As promised, I have been “milling” a sugar mill for the fictional M&K Sugar Co. As fate would have it, by shear dumb luck I discovered “Fowler Locomotives in the Kingdom of Hawaii,” Jesse C. Conde, 1993 that had many pictures of these locomotives, Fowler Co. provided track plans for their Hawaiian customers, and even a photo of a railroad I never knew existed to the West of me!
These structrues were massive. The advantage from a modeling perspective is that they were simple, with the photos on hand basically showing huge, corrugated metal covered buildings and a towering stack. “Next Stop Honolulu” has short chapters dedicate to our local mills, and I have to re-read those as well as make a site visit to the surviving structures in Waipahu. Clearly, a mill would not only be a logical way to anchor the Triple O in time and place, but it would serve as a reason to have any of a number of other facilities - fuel for the mill, service facilities for the locomotives, loading docks for outbound bags of sugar, etc. In short, the mill would become a focus for that part of the railroad and be the reason other buildings come into being. Write me in 20 years to see how I am doing! [:D]
Ambitions aside, real space compression will be an issue. Below are an overhead and “primary viewing angle” of the only possible site for this structure:
Eric, looks like a fun project!! Don’t get hung up on scale, you only need to SUGGEST a sugar mill. These structures were massive, visible for miles as you approach. I remember the towering stacks. Every modeler faces how to represent something like this. A steel mill or oil refinery, if built to exact scale, would be huge, even in HO. A few key elements to suggest, and build it undersized!!
Years ago, I wanted to go exact scale 1:20.3. I took HO drawings, and multiplied by 4, which worked out to 1:21.75. Even a branch line station becomes Ginormous!!
Yes, build it undersized, but capture the key elements. I have this issue representing the Swiss Alps, as well !!
Paul & Bill, I did some more “thought modeling” today. A good piece of HardieBacker will serve as the foundation, and, yes, I am going to use pink foam covered in something that looks like corrugated metal. I think the raw material is a wash between beverage cans cut and crimped and pre-fabricated stuff bagged and shipped. The latter will be easier, of course, and dietarily less deleterious! I am going to try and make a carboard mock-up in the coming week or two. Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Eric
After knocking out a bunch of other small projects, I finally turned to on this one. My thought is that to say “Hawaiian mill” it needs to be big, roughly barn shaped, and have an enourmous stack. These things dominated the landscape, but, as Paul mentioned, I, fortunately, only need to suggest that!
Having learned to start with cardboard mock-ups, Youngest Daugher and I started cutting carboard to size yesterday and got as far as a frame for the mill adn the unloading shed:
Today, I cut and taped my way to a reasonable mock-up. As ever, my 1:24 construction crew was on hand to provide a sense of scale:
the cardboard mock ups are a great idea to help visualize, and adjust proportions,and with that ,anyone familiar with the sugar mills will recognize what this represents. It DOES dominate to a certain degree, which is the correct feeling. I think you’re on the right track !
Thanks, guys! I receieved a few other suggestions to help give it that sense of size I need, to included breaking up the roofline a bit and exploring what I could put on the mountain behind the mill. Of course, the mock-up fell apart overnight, so it is back to square one to a degree!
Update. HardieBacker had not yet returned to our store shelves, but the last bits for my cane cars are on hand. I am making a push to finish the cane cars, and then I will turn-to on this project. FYI, I plan to use HardieBacker as the base. I MAY screw 2x4s into it to serve as internal frame for the pink foam core / walls.
That is a brand name for cement backer board. GR ran an article a couple years ago about making buildings from the stuff. I found it too hard to work with for that purpose, at least with the tools I had on hand, but it makes marvelous bases for structures, since you can score and snap it to size! I may use it as the sub-roof, too, to add heft to the end structure.
In the meantime, here are the can cars awaiting their hold-down chains behind the LGB m207 / Stainz hybrid we rebuilt as our plantation loco:
I’ll consolidate their construction process later. I thought about making one of those “one page projects,” but I’ve had somuch help getting them this far, their build long belongs in the public domain.
Making a supply run this week. I am still debating whether I will use the pink foam core or corrugated plastic sideboard. The former is free. If I were making a stucco building, it would be a no brainer. The latter may be easier to work with as I glue “corrugated metal” to the sides and detail the structure. Either way, I have resolved to use 2x4s anchored to the concrete sheet to serve as a frame. More to follow!
It dawned on me that the loader shed is my limiting parameter. If the M&K’s locos cannot pull the full cane cars through, then this isn’t going to work!
A bit too close for comfort, so I widened the portals 1/4" all around.
The next most limiting factor was the swing of the box cars that will take the bags of sugar to the docks for shipment:
The loading dock will necessarily be a bit short!
More recently, I moved the whole assembly out the railroad to really make sure this will work:
Thanks! I am still trying to decide how I am going to affix my siding to the foam. If I paint the foam first to seal it, that’ll impact the hold of the glue to the core when I affix the siding. Got to have a think on that one…
I was living in an apartment, and playing with N scale trains. Anyhoo… I built a warehouse kit from Campbell models,it consisted of a cardboard sub structure,with a roll of corrugated tin that could be cut and glued to the sub structure. I think I used epoxy, or gel super glue, but this was for indoor use.
I would recommend taking a couple of scrap pieces, and experiment with adhesives. My first try would probably be epoxy.
I did something somewhat similar with the train room indoors last year: I made scenery with styrofoam sheets covered with a skin of crumpled tin foil, which was primed and painted. I used Dap lightweight spackle to attach the tin foil to the styrofoam. It holds surprisingly well!
what I discovered: the sparkle sets quickly along the edges of the foil. The areas underneath the foil, not being exposed to air, took a month or more to cure. But, it did eventually set up completely…
Thanks for your thoughts. Some car repairs ate into my budget, so I’ll be converting cans to siding rather than buying commercial stuff. This’ll give me time to experiment. If it wasn’t for COVID, I’d fire up the grill, make some calls, and I bet I’d have more than enough cans! [:D] Stupid virus…
One hundred 12 oz. cans lost their tops and bottoms and got slit down the middle. Tedious, but necessary. The plan is to cover this in stages, annealing one batch of siding at a go. Blech…
Set a piece of scrap foam upright and tried using TiteBond III to glue on a piece of scrap aluminum. We’ll see how it holds up tonight, then look into scaling this up.