Power Plant Scene

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

The right hand, lower corner, of my layout plan has been the recipient of a number of ideas for structures,…first there was the Balt city backdrop, then this steel mill scene,…

then more recently the Allied Rail Rebuilders. Ahhh, the old musical chairs game.

Change is in the air, I’ve moved the Rail Rebuilders out in front of the double mainline stone arch bridge, and this has opened up that back corner for new ideas.

A power plant scene sounds like a good one,…to power up the city of Balt that lies across that back wall and over into the left hand corner.Now I would have a repository for my coal cars. Perhaps if a lot (or most) of the power plant itself were painted on the backdrop, I could include the electric substation in the open space out front, along with a heavy duty crane installing a big transformer it was unloading form a transformer carrying car?? I have all of these models.

2

Walther’s Northern Lights kit

This is that back corner where I am considering the power plant scene,…

That paper dwg leaning against the wall is a pic of the Allied Rail Rebuilders structure that I have now moved out to the front of the arch bridge span.

That frees up that corner and its two walls for a power plant scene.

Suppose I could have a good size coal image on some portion of the wall?

Suppose I were to cut Walther’s Northern Lights structure in half and mount them against the wall to make it look like a larger plant?

3

This is the way I would go as I did this with a Walthers Greatland Sugar kit. Since the long rear wall would not be seen in its planned location, I carefully grafted the two long walls together end-to-end. I then cut a matching rear wall from plain styrene sheet. I did the same to the two kit supplied roof panels to make the front half of the roof and again substituted plain styrene sheet for the rear half of the roof. The result is a rather imposing building that truly looks large enough to be rail served.

I also have to add a power plant to my layout. Unfortunately, the prototype looks nothing like any of the power plant kits available so I will have to scratch build it. On the other hand, it was only supposed to be under construction at the time period my layout is set in so I don’t have to build the complete structure.

4

Hello All,

Because of the limited access under my pike, I have had to place the booster on top of the pike.

I needed a way to disguise, or camouflage, the booster. I also needed access to the booster for maintenance.

My first attempt was to fabricate a modern power plant out of cardboard with a bank of cooling units; made from cardboard tubes.

It looked alright but a modern power plant just didn’t seem to fit the theme of my pike.

Then I looked at the Walther’s kit. This is a fantastic kit for both our needs.

According to the footprint of the kit it was too small to fit over the booster.

My thought was to take two (2) kits and kitbash them together to get the structure I needed.

Because I needed a rectangular structure here’s what I ended up using;

  • Out of the eight (8) wall panels I used six (6):
  • I spliced the two (2) wall panels with the large doors together
  • Out of the four (4) remaining wall panels, I used two (2) for the end walls of the structure

To splice the walls together I did not sand the ends flush. I used 90º strip styrene to fill the angled joints. This provided a strong splice.

Using pieces of the sprue I replicate downspouts along the seams.

Because I required that the finished building be removable I fabricated a foundation for the structure out of 1"x3/4" wood that I harvested from an old piece of furniture.

This foundation is clad in Chooch Cut Stone Wall facade. The smokestacks are attached to this foundation so when I need to remove the structure they are separate from the rest of the building.

In your situation I would suggest splicing the two (

5

A lot of structure kits can benefit, on an around-the-room layout, by using the long walls on the visible side, with the unseen ones replaced using plain styrene.

I built Greatland Sugar into a longer structure, and added one of the outbuildings to it, to create a not-too-bad representation of the Tuckett Tobacco Company, in my former hometown…

I used two American Hardware kits, in the same manner, to create the Westinghouse Air Brake facility in Mount Forest…

Walthers freight house was similarly expanded…

…as was Vulcan Manufacturing, now Bertram’s Machine Works…

Two George Roberts Printing factories were combined to become Wilkinson-Kompass, offering mill supplies and hard

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If you prefer an older era structure, this DPM, now Woodland Scenics, kit is very shallow. Of course, you would not have to build the back wall but could use the segments to widen it even further. This kit is built from their modular segments, so there is a bit of a learning curve needed to align all of the walls and pilasters.

Image result for dpm ho scale power plant images"

For a more modern era, the Walthers Metro Power Kit could really be expanded sideways quite a bit if you place the back wall next to instead of behind the main structure. But it might take some cutting of the walls to get it to align correctly.

Image result for walthers ho scale power plant images"

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Very nice work Wayne! Very imaginative use of those various kits. It is truly amazing how large some of these structures get when the rear walls are added to the fronts.

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What sort of ‘booster’? What does that have to do with the power plant??

Have you got some photos, and or links to same.? While your description is nicely done, a photo or 2 would really help see this doubled up Walthers kit

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A bit of an aside, but while reading throgh this thread I see potetial reach issues, both over that viaduct to reach where the building might be, and also under the bridge there where there look to be switches and therefore a need for uncoupling. It is hard to say, it may be less of in issue in person than it appears in the image.

Just something the OP might want to consider before he lays anything permanently in that section of the layout, such as the planed power plant!

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The reach issues you expressed there are real concerns. Its a long reach (too long) even for my very long arms. I had in the back of my mind that those items that would be placed in that corner would be attached to base plates of foam board that could be extractable from the corner in order to aded details, etc.

OR that corner needs to be completed prior to placing the stone arch bridge in place?

I’ve modified the track design in that corner such that their are no switches under that bridge. But you are not going to believe what I am considering placing there…Surprise

11

Time for a Curve Ball

Oops, …this morning I unpacked and was taking photos of the coke structures that were part of that steel mill scene I bought a few years ago. I figured I might as well sell this structure off as there is no way I would have room for it down near my steel mill. I had never really looked at one of these coke plants that closely, nor considered utilizing one on my layout.

BUT I got to thinking, that being another coal consumer, would this structure fit into that corner along with the coal fired power plant?..just maybe? It is a pretty interesting structure that could stand on its own rather than being directly attached to the steel mill.

So here is a little mock-up I did,…

I’m liking it,…even while I will be accused of ‘too much’ in a small space

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That hasn’t stopped you yet, Brian! [(-D] Build it your way.

Waiting to see a train run.

Mike.

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Wayne,

Your Westinghouse Of Canada looks fantastic! You gave me some great inspiration for a structure to add to my layout.

Thanks for sharing!

Neal

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Glad you noticed that!

I notice you do a lot of planing in the actual space! That is actually a really great option as now you can physically walk up to an area and touch (on in this case, have trouble touching!) the layout.

I have noticed whenever I’m around someone building a layout, changes are always made once you’ve laid out the layout in a real space!

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Hornblower and Neal, thank you both for your kind words, and I hope that you’ll both forgive my belated response.

Wayne

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Wayne, those are excellent buildings and pictures! I am just starting out and still thinking about how to build my set. I want to build a model of the powerhouse where I work. I had considered using some of the Walthers powerhouses and putting them together into one powerhouse, but your knitting mill looks very much like the powerhouse I’m wanting to build. Since I’m just starting, it will probably be a while before I can do complicated structures like that. But I see that in my future. Thanks for sharing your work.

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While I’m here, I thought I’d add a couple of pictures of some of the rail yards around the plant. A 9-Unit coal-fired plant takes lots and lots of coal.

This is the unloading facility. The cars dump the coal into an underground hopper. Belts under the hopper move the coal up to the coal towers where the coal goes into the pile on the right, or using another belt moves to the pile on the left.

A different view of the unloader building.

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Thanks for your kind words, Greg.

I had originally bought two of Walthers’ older style (brick) powerhouse kits, with the intention of using them in my upper staging yard, as I wanted to run dedicated coal trains on the challenging grades of my layout.
The plan was to use all four long walls, and perhaps two of the end walls on the visible side, with the other two adding some implied depth to the structure at the backdrop.

However, it would have eliminated two tracks, so I decided to leave it unmodelled.

I gave the two kits to a friend, who built them in the same manner as I had intended, and he also used them as a backdrop structure, but designated it as a foundry. While it’s supposedly rail-served, there was no room for a visible siding, and its in- and out-bound cars simply go to a semi-hidden staging yard.

To splice structures together, the main aim is to make the pieces look like they belong, so for curtainwall structures like my knitting mill or the Westinghouse factory, all that’s needed is to remove one of the vertical “concrete” sections on one end of one wall, then use fairly heavy sheet styrene on the interior as a splice-plate.

I use .060" sheet styrene, bought in 4’x8’ sheets, which is much cheaper than the same stuff intended for hobby use. The seller simply rolls it to a manageable size and tapes it, so you don’t need a pick-up truck to get it home. Besides being useful for the splicing, it also works great for making those blank unseen walls, and for new, lengthened, roofs, and also for bracing to keep your larger structures’ shape.

Here’s Languay’s Pump & Compressor factory lifted from its spot in Dunnville…

[IMG]https://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/doctorwayne/structures%20and%20a%20few%20b%20and%20w%20photos/Structurebrac

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I always liked the looks of that DPM kit.

Does the backside of it have those same tall windows? If so, perhaps it could be split in half and made to look larger?

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One of the advantages to some DPM kits is their modular construction. Walls, windows, loading docks, etc. can all be rearranged to suit the builder. They used to sell wall sections separately.

I made my DPM power plant into a brewery.

IMG_6657 by Edmund, on Flickr

IMG_4637 by Edmund, on Flickr

IMG_4634 by Edmund, on Flickr

Woodland Scenics took over DPM and I really don’t know if the separate modular parts are commonly available. I had amassed a huge amount over the years and built several structures using them.

Cheers, Ed