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What is the J&C Studios O Gauge Archive?

J&C Studios O Gauge Archive

O Gauge / O Scale Forums and Individual Blogs for Model Railroading

What is the J&C Studios O Gauge Archive?

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jdcrawler

Factory ( start )

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Trackside Structures & Accessories

Factory ( start )

jdcrawler
Joined: Apr 4, 2011
Topics: 46 Replies: 65 Topics: 46

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posted Apr 17, 2011:

This time I decided to tackle a little bigger project and build a small factory.
The base is built out of a 24x24 inch piece of 3/4 plywood that has 1-1/2 inch square strips of wood glued to the underside.
The factory outline is located on the 3/4 inch base with two wooden dowels.
This allows me to remove it for working on it and keeps it in position on the base.

The walls for the factory are cut out of 1/8 inch Masonite.

I had gotten some windows off ebay and I started to layout where they will go on the building.
It didn't take me long to realize that I didn't have enough windows to make it look right.
So .. I ordered some more windows.

In the mean time I've gone ahead and cut out the openings in the building walls and I've installed the inside window frames that I have.

The rest of the windows came so now I can start to assemble the walls.
This is the front of the main part of the factory.

This is the start of the back extension of the factory.

Here is how the building looks all glued together.
There will be two large storage tanks that will go along side the main factory wall that only has the one window on the third floor.
The spur line from the railroad track will run along this side of the back extension on the building.

The loading dock for trucks will be on the rear of the main building.
The indented area in the center of the back wall is for the frame work for the freight elevator.

My wife showed me how to make "brick walls" using Microsoft Word.
I made up a pattern and printed out a bunch of sheets.
I'll cut these out and glue the sheets to the sides of the walls to give it the look of a brick building.
I can turn some of the sheets 180 degrees so it gives me two different patterns.

I started gluing the sheets of "brick" to the sides of the building.

On right side of the factory, you can see that the brick sheet was not wide enough to cover the whole side.
So I cut another brick sheet at an angle and then cut steps into it.

With this brick sheet glued onto the side, it is then hard to see where the joint is.

While the building has been drying at different times, I started on the two chemical tanks.
Each tank will be made out of two couplers and a cap for PVC drain pipe.
On the left are the pieces stacked together to form a tank.
On the right are the pieces that I used.

I assembled the pieces together to form the tanks and fastened them to a plywood base.
In my junk box, I found two pot metal bracket ( off something ? ) and fastened them to the side of the tanks for the catwalk supports.
I also found two pieces that look like some sort of cap and mounted them on the top of the tanks for hatch covers.

The catwalk, railing and access ladder came off ebay.

The tanks will be filled from railroad tank cars so I need a filling platform.
This is the start of building that platform.

IMG]http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh182/jdcrawler/O-scale/64-1.jpg/IMG]

And here is the completed platform.

The two support post for the back wall are longer than the support post for the platform.
These will go into two holes drilled in the tank base to locate and hold the platform in place.

The platform holds the electric transfer pump.
There are two valves for controlling the flow to the tanks.
I bought the pump, valves and pipe elbows from Plastruct.
The pipes are made out of wood dowels that I already had.

On the back side of the platform, the two fill pipes run up the side of each tank.
There is an outlet pipe at the bottom of each tank to connect the tanks to the factory building.

The black hose is the flex hose to attach to the tank car.
The connector on the end is turned down from a piece of brass and I soldered grab handles and locking tongs on each side.
There is a black shutoff valve handle soldered to the top of this connector.
The hose is a piece of small rubber automotive vacuum hose.
I put a wire inside to hold the shape of the hose.

Here are photos of the finished tanks.