Hi Jim, thank you. The Luetke sales office 73211 has laser parts made from styrene: https://www.luetke-modellbahn.de/Spur-Z/Gewerbe-und-Industrie-204/Verkaufsbaracke.html The Lutke barn 73312 has wooden laser parts: https://www.luetke-modellbahn.de/Spur-Z/Land-und-Dorf-203/Feldscheune.html
Steffen, I particularly like the barn. Your layout is looking great, looking forward to seeing more. I've been following your build thread since the beginning. Joe
Hi Kurt and guys, here comes a little nice gimmick for one evening. I was wondering if I could have grain doors without blocking movement of the small pin on inner downside of the MTL car door and thus the movement of the whole door. And I did not want to have a big gap between boards and car wall to allow this movement. Furthermore I think doors of a loaded car in transit have to be closed and sealed. Otherwise it would be a stationary car at the elevator side. So what to do? The solution is to connect both doors and boards and to move these parts together. I made weathered boards from scrap wood and cut a corner where should be room for the small door pin. Then I glued a small strip of styrene on the inside of the door. The strip has to bridge the thickness of the car wall, so the boards can slide just behind the wall. I painted visible sides of the strips with brown. Then I glued the boards on the strips leaving no gaps at car bottom. Voila, now I have a car showing grain doors while being loaded by my elevator agent, but having closed doors while it is in transit as part of a freight train. And with its closed doors it can be switched to other destinations than the elevator. However, the price is a slightly reduced opening of the car door. But for me this is ok.
Great job Steffen!!! The boxcar looks fantastic with the boards in the opening. I need to do that for my grain mill fleet. Joe
Another detail to do is cut up a stack of spare doors and carefully sand or slice them thinner, and stack them on the side of the elevator to represent more doors available for more cars, and also get some tan ground foam and sprinkle a bit on the roadbed to represent some spilled grain. TRUE STORIES FROM C&NW Grain Doors Conductor Ed Feeley had a lucrative used lumber business going on the side from stolen grain doors. Before jumbo covered hoppers, grain was loaded at all the elevators in forty-foot boxcars. To load, the door opposite the loading spout was closed and sealed for leaks. The other door had heavy wood panels, braced plywood, or pre-made wood grain doors fastened from the inside. Grain doors typically covered about 3/4 of the opening, and the bulk product filled the car below that line. Exterior doors where then closed to protect the load, and unloading was a labor intensive task usually involving a hand shovel and brooms. Doors were inched open, and the grain simply spilled out. In later years, grain doors were made of disposable heavy cardboard and paper, but many wood doors were reusable and stored in stacks at elevators, or in railroad freight buildings, making them a target for thieves like Ed. Ed would use his own pickup truck to load the stolen doors from empty cars, or sometimes he would take doors from stacks piled at local elevators under darkness. Ed never got caught, and nowadays would be looking at prison time for his "hobby."
Because of a break in gardening I could start work on the water tower. I do not like the enclosed substructure of the tank, so I tried to construct a typical open frame. There is no special prototype but I took orientation from a C&NW tower at Lusk (photo by Wikipedia). For making the beam structure I made a template. So I could glue small wooden strips (1.2 x 1.2 mm and 1 x 1 mm) in quick and safe way. The frost box is made from 7 x 7 mm wood strip. All parts are glued on a base plate, which will be unvisible after positioning on the layout. That's the look I want: So far for the moment. I hope you all are ok in these special and crazy times.
Steffen, Your tank looks great! Lusk, WY is a bit out in the middle of nowhere. There's not much to see around that area, except for Powder River coal train movements! You didn't ask, but here's the Lusk depot: And the tank: I wish I took more angles of it...
The tower base you made is very good! I think its a pretty good representation. Is the tower at Lusk still standing?
You did a great job with the water tank kit Steffen. I was the guy who produced that water tower kit for Micro-Trains. I did not want to have the structure base, but MTL insisted, and it was their money. I did make 2 other styles of water tower base, the straight open frame, and the slanted open frame, both with standpipe rooms: This is the first design I made, and put on my Issaquah module about 15 years ago: And this is the one I made for my Lester module, but will be modifying it to a straight leg design: Anyways, these are the designs that your water tank were based on.
Hi all, thank you very much. @Robert: These are wonderful models, too bad that you couldn't make it in this way.
Yesterday I could finish a 2nd major structure, the water tower. I still have to add ladder and roof hatch after installing on the layout. I used wire instead the wooden laser part for spout chains. This beautiful little thing was a really big challenge for me but was worth the effort. Now I am preparing the tower location on my layout for final installation: