One of the ingredients of iron is limestone, and this is the Crusher for a limestone quarry. Of course, the railroads use limestone for track ballast too, so this industry will get a lot of traffic. This model is built from two Walthers' Glacier Gravel kits. I just love this kit, and have built both 'N' and 'HO' versions of it. This kit would also be at home as a coal tipple or part of a cement plant. This is the first time I've kit bashed this model, much less used two. A bit of history about this kit; Walthers based it on a scratch-built model the late Gordon Odegard made for Andy Sperandeo's Washita and Santa Fe project railroad in Model Railroader magazine.
In this shot, you are seeing close to the basic building if built as per the instructions. If you are already familiar with this kit, you will notice just a few differences here on the front side.
As we swing around the front to the left, we start to see some modifications. The unaltered kit only has one loader and room for two tracks. I've bumped out the left side to allow a second loader and a third track.
In this shot you can see there is actually room to handle four tracks of hoppers; two under the loaders, the space between them, and under the chutes on the outside of the building. This perspective shows how much has been added to the rear.
Here you can see where the four tracks will go. I added some roof cupolas and the exhaust fans on the flat section. It is mostly sheet styrene, but the grid work is made from the fire escapes from the Burlington Mills kit.
This is a small transfer house that feeds the Crusher. Another conveyor needs to be built that will feed the cupola on the roof of the transfer house.
Now we move to another fan favorite, which you see on every coal-hauling layout featured in magazines and posted on the web. It is Walthers' New River Mining Company, and it is a very nice kit that is easy to assemble, and has a lot of interesting roof lines. But like I said, everybody has this model on their layout, and I wanted something a little more distinctive.
I think this qualifies as "a little more distinctive." It is made from three kits, as well as Plastruct stairways and railings. I don't know if you can appreciate the sheer size of this model from these photos, but it is huge. There is actually a fairly large building that wouldn't fit in the cart that covers the side on the right.
The other side. Damn, that's a lot of windows. I hate to glaze windows. Many (most) times I don't. But I felt a kitbash this impressive (well I think it's impressive) deserved to have it's glass installed. Besides, too much of the window detail was molded into the clear glazing to leave them off. Unfortunately, the complexity of the alterations I made required the windows to be installed before completion (painting) of the model. You can see the blue tinted windows where I applied Micro Mask to them. It is a rubbery masker that peels off easily after painting. Did I say 'peels off easily'? More like 'falls off easily'. I had forgotten that clear styrene has different characteristics than your standard styrene. Manufacturers use demolding agents on it which leave an oily residue on the surface. I should have washed the windows with a mild detergent first, but I didn't. That is why the Micro Mask fell off. Well, most of it. Looks like I'll need to tape mask the rest.
This tipple is so large, I may have trouble finding a location for it. If need be, it separates into two sections. I hope not.
I need to finish both of these projects. If not, I at least need to take some more pictures. Hope you enjoyed this. Don
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