Rethinking the refinery...

I finally painted my LPG/propane loading platforms grimy black, and when I positioned them to see how they'd look I got to thinking about the rest of the refinery scene.

Back in this post I included a photo that indicated that I'll be including some large storage tanks in the area behind the refinery's LPG/propane loading platforms. However, after looking at photos I'm not sure that having large bulk storage tanks is the right way to proceed.

This 1951 photo of the refinery shows a string of (unpressurised?) tank cars at a loading rack, possibly bringing in crude oil. The LPG loading platform had not yet been built.

Skip ahead several decades, and Google Earth provides us with this view of the refinery.  The original loading platform is on the right hand side, and the newer LPG loading platform is now visible on the left hand side:

Unfortunately I don't know when the second platform was built

This is a closer view of the newer platform and its surroundings:

Neither photo shows large storage tanks near the loading platforms.  I'm not sure whether those long cylindrical tanks were around in 1960, but those two huts (one of which seems to be a 40' x 100' quonset warehouse hut from WW2) might well have been. As the two tracks closest to my backdrop are for receiving inbound shipments, having a couple of warehouses nearby makes a lot of sense.  So I've been doing some experimenting with mock-ups of these buildings to see how they might fit into my scene.

So, after all that preamble, here is what I'm now considering:

 

What do you think? Storage tanks or sheds? Personally, I like the sheds even though I'll have to compress them a little.

Regards,
Ron

10 January 2014 - first GC&SF operating session for the year

The crew got together last Friday night for the first GC&SF operating session for 2014.  We had a big crew, with everyone except Barry (who's on holidays) coming along. It was a warm night, so we sat outside for "show-and-tell" before starting the session.

From left to right:  Brendan, John F, Rod, Vic, John C, Dennis, Ron (me), Charlie, Greg, Noel, Darren and Bill.  The Sn3 scale loco on the table belongs to Bill, who has a fabulous narrow gauge layout.

All in all, the session went very well, although not without a few annoying problems most of which stemmed from oversights on my part. The guys have learnt to operate the layout very well and with minimal intervention from the roving dispatcher (that would be me).

We started the schedule with the 'afternoon' half of my operating timetable (from 3:00pm to midnight), but as things went so well, when we got to the end we kicked over to the 'morning' section (6:00am to 2:59pm). Here are some photos of the action.

In this photo, the two Johns are obviously having too much fun. But at least Vic is earning his pay:

I bet John F had another T-shirt to change into before he got home.

Vic's south-bound train has reached Ardmore, and is meeting a northbound freight operated by Charlie.  Brendan operated the yard at Ardmore using WiThrottle on his iPhone.

Errm ... there's something wrong with this, guys - these two trains aren't supposed to cross at Ardmore.

Greg and Rod ran the afternoon Gainesville/Ardmore local freight. Here they are finalising their moves at Dougherty before returning to the south:

John C (operator at Pauls Valley) and Bill are confering about a train that Bill is about to operate:

Dennis ran the Pauls Valley - Davis local, and is switching the Kerr McGee refinery at Wynnewood in this photo.  In the background, Noel is waiting for the scheduled departure time for his train (a southbound livestock extra).

Bill is driving the southbound "Ranger" at Wynnewood.

In this photo, Bill and Rod have teamed up to run the SLSF mixed local from Hugo to Ardmore.

Greg, Brendan and Darren are in the background.

Later in the evening we had completed the 'afternoon' half of my operating timetable, and as things were going so well we advanced to the 'morning' session.  One of the nice things about CC&WB operation is that you can do this with almost no preparation.

Here Darren is switching cars at Big Canyon, for the morning Ardmore local freight.

For quite some time now I've been receiving nagging emails from Vistaprint inviting me to buy some of their promotional products.  I finally cracked a few weeks back, and bought some mugs with my Gulflines emblem printed on them.  They turned out a lot nicer than I was expecting.  In this photo our two lovely models are demonstrating the mug...

Thanks for coming over guys. I had a great night, and I hope you did as well.

Regards,
Ron

Tank-car loading platforms - almost done

Constructing the first tank-car loading platform was more challenging than I had expected, mainly due to my 63 year old eyesight.  After consulting with the guys, and on the recommendation of Darren, I bought a "headband magnifier" from Jaycar, before tackling the remaining two kits.  The magnifier worked a treat, and I'll get a lot of use from it in future.

The second kit went together with far less stress than the first, and came out a lot better.  By the time I'd finished the third I had developed some techniques which resulted in much better workmanship, and this third assembly is easily the best of the three.  After finishing the third kit I went back to the first and repaired the damaged access platform.

Here's how the three platforms look posed temporarilly on the 'concrete' at the refinery.

While positioning the platforms I found that on the first platform that I assembled (the one on the right) one of the access platforms had become glued into the horizontal position, and would not clear cars. While forcing it upwards, I broke the glue connection on one of the diagonal braces, which is why it looks crooked in the photo.

Here are some pictures of the refinery scene, with tank cars spotted along both sides of the platforms:

In answer to Rod's question against the previous post, I've decided to paint these platforms a grimy black, which seems to be appropriate for the era based on the few photos that I can find online.  I still need to add pipes and filling hoses and nozzles for LPG/propane.  TrainCat provides instructions for adding equipment for loading bulk oil, but I suspect that it is not appropriate for loading LPG.  If anyone knows where to get that equipment please let me know.

Thanks for looking.
Ron

Tank-car loading platforms - one down, two to go...

Back in this post I mentioned that I had some TrainCat tank-car loading platforms on order for the Kerr McGee Refinery at Wynnewood.  The kits arrived a few weeks back, but today was my first chance to tackle building them.

TrainCat describes these kits as being "a quick one evening kit", and that is probably true if you've had experience with similar kits before.  But this was the first brass kit of any sort that I've assembled, and I found the job to be a lot more fiddly than I had expected.  All up, it took me about 4 hours from Go to Whoa which I guess does meet the "one evening" description, and I'm sure that I will reduce that substantially when I do the next two kits.

The quality of the kits and instructions is very good, although I did have one piece break when I folded it over.  I glued the parts together and they seemed fine, until the glue joint failed when I accidentally put too much pressure on it during final assembly.

Here's the assembled kit sitting on my work map.  You can see that the access platform on the far side is missing one of the handrails.

I'll repair the damaged platform in a day or two, after the rest of the glue has set properly.

Time to get back to work. Thanks for looking.

Regards,
Ron

New (sort of) 'puter for the layout

The old laptop that I've been using to run JMRI/DecoderPro and Stan's Fast Clock has been giving me a bit of grief whenever I try to operate JMRI WiThrottle server. The network between the laptop and the wireless router kept dropping out for no reason that we could identify.

So yesterday I installed an old desk-top PC and monitor in place of the lappie. I installed DecoderPro and added my loco roster, so you can select the loco you want to use from the list provided on the smart-phone:

To be honest though, I think that it will probably be quicker to just enter the loco number than to scroll through the list of nearly 50 locomotives for the one you're after.

Greg and Brendan will no doubt be pleased that I have this sorted now, as they sometimes use their smart-phones as throttles.

Thanks for looking.

Regards,
Ron

Operating the GC&SF - October 2013

Here are some photos that I took at last Friday night's operating session on the GC&SF.  Unfortunately, I didn't get photos of everbody who attended, and I apologise to those that I missed.

First off, this is the starting line-up in the south staging yard.

From left to right, the trains are:

1. the Ardmore local, with empty gondolas for the quarries at Big Canyon and Dougherty,

2. a north-bound through freight (train 38),

3. The Texas Chief,

4. another north-bound through freight (train 40),

5. The Ranger, and

6. a stock-car extra.

The GP7s are Atlas, the E6s and PAs are Lifelike, and the FTs are Micro-Trains.  The track on the far right is the hidden continuous run connection between Ardmore and Pauls Valley. It doesn't get used during operating sessions.

Here's Noel running The Ranger northwards through Big Canyon:

Brendan is collecting cars at Davis for the morning run to Pauls Valley:

It's good to see the car-card sorting shelves being used as I intended.

Here's Charlie preparing to leave south staging with train 38:

Vic and Greg ran the yard at Ardmore. Here's Vic, but I didn't get a photo of Greg

Here's Charlie again, demonstrating what happens when you don't look ahead. He's just discovered that there's already a train sitting on the main at Gene Autry.  (No, that's NOT a mid-train BAAB loco set.)

He was a much happier fellow by the time his train passed Big Canyon quarry:

I believe that the crusher kit (Walther's Glacier Gravel) is based on the actual Dolese Bros. structure at Big Canyon. I have some TrainCat conveyors on order to add to this scene. 

This is Darren bringing the Ardmore local freight into Dougherty:

Left to right, Noel, John F, Brendan (background) and John C at Ardmore.  John F is operating the southbound through freight that is visible in the distance. John C is running Pauls Valley.

John F's through freight is passing through Big Canyon, while Darren's local freight crew waits on the siding for the main track to become available for switching.

That's it for this session. Thanks for looking.

Regards,

Ron

Rock face at Big Canyon

At the top of his Zebras and Warbonnets blog, Geoff Hoad has a great photo (taken by C. Dwane Stevens) of the AT&SF main track just south of the Big Canyon quarry, where the rail line squeezes in between the Washita River and the Arbuckle Mountains.

Early in September I started to do some work on the rock faces that I'm building to represent this area on my layout.  I did some more carving of the foam 'cliffs' and then masked off the track in preparation for adding some plaster the next day.  As fate would have it, that 'next day' took several weeks to arrive.

Here's how the scene looked when I finished work for the day, all those weeks ago:

This is a closer view of the rock face:

The technique I used was a blend of ideas that I had seen elsewhere. I started by filling the unwanted holes and gaps (especially those between the layers of foam) with plaster. A few days later I chipped away any plaster that was in the wrong places, and then repeated the process with grey grout.

While the grout was drying I painted on a wash of very dilute black paint, allowing it to soak into the plaster and grout. Unfortunately, I was too aggressive in applying this wash, and I washed much of the plaster and grout out of the gaps between the foam layers. Here's how it looked after this work:

As the wash dried I noticed that in many places the blue foam was still showing through, So I painted these areas with various shades of thinned grey latex paint. After it dried I applied another layer of black wash to blend it all together.

To finish off, I painted the top of the hill and the river bank, both of which will eventually be covered by grass, bush and trees, with my chosen earth tones.

Here's how the scene looked as the paint was drying.

This is the first time I've ever tried to model a rock face, and I think that from a distance it looks fairly good. Up close though (at normal viewing distance) it's a different story. The horizontal gaps between the layers of foam, the rounded blobs of plaster, and the small gaps where the foam still shows through, all have to go.

The cliff face will stay as it is for now, but after my October operating session I will tackle it again.  I've learned a lot from this exercise, and I know I can do much better, now that I know what pitfalls to watch out for.

Thanks for following along.

Ron