Thursday, October 9, 2014

Whipping up a Truck Dump


Coal was and still is a major commodity on the PRR Pittsburgh division. Unfortunately I don't have the room for a full-sized coal mine on the layout. But then I saw a truck dump like the one pictured above on Lee Weldon's late great Western Maryland layout (Link). Coal is trucked from a mine, which can live somewhere off the layout, and brought to the truck dump where it;s transloaded into rail cars.

Intrigued, I shot Lee an e-mail and her very kindly provided me with the dimensions for his model, which as it turns out is a Campbell Models kit. Rather than buy a kit, I chose to scratch build a model from materials I had on hand. I used Evergreen V-Groove styrene sheets for the walls and various Plastruct styrene strips for the rest. The only part that wasn't scratch built was the coal chute, which was left over from a Walther's kit.

For paint, I went with Floquil "roof brown." I will need to apply a second coat tomorrow and add some weathering. For my first serius effort at scratch building, I don't think this is turning out half bad. We shall see when it's done.

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