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| The cement plant unloading area will be built on the beach side of the refueling tracks. |
Some good old-fashioned scratch building has been undertaken alongside Philden Beach, with the area between the diesel refueling tracks and the No. 1 track or beach siding identified as the logical point for the unloading point for the soon to be commissioned cement plant.
In not wanting to foul the yard tracks at the section where the 3-way turnout rests, some imaginary piping was needed to run underground beneath the laneway between the plant and goods shed, and magically pop-up alongside the yard lights between the No. 1 and 2 tracks. The cement plant had already been detailed with some safety orange piping leading from beneath the silos to the inside of the lower room, so I’m just letting the viewer assume that the connecting piping leads underground from somewhere beneath the plant to the unloading track a short distance away on the other side of the goods shed.
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| The silver unloading pipes are leftover air-conditioning pipes from the Walthers Modern Cold Storage Warehouse kit that I used to kit-bash the Brandon Industries warehouse. |
All I really needed to do was to model something that looks kinda’ believable and could stand alongside the tracks to provide a place for two cement hoppers to be parked out of the way and clear of the other yard tracks. For this I used a leftover section of roof piping from the Walthers Modern Cold Storage Warehouse. I then fashioned a raised metal walkway using the roofwalk of a broken HO American boxcar that I picked up from a buy-and-sell meet. It leads around the existing yard lamp post to provide workers a safe passage between each of the umm… thingymybobs that are supposed to resemble the hoses that connect to the underside of the incoming cement hoppers. Call it a bit of poetic license, modeler’s license or what you like, but ss you can gather, an authentic structure this is not.
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| The original One Nation National Rail network signage was then removed. Some new Coffs Harbour cement receiving signage will shortly replace it. |
Track No. 1 is turning into a busy siding. Beyond the goods shed, there is room for 2 x cement hoppers to be parked alongside the cement unloading pipes, while across the driveway there is room for 2 x louvred vans to pull-up at the rear loading dock of the Brandon Industries warehouse. Swap those wagons out, and you have room to park 4 x 40′-foot container wagons, or a 5-wagon long steel train.
All that is needed next was to weather the cement plant and unloading pipes.
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| Spot rusting the exposed steel parts with some Vallejo Environmental Rust Texture. |
I’ve went to town when it came to weathering this structure, and I won’t go into detail about how I did it here as I, umm… wrote a book on weathering railway models and followed my own instructions as detailed inside its pages. While I’ve kept this site free to readers and free from third party advertising, the occasional plug on where to buy my books is necessary as it remains my main source of income. So please, take a look at Model Railway Weathered Wonders on the link here, or ask for it through your leading hobby stores.
There’s enough room to fit the piping alongside the diesel refueling tracks and secure it to the ground with some super glue using the pre-existing support brackets, without needing to rip-up any existing scenery. That is a huge bonus! The pipes will end concealed beneath the banana trees and disappear beneath the ground at the other end thanks to some curved elbows, which again were leftover kit pieces salvaged from my model box of wonders.
The walkway will be super glued directly to the ground and the orange pipes will be rolled into neat stacks clear of the tracks and be fixed in place also. A new cement plant sign will replace the former National Rail yard sign and the witches’ hats salvaged from the former bus depot will be repurposed trackside to act as marker points when uncoupling the cement wagons.
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| The finished cement plant. This is the side that will face towards the goods shed laneway. |
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| While this is the side that will stand beneath the towering Jetty Hotel. The boarded-up viewing office will overhang a narrow driveway down the side of the plant. |
At some point in the coming week, I will give myself a modelling day to drill the holes to accommodate the wiring for the lights and attach both elements of the structure to the layout. But the cement plant has already been test-fit and looks as though it has always been there which makes it a fantastic addition to Philden Beach, and a nice nod to my original Philden layout. When it comes to saving a kit building from an old layout, I’m glad that both this building and the adjacent goods shed have become a pair of sentimental survivors.
Next up, I will unveil the latest loco addition to Philden Beach’s roster, followed by the Cement Plant’s official re-opening.
See also; Resurrecting the Cement Plant and Re-detailing the Cement Plant