Building the Red Star Yeast plant
Both the tall and the short cooling towers demanded planning, patience, and a willingness to do repetitive tasks, namely cutting more than 300 fan blades individually. After using a NorthWest Short Line Chopper to cut the blades, and tweezers, I inlaid each cooling blade. The (scale 45″×5″) wood slats for the tall tower and Campbell Scale Models corrugated aluminum stock for the shorter tower were glued to the interior brackets of their respec- tive towers. Fronting the towers is an Alloy
Forms chain link fence. To simulate barbed wire, fine metal dust was ap- plied to a copper wire after applying a light spray of adhesive.
South side Spanish architectural influence is evident on the south wall. Using trac- ing paper, I sketched out the fancy curvilinear shape of the south wall of Building No. 3 (the building with the old dog houses on top,). Once satisfied that it looked correct and in scale, I traced the outline on ¼″ balsa and cut it out. The brick was from older stock made by Holgate and Reynolds, some of the finest ever made in my opinion. Plastruct offers various channels from which I cut vent pipes. Note the exhaust residue to the right top of the double vents on Building No. 3; this was done with some light weathering powder.
The five by seven pane windows had to be hand made from Grandt Line No. 5010 windows. I removed one vertical layer of panes to do this. Grandt Line and SS Ltd. have a nice variety of in- dustrial doors from the era. For fine de- tails, like the fire alarm and many roof details, I relied on SS Ltd., but Camp- bell Scale Models fit the bill for vents on Building No. 1’s roof (in the south- west corner). This building contained the six molasses tanks.
Dog houses and roof details The dog houses, which vented steam from the fermentation operations, were constructed from Grandt Line No. 3570 ¹/₄″ scale cupola louvers. The three- pronged caps seen on many of the roof pipes came from Grandt Line’s No. 5084 engine house stack set, and the small cyclone vents were from SS Ltd. For the black roof material, I used tex- tured dull black paper obtained from an art supply store.
Shelf The “shelf” above and behind the
short cooling tower contained unusual ventilation apparatus used in the ice cooling processes. These would be the square box affairs that cross each other
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The roof’s “dog houses” can be seen in these two photos. These were used to ventilate steam created during the fermentation process. Another unique roof-top detail are the three-pronged capped vents (above); these were made from an engine house stack set.
and taper down at an angle, which I constructed from Evergreen Scale Models channel using a miter box. The work shed on the north side had its curtain cut from .005″ white Ever- green styrene sheet. A set of diesel gauges were placed inside the shed and dial faces were painted on them. The office and lab are probably the most easily identified building. It has multiple windows on the third floor.
South end tank farm The tank farm was constructed of PVC pipes and Plastruct domes of vari- ous diameters. The adjacent garage
and base were cut to be fitted against the main structure, making it easier to transport the model in two main pieces. I refrained from donning high detailing of the tank farm, as my goal was to focus on the main structures comprising Red Star Yeast, though I did want to capture the gritty garage rubber truck bumper pads. Spur tracks always add nostalgia, context and realism to a structure model. After all, this is model railroad- ing. Look at many of the leading crafts- men kit manufacturer’s kits, such as Fine Scale Miniature or South River Modelworks, and you will find a spur
OCTOBER 2012
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