Scratchbuild an HO scale coal dealer
Next, I ground down a No. 17 chisel knife blade until its width was just a bit less than the space between the two pieces of .125″ square styrene. I also ground a radius on the edge of the blade. The edge doesn’t have to be sharp because it is used as a scraper to make a concave surface on the top of the channel. A few passes are all that are needed.
Once the concave surface was made I took the channel out of the fixture and broke the edges along its length by lightly scraping them with a No. 11 knife blade. Finally, using the Chopper, I cut the channel into scale 6″ lengths and glued all those little pieces in place. (It took several lengths of chan- nel to get 456 pieces, of course.) They looked like connectors once they were glued over the rod ends. To tie the silos to the conveyor house floor I cut four circles of .060″ sheet styrene 2¹₃₂″ in diameter using a Sears Craftsman®
these ends from .060″ sheet styrene. Why three? One will be the center stiff- ener for the conveyor house. As far as its length goes, I decided on a one-foot spacing between the silos and a one-foot overhang beyond the end ones. Since the finished silos meas- ure 17′-6″ in diameter, that gave an
Elevator end wall profile HO scale
wheel and circle cutter (No.
The silos are bolted to the floor of the con- veyor house, which ties the model together. Each silo has a filler disk glued inside its top. Since the disks were made with a circu- lar cutter, they have a ¹₄″ hole centered in them, which is a perfect size for the bolt.
tween the three strips hold the channel while it is being shaped.) I glued a short piece of styrene against one end of this fixture as a stop so the channel would not slide out of it.
Conveyor house end profile 15′-0″
25293). This dimension matches the in- side diameter of the PVC pipe. The cir- cle cutter also drills a quarter-inch di- ameter hole in the center of the disk; I epoxied a short ¹₄-20 bolt into each hole. A disk was glued inside the top of each silo flush with the upper edge and the bolt pointing up. The bolts will join the silos and conveyor house together.
Conveyor house
After building all four silos, I fabricat- ed the conveyor house that sits on top of them. From the one photo of Sargent Brothers Coal that I had, I “guesstimat- ed” the end profile of the prototype and mocked up one from cardboard. (See the dimensioned diagram.) I cut three of
HO scale
18′-6″ 52
12′-0″ JUNE 2013
15′-6″ 19′-0″
50′-9″ 54′-6″
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100