Build a beer bottle water tower
This industrial water tank was modeled after one that stood for 75 years in Newark, N.J./Chuck Diljak
O
nce in a while, you can find a bottle
of an adult beverage around my layout. But, you will
find them only when I am operating my layout. That’s because I need to keep my mind clear and my fingers safe from sharp tools at the work- bench. That was until now. Recently, I found a project that required a bottle of an adult beverage at my workbench. It was, however, an empty bottle. Anyone living in northern New Jer- sey may remember the water tower that defined the character of the old Pabst Brewery in Newark. You saw it every time you passed by on the Gar- den State Parkway. The water tower was shaped and decorated like a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer bottle. The tower was built in 1930 by the Hoffman Beverage Company and advertised its Pale Dry Ginger Ale. In 1945, the Pabst Brewing Company purchased the factory and redecorated the tower. I always found this tower inspirational and it would easily fit most model railroads that have breweries. Unfortunately, I never took a photo of the tower. It was located in a tough neighborhood and taking a picture from the Garden State Parkway was not safe due to its narrow shoulders in this area. Alas, the tower was torn down in 2006. It was not forgotten, though, and many photos and articles can be found on the Internet. You can also find many other examples of water towers shaped as ob- jects, such as tea pots, oranges, and even catsup bottles. I found photos of the Brooks Catsup Bottle, located in Collins- ville, Illinois, on the Library of Congress website to accompany this article.
64
The Stegmaier Brewing company uses its water tank as a way of advertising its product. PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
However, after seeing the Pabst water
tower, I wanted to build a beer bottle model. I was paralyzed with two issues: what to use for the bottle and how to con- struct the tower frame. Fortunately for me, the answer to the first problem was solved when Marcia, my wife, needed a bit of cognac for a recipe she was mak- ing. Since we don’t keep cognac in our liquor stock, she went to buy one of those small 50 milliliter bottles that you get on airline flights at the local liquor store. When I saw the bottle she came home with, I knew I had my answer to the first issue. The answer to the second issue came almost immediately after. Knowing the diameter of the bottle, I discovered that Tichy Train Group’s water tower is nearly the same diameter. So after years of thinking about it, I was finally ready to build my beer bottle water tower.
Artwork
I like to think my layout is set in the late 1950’s in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylva- nia. Armed with that restriction, I did some research on the prototype Steg- maier Brewery located there. The in- ternet yielded images of Stegmaier beer labels from this era. Unfortunate- ly, the images were not good enough to make decals from.
I decided to recreate the Stegmaier label using a software program called Inkscape. Inkscape is a freeware pro- gram that creates vector images, simi- lar to Corel Draw® tor®
and Adobe Illustra-
. You can download versions of the program that work on Macs and Win- dows based systems at: http://www.
inkscape.org. Vector images, such as EPS files, are the best to work with since no matter
JANUARY 2014
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