Scratchbuilding Wesolowski Chemical
Five outside, ground tanks of varying sizes (above) were added from the Walthers set and connected with pipes from the Walthers Piping kit. The Wesolowski Chemical sign (be- low) was made from Slater’s 6mm tall letters mounted to a styrene bracket.
when dry, it can be weathered to elimi- nate the shine. Then, to add some inter- est and color variance to the roof, I weathered the whole expanse with pow- dered pastel chalks: white, black, and rust–applied with a makeup sponge. I mounted each of the guy wires to its respective eye-hook, using a drop of cyanoacrylate to attach the E-Z Line to the hooks in the roof first, then, once the adhesive had set, threaded the E-Z Line through the eye-hooks on the stacks. I held each line taut with tweezers, while I added a drop of cyanoacylate and cut the excess off with a small pair of scissors. To create the “Wesolowski Chemical” sign, I used 6mm tall letters from Slater’s, a prod- uct I’d discovered at the National Train Show at the NMRA's Philadelphia Convention in 2006. The letters were each trimmed and sanded, then mounted to a small piece of styrene “L” bracket with cyanoacrylate.
Tanks
tomobile primer from a spray can and gave them a final coat of Polly Scale Grimy Black. While the paint does ad- here reasonably well to the sanded cowlings, it’s best to handle them gen- tly from this point on.
The guy wires holding the stacks are another neat detail of Wayne’s model, so I opted to use E-Z Line from Berk- shire Junction, an extremely flexible spandex-type material made for string- ing scale model telephone poles. Sewing thread would also work, but I wanted the lines to be delicate, thin, and stretchy enough to withstand any bumps and knocks that could occur while I was weathering the roof. To hold the guy wires to the stacks, I
used Detail Associates formed wire eye-bolts. I determined where each of the guy wires would need to be mount- ed to the roof (the rooftop tanks get in the way of several of the wires). I drilled four No. 80 holes in each of the stacks, and secured the eye-hooks with cyanoacrylate. I also drilled holes for the eye-hooks in the roof where the guy wires would be anchored. Note that several of the stacks’ guy wires use the same mounting eye-bolt. Finally,
it was time to mount the
stacks to the roof, a task I pondered for quite some time. In the end I deter- mined that five-minute epoxy would
80
probably do the job. (I used more five- minute epoxy on this structure than on all the others I’ve ever scratchbuilt combined!) One at a time, I slathered the inside of the cowling with the epoxy and placed it over the pencil out- line I’d made on the roof, being careful not to smear the epoxy by moving it around too much. My rationale, which held true, was that the epoxy inside the cowling would drip down on to the roof and hold it in place. I let the epoxy on each smokestack set before moving on to the next. It’s
critically important that the
stacks are perfectly plumb, both side- to-side and front-to-back. The human eye is able to pick up even the slightest anomalies, so it’s also critically impor- tant that the stacks are parallel with one another. Bottom line: take your time with this step.
Roof weathering and wires At this point it would be wise to weather the roof. (I was unwise because I was anxious to see what the structure would look like with the guy wires at- tached. Once again, I was thankful I’d used the E-Z line.)
joints where the cowlings and tank pipes meet the roof by using acrylic Mars black paint from a tube. This paint is thick enough to fill any gaps and
By my reasoning, a chemical plant needs a lot of tanks, so I used the re- maining five tanks from the Walthers set, along with some components from the Walthers Cornerstone Piping Kit (933-3105), to create a set of four ground tanks and one mounted tank that would sit at track side. I painted the two smaller tanks with Polly Scale Coach Green and Reefer Orange, but added several drops of Polly Scale Reefer White to each, since these were probably the original tanks at the plant and thus would have been more sun-bleached. The larger two tanks were painted the same colors, but without the added white. The visible piping was painted Polly Scale Aluminum and weathered with rust chalk. This detail adds anoth- er level of “fussy-ness” that gives the building character. The fifth tank was mounted to its legs, painted CP Gray, and set on the ground near the lean-to shed on the left side of the building. The final details were 55-gallon
I first created “tar”
drums, pallets, and workers, all added to the loading dock. Even though Wesolowski Chemical is mounted against the backdrop, it’s anything but a background building because my layout is only 18″ deep at that point and almost at eye-level. So it’s closely scrutinized by every visitor. But then, even if it was five feet from the aisle and hidden behind a grove of trees, I still would have scratchbuilt it and still would have detailed it. This is a tribute structure, because it’s named for the guy whose articles taught me that scratchbuilding and detailing and were some of the most fun aspects of this hobby. Thanks, Wayne.
JANUARY 2014
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