Model a small oil dealership
The office is simply a box made of Evergreen Scale Models cor- rugated “metal” siding with Grandt Line caboose windows and a styrene door. Though small, it does the job and fits the space.
Ribbed Roofing, No. 97408; that for the office is Northeastern cardstock corru- gated roofing. On both materials I brush-painted a coat of Polly Scale ATSF Silver, oversprayed it with Dull- cote and weathered it with a wash of Kuras Design Group Rustall. The sub- roofs for the pump house and office are Evergreen scribed sheet, as is the deck of the loading dock. For this deck, which represents wood, and all other areas simulating wood, I used a fine tooth model saw to distress the styrene, sprayed the areas with Floquil Foundation, then gave the surface a coat of Dullcote and washed it with the ink and alcohol mix. This resulted in a weathered, wood-like appearance. The tank car unloading platform is a
bit different from the other three struc- tures. It is 4′×7′ in size and 7′-0″ high, and is supported by lengths of Ever- green “L” girders. I cut a base of .060″ styrene, removed a few chunks and beat it up a bit, then painted it with Floquil Concrete. I cut girders to the correct length and glued one to each corner of the base. When these had set, I cut to length four pieces of “wooded” styrene strip as the base of the plat- form, glued them in position, added three cross-braces and secured the platform foundation at its corners with Grandt nut-bolt-washer castings. The decking itself is made up of lengths of styrene 2″×8″’s. When everything was in place, I carefully brush-painted the components using Floquil Foundation for the wood and Grimy Black for the metal. An over- spray with Dullcote and weathering washes followed. In Gordon North’s ar- ticle, his piping dropped into a large concrete housing. I had a couple of old
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HO concrete pedestal bases and, while I don’t know if it is prototypically cor- rect, I glued them in position to receive the lower ends of the piping. I drilled holes in the deck and lined up the pipe bases with these holes. For the railing around the platform, I used .028″ brass wire for the uprights and handholds. The railing is three feet high and has an opening for the vertical ladder which came from my parts box. I pre- colored the wire with gun blackening solution and then soldered the railing to the uprights. I touched up the paint where required, and this part of the set-up was ready. Now, how about the piping itself?
I originally intended to use .060″
brass wire for all of the piping, but I didn’t have enough (not having a local hobby shop within 60 miles is a real pain). I also considered similarly-di- mensioned styrene rod, but it is diffi- cult to get that material to maintain bends. I ended up using floral wire that I found at a local Michael’s craft store, and that worked fine. I bent four pipes using thin slices of styrene tubing at the curves to simulate flanges. Again, not being an expert, these may or may not be accurate. I do know that most of today’s piping uses swivel connectors at many of the joints, but I didn’t know how to duplicate them. On the final set-up, I’ll have “sump pipes” as Gor- don North referred to them, at the un- loading platform to get down into the tank car. As for the loading platform, be sure you make the horizontal lengths of the piping long enough to ex- tend out over whatever delivery truck you are going use. One other thing I noticed in Gordon’s model was that he color-coded the piping red and green. I
don’t know the significance of this, if any, but I thought it looked good so I did the same. To accommodate the ground level piping, I used a Radio Shack “nibbler” to create appropriate openings at the bottoms of the pump house and loading platform and bent the wire to route the piping into and out of those spaces. The pipes are sup- ported by strips of styrene painted to replicate concrete. As a last detail, I glued two shut-off fixtures from Plas- truct into position before the piping en- tered the loading platform. The only real construction issue now left was ac- cess to the tanks and their roofs. I built two long ladders, plus a short
one for the loading platform, from Ever- green’s O scale ladder kit and glued them in place. I had debated about a walkway from one tank to the other, and in the end decided that since al- most all photos that I had seen showed some sort of passage, I would include one. Sticking with styrene, I cut two pieces of Evergreen I beam to a length of 26′-0″, added some cross braces and painted this assembly Floquil Grimy Black, leaving the top unpainted. When dry, I added the decking of distressed scale 2″×8″’s, gluing them in place on the “clean” surface. This decking got a brushed coat of Floquil Foundation and that ubiquitous Dullcote was the sprayed on the whole thing.
I added three-foot tall railings down the sides and then washed the walk- way with weathering liquid. Having completed most of the construction, it was time to put things together on the base. As I said earlier, I had a thin ply- wood base, 6″×12″. I wanted to try to ensure minimum warpage in the scenicking process, so I sprayed the un-
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