Many of us have helped friends build their own layout in some manner or another. It might be the physical construction, adding scenery elements, or creating rolling stock/engines for them. I was challenged (or maybe just asked) by my fellow ONR modeler Bram Bailey to build Stroebel Enterprises Ltd. Bram decided to add some interest to the Elizabeth Bay section of the layout by adding an agricultural industry. It is a grain elevator and potato warehouse owned by the Stroebel family. Bram tossed the challenge out to me see if I wanted to build the structures and I of course said yes. Then the challenge was extended to paint the switch engine which will serve the area.
I agreed and a few months ago made the trek to the other side of the Cleveland area to pick up the kits that Bram had for the area. The long brick building in the center is the Potato Warehouse and the white buildings on the right make up the Grain elevator complex. The HQ is a DPM kit that came from the estate of Jim Moore, the spud warehouse is two Columbia feed mills (Walthers 933-9030) bashed end to end and the Grain elevator is a Valley Growers Association kit (Walthers 933-3096) built pretty much to its design, but custom finished. The warehouse required a new roof, since the parts supplied by the kit were just about 1/16-in. to small and actually had been made so that the user could score the roof and bend the single roof piece to fit. So a quick dive into the spare parts and styrene box found a few pieces long and thick enough for the job. Placing the new shingles on the roof also proved to be a small challenge as I couldn't get them to adhere to the styrene quickly enough with the long sheets I was using. I tried using painters tape to keep them tacked in place for a few minutes, but even that came with its own problems as several sections peeled away the top of the shingle from the backing paper. If you look closely enough you can see some darker areas on the roof, which are pieces of sheet metal which the company has used to patch the roof. The roofline even has some lighting rods installed in case some thunderclouds roll through the area.
The HQ building was repainted to match the dark color of the warehouse, and then lightened by adding gray as the mortar and some weathering powders. The warehouse and elevator were also weathered using a variety of colors available from pan pastels.Last week I decided that sufficient details, weathering and overall progress had been made and I was ready to declare the buildings complete. As you can see, Bram is knee deep in other projects for the layout, so we unfurled the plastic cover and roughly set them into place. This is on the lower level which is undergoing some scenery addition by his crew. I'm looking forward to see how the scenery crew finishes the area.I'm presently in the process of finishing a Key Alco S-2 that will be the Stroebel Enterprises' industrial switcher. Now that I have some primer back in stock, painting the engine will come in the next few weeks. With Bram's layout shut down and no operating sessions until next spring at the earliest, I have plenty of time to paint the engine. However, Bram has challenged me to design and build the Tryon Lumber complex on his layout. A few months ago I gave him an extra planning mill from my layout. So after a few discussions, I'm going to tackle the design and build. So I've been digging into the spec sheets and working on building configurations. Looks like a good winter project to build all of those structures.
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