Dave,
Thanks for your kind comments. But I wasn't quite done yet. Now I have a plot hacked out of the hill and extending onto the bumpout. Not really big, but big enough.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
It wasn't a lot of land, but just enough. I dug around in my piles of stuff. Found some windows in the Tichy 200-window assortment. The walls are the driveway from the Walthers 933-3174 LCL Container Terminal, with the curbs forming vertical pillars once stood up. Some stone sheeting on what is supposed to represent the original powerhouse that was updated to the present appearance on top of the coal bunker. Various Plastruct scraps and bits, plus some household waterline PVC tubing for the boilers and a couple of those big phat bubble tea straws for the stacks. LEDs from holiday lights, suspended on bus bars made from brass stock.
Front
Back, note the doors to load the basement coal bunker.
I did have to engorge the bump-out a little, which was simple with Sculptamold. I stuck the short ends of some skewers in, then glopped on some Sculptamold, smoothed and shaped it and let it dry.
Very creative!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Thanks! Finding that 90' section of brick roadway with curbs in the leftovers from the Walthers LCL kit was the key to making this work. It turned out easier than I expected.
That piece of roadway could be turned into a lot of things, so people may want to keep it in mind. I used the traveling crane in the kit at the May Day Mine in Hesperus, but have since had people asking if I'd sell them the crane, so maybe it's hard to find?
One more note on parts...the doors to the coal bin are the sideboards from an old Roundhouse 30' standardgauge flatcar kit.
Some of my best kits are just the castaway leftovers from "fancy" kits -- the kind that come all neat in a box with instructions