HO Factory Project: Introduction

Today I am going to talk about a modeling project that I recently picked up again. It started out as a mill building for the Lakes Region railroad, and when that layout went into storage the unfinished mill building went on the back burner for a while.

I was recently digging around my structure kits and whatnot when I found this half completed mill. With no near-future prospects of the Lakes Region layout seeing action any time soon, I decided to change the building's purpose a bit. I thought, why not model an old mill building that has a new tenant that needed the building expanded? I would finish the model as I designed it, but kitbash it so it has a corrugated steel addition built onto the side. Since I have no place on a layout for this model, I will build it as the main focus of a diorama.

The original building will be built the same, except I am going to add a story to it. This is partly because I have already started detailing the brick, and I want to go through that process step by step with photos on the blog, and also because a bigger building just looks cooler. The addition will be built off of one end of the building, and will feature loading docks and a big door where rail cars can go into the building, as well as a front office and possibly a small store area. I'm thinking of modeling it as a furniture factory right now, although that is still up in the air. If I go with that plan, the building will also need a large, paved over area for unloading lumber off of centerbeam cars. I have the space on the diorama for that, and I'm not sure what else to do with the space. I'm also toying with the idea of the factory going through a "going green" initiative, and have solar panels on the roof. I don't know of any HO scale solar panels out there, but it would be fun and easy to scratchbuild those. A small woodchip-fired power plant built onto the side of the factory would be cool too, and realistic in a furniture factory that has plenty of woodchips to fire it with.

The original building will be built out of Walthers Modulars kits. These things are great. They are molded as brick walls, and several different door and window styles are available. They fit together very easily, and you can easily build a structure as big or small as you want and whatever design you choose. They come molded in appropriate colors, but are easy enough to paint over if you are following a specific prototype. For the addition, I am searching for Walthers recently discontinued "Peterson Tool Specialties" kit, a model of a corrugated steel warehouse. It is no longer available from Walthers, but it was discontinued quite recently so it is still available elsewhere. Walthers has other corrugated steel warehouses, but I want this one because it has the rail car door and the front office. While I could kitbash those onto a different building if I have to, it's easier if I use a kit that already has those features out of the box.

Speaking of kitbashing, I won't be building the Peterson Tool Specialties the way the instructions want me to. If it's like other Walthers kits, I can probably arrange the office, loading docks, and doors however I want, which will be nice for fitting it to the other building, but it won't be a stand alone building. It will be attached to the original brick structure, so I will need to combine the walls and roof (it will be lower than the brick building) smoothly to make it look like it really is an addition. I know this kit is designed to be able to combine with other kits for a bigger building, but I'm sure it's not meant to combine with a brick warehouse out of the box. Also, I won't be using the roofs that come with either building. I will be using sheet styrene and digital photos to create a realistic tar paper roof, a staple of modern industrial buildings.

As a full time student, I won't be making major progress every week, so I won't be posting new stuff for this project every week. My next post will be about prototype information, which is always a useful in making a building look realistic. I will go around the next few weeks and take photos of old mill buildings and new corrugated steel buildings so I have stuff to work from and some photos to share here.