Lots of Sanding Needed

Well, we are in Panama City, FL, for the pulp and paper mill, so there is a preponderance of sandy soil.  Used primarily sanded grout with alcohol/water spray followed by 50/50 water/white glue.  Even with alcohol, the grout seemed to want to ball up -- but otherwise things worked out pretty well.

Much of the "sanding" was done with help from a granddaughter.  Previously, her brother and sister stopped by and added a couple of trees!

What to do for a Woodpile?

 Somewhere reasonably near the pulp and paper mill should be a stack of pulpwood -- short logs for 1956.  Maybe here?

Sure, why not?  But none of this looks quite like a woodpile.  Maybe less is more and we will use our imagination.

Just use a few of the cast truckload piles and put random stacked pulpwood behind.  Start with a wedge of Styrofoam painted Expresso.  Add individual logs dipped in 50/50 water/white glue.

That could work; maybe add a few more sticks for good measure.  A grapple/orange peel bucket to move to a conveyor-to-be.

Something like this with a little imagination. . . .

And this. . . on a smaller scale (in more ways than one).  Of course, most of the pulpwood is off of the layout.  😉

Custom Fitting a Recovery Boiler

 Hmm, how much room is left for a recovery boiler and how big can it be?

Looks like 6X8 is going to be the footprint. . . 

By about this tall:

These things get pretty big; that's a recent shot of it surrounded by smoke stacks!  We'll need to do a little downscaling to make things fit!

Here's a start with some Plastruct trusses!

Maybe the chip loading bin from the sawmill can work as a precipitator?!

And maybe a cardstock model of the furnace, itself will work.  Or maybe it needs to be bigger.

Working toward something like this schematic:

Filling Watson Bayou. . . not so fast, there!

 Filling Watson Bayou with realistic water was not quite as successful as had been hoped.  Several leaks developed in the dam as can be seen by the drips on the sideboards.  Probably should have been smart and put down plastic before pouring, but hindsight is great.  After a few, layered pours a decent bayou was accomplished.

In time, a proper thickness was obtained, boat and skier were placed, and wakes were added.  Noticed that skier may have been a bit surprised at how close she was to the bank -- probably waving at someone - and created quite a splash getting pointed toward the boat again.

Damming Watson Bayou

To put some "water" into Watson Bayou, a dam needed to be placed at the edge of the layout. 

It would have been neat to use a sheet of plastic so the water could be seen from the side, but after trying a saber saw, score and break, and other such approaches plastic was given up.  A sheet of 1/8-3/16" plywood was much easier to cut into a 2X40" dam.

Installed with several screws.

Added just a little white glue around the shoreline and silicone sealer along the dam hoping to keep the realistic water from flowing out before it dries.  

Needed to paint the dam first, but Walmart no longer carries the paint previously used -- besides, their color mixer was out of white paint so wouldn't have been able to mix up a quart or so, anyway.  Picked a close spray paint.

Spray painting meant the layout around the bayou needed to be covered as well as the classic 442 nearby.

OK, so not an exact match, but don't tell anybody and we'll be fine.  Maybe fill with water after Christmas,

One if by sea, two if by land sort of

 Found a Tichy tank car kit some time ago.  Pulpwood racks by Tichy had me so worked up, the tank car stayed in storage until this year!  Pulled it out for something to do at in-laws and made some significant progress, but it was NOT easy.  Lots of gobby gluing, some close-enough, etc., but from a distance, it might look OK.  Still need to apply decals.  Was interested in a Staley starch set that would fit with 1956 era.  Apparently Staley changed logo since then and had to get a set of Walthers decals from ebay that the seller suggested should work but might disintegrate since they haven't been available new in the past 25 years!

The decals were white so the tank was painted flat black.  In the meantime, the memory returned of a white Staley tank car from an earlier period of model railroading.  In fact, the car was so old (probably 1950's vintage) that it had the hook and loop Mantua couplers!  They have been replaced but now I have TWO Staley tank cars without really realizing it:

A little hard to see, but the white tank is significantly larger than the black tank.  Hmm, if the white had been labeled 100,000 gallons, I could have used the 80,000 gallon decal on the black.  No such luck.  Oh well, we'll just place them on separate tracks at some distance from each other -- one loaded, one empty to return.

So, that's the two if by land.

Another project was to put a boat and skier on Watson Bayou.  The closest thing to the AlumaCraft outboard runabout that we had in the 1950-60's was this green and white model:

Besides the boat not being aluminum, the outboard is obviously a Mercury, whereas ours was a Johnson.  But with a little aluminum spray paint, we got close to the correct color.  Just couldn't help leaving the outboard a Mercury, but used a little bit of chrome paint to make the Mercury "hood" stand out.

Our boat had bench seats from side to side whereas the green boat came with benches along the sides,  A sharp Xacto and a little glue and the second seat was "fixed".  In the '50's outboards often had red six gallon gas tanks.  An attempt was made to install two of those.

The water skier figures came with a captain sitting (never seen in our boat) and a guy in swimsuit.  But we needed a lady as well, so the "stacked" pair was separated and the blonde fit just right on the second seat.  Not sure how to rig up a harness and ski rope, but wondering if 7X fly fishing tippet would be small enough,

So, now there's one if by sea, sort of. . . .

Not So Magic Kiln Addition

What's a lime kiln without an exhaust stack?  Most stacks seemed to be circular in cross section, but the parts on hand were designed for HVAC and are rectangular.  So, pulling out a few of these "printed" parts gave:

A little glue and some dry brush "rusting" and you get

Even included something that might have contained a blower or exhaust fan!

On the end of the kiln, it looked like this:

A lot of work on the kiln was really just delaying start on the recovery boiler!