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  • Refinery: Primary Fitting

    Exercises day so just a bit over two hours, a half hour of which was on the phone with United Airlines.

    Decided to stop model building and start getting the base plate ready. After drilling all the holes to pass the wires underneath, I went a bit further and prepared the Masonite for additional work.

    After drilling the holes I place everything where it's going to go to understand a bit more about the arrangement. I first has to make sure that I didn't drill wiring holes throughs cleats and risers holding the table top in place. I had to re-position some units a bit here and there to ensure that the holes just went through OSB. Took some pictures of it all and it's pretty impressive.

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    I'm glad I spent the time to build the additional units (flare and cooling tower). The flare adds a lot of interest and looks great with the warning lights flashing. It really impressed my grandson. It's about as tall as it could be and still look in proportion to the rest of the model. Need to get some additional workman and populate the place...

    I wasn't going to put fascia boards on the layout on the right side of this pic since it's not facing the viewer from the layout's front, but you do see it in this view from the layout's left end so someday I'll probably dress that off too.

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    The loading rack isn't shown since it's one a separate piece that needs trimming. I'll do that next session... tomorrow.

    This shot shows why I have to do all the interconnecting pipe work off the lay and in the shop. I have no way of reaching over the unit ops, measuring and cutting all those pipes. All of the pipes run towards the wall.

    There's not much room around the big tank for a dike, but I need the real estate on the left end for the ops building and some limited parking area. Otherwise I could move everything left and separate the units a bit.

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    I screwed the Masonite down to ensure it lies flat and then added two 1/4" dowels so I can exactly reposition the entire piece with all the equipment mounted and get all the wire and screws holes in immediate alignment. Close up of oriented stand board shows why I call it "instant splinter board". You have to be real careful around this stuff or you will be impaled. There were a few spots were the underlying screw points were sticking proud of the OSB's surface. I filed these off with a hand file so they wouldn't elevate the base board or prevent it from sliding into position.

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    I also countersunk and sanded the Masonite around all the holes as there was a lot of material sticking up around the holes preventing the equipment from settling in nicely.

    The last thing I did was to add temporary stiffeners to try and keep the floppy Masonite from bending too much. It would make moving the finish refinery impossible to move onto the layout if it flexed. I put two longerons and one cross piece. It may need more. These will be removed as I slide the refinery into final position. It's going to take a bit of coordination and some extra helpers to get this done without wrecking anything. The chain link fence and much of the ground cover will go in after final placement since I'll need to remove or drive in a lot of screws and will need access to all of them. Ground cover immediately around and under equipment can be done off the layout.

    You can see all those holes... The chop saw stand supports the outer end since I don't have a big enough table. I actually do since this work table has a twin, but my lathe and bench grinder are sitting on it. It might make sense to put it into use on this project.... hmmm. These are the kinds of things that I learn by writing these daily reports. You get to think about things a bit differently when you study the images.

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    • Refinery: Odds and Ends

      Took my own advice and cleared off the other table with the lathe and created a more stable support for the base board. I also added two more cross temp supports to further stabilize the Masonite. I then noticed that one of the screws I used to hold the middle stiffener in place is sitting right under the place where the cooling tower is going. That will be moved tomorrow. I can now get to work in earnest putting all this together.

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      I finished the Methanizer vessel by air brushing the yellow for the relief valve line. Even though it takes time to mask, the results are absolutely worth it. I painted its feet concrete color (a mixture of Tamiya medium gray, buff, and white) and dressed up the right angle valves on top. This baby's ready to go. Color of concrete is a little more tan in real life. The phone camera made it a bit more gray.

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      Added all the vessels to the production platform, but in retrospect, that may have been premature. I have to add two water lines from the condenser that aren't there and it will be more difficult doing that with these units fastened in. I was just downstairs reviewing the piping diagram and getting my bearing on what goes from what. I have some mismatched pipe sizes. On the heater I went with larger diameter (insulated) piping, but on the other end it's going into the 1/8" tubing. Too late to fix that so I'll have to transition from one to the other at some point in the run. No one will see it or know it, but I will. The two lines on top should probably be the larger diameter, but the plans show this as small. The reflux line is correctly sized large.

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      The last thing done today was applying the custom "Marley" and "SPX" decals to the cooling tower. I first coated the decals with Microsol Decal Coating solution. This stuff's very good and doesn't run the inkjet ink. You apply it and let it dry for 15 minutes and you're good to go. While that was drying I applying a brush coat of Tamiya clear gloss to the placards where the decals would go to give good adhesion. As I applied them, I also wet the surface with Microsol decal setting solution to snuggle them down. Results are good. The logo graphic was print screen from SPX's website.

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      Here's their logos applied to one of their products.

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      I post this thread on another forum from O'Gauge Railroading Magazine. A reader commented tonight about why I'm not fastening the Masonite now to the layout and I explained about the piping being unreachable with the unit ops in the way... and that set me thinking... "Why do I have to have the pipe alley where Plastruct put it?" In other words, I could put the pipe alley in the front, then have the units and lastly the loading rack. The only pipes that would have to go back to the wall are the two feed pipes to the loading rack. It's what makes writing this crap every day worth it. It pays me as much dividends as it does the readers. I'm going to re-plan the arrangement and see how it could be done. Once I understand what pipe goes where and why, I can rearrange them to have it done on the front edge meaning I can permanently place the Masonite base and all the units onto the layout. I CAN THEN do all the pipe interconnects without the worry about trying to carry the finished product into the layout room without wrecking anything.

      So tomorrow, besides finishing the cooling tower assembly, I'm going to put in plan B and begin piping fun. Whoopee! As George Peppard used to say on A-Team, "It's great to see a plan come together!" So far, this is the biggest modeling project on the layout, and probably the biggest modeling project in my life.

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      • Refinery: New Design and More (Part A)

        This is a photo-rich post so it will be three parts. Based on the epiphany from yesterday, I did re-design the plot plan and got the pipe alley in front so I can do all the building on the train platform.

        Before I get into all the gory details of today's adventures, I thought I share a couple of pics of the finished cooling tower. I sent a picture off to SPX Cooling Technologies just for their edification. I doubt that any model railroader in the world has made a model of their products for a miniature refinery on a hobby railroad.

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        I really love making this stuff.

        I also painted the steam and gas lines extending up the flare tower. Steam lines are light blue and gas is orange.

        Here's the new design with the pipe alley in front. I rearranged the unit ops to be more aligned with their piping requirements.

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        Someone suggested that I needed an EPA dam around the big tank. I have room for it so I spent most of the afternoon building an octagonal structure that surrounds the tank. I had to add sufficient clearance for the stairway. I made it a scale 4-foot high out of 5mm German plywood. It's about a scale foot wide. The angle between each piece is 22.5° so I set my angle gauge and marked the angle on the belt sander table. I clamped a angle block to this angle and sanded all the ends.

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        To begin the dam process I made a paper pattern of the octagon testing to ensure that the tank had enough clearance. Using a compass, I attempted to lay out 8 equal segments, but it didn't work out as exact as I would have wanted it. I cut the pieces on the scroll saw and that was the first problem since there was significant piece-to-piece variation that I needed to correct going forward. Some pieces were a little longer or wider than nominal which is understandable since I was cutting the pieces apart from one another and if I erred on one side of the line that piece would be small by that amount and the adjacent piece big which made the error double.

        I stacked all the pieces on the surface plate and clamped them. Then, after clamping the stack in the bench vise, I used the Skil belt sander to level them out.

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        • Refinery: New Design and More (Part B)

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          Even with this, there was still variation that I corrected (or attempted to) when the dam was assembled. I laid out the dam on the base board and test fit the pieces there.

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          I decided that this assembly needed it's own base upon which to glue all the pieces so I traced the template and cut it out of 1/8" Masonite. Unfortunately, the sides were exactly equal since my layout was pretty crude. As a result, when I glued all the sides onto this base, I overhung on some segments and was deficient in others. I used "gravity clamps" to set the tacky glue.

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          You can see the gap in the edge in the above pic. So I made some Masonite trim pieces and CA'd them into position after which I sanded and filled where necessary to create a consistent assembly. CA is terrific for this kind of stuff since it cured very fast and I could keep working.

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          I screwed the dam down on the base board once the board was mounted on the layout. I cut a access groove for the outlet line to pass through the dam. I suppose this isn't kosher and I could have raised the tank's foundation a bit to clear the wall, but what the heck... I'll paint it tomorrow and probably put some gravel in the pit ensuring that the tank area is masked off. In looking at this picture, I can bring a stair up to the edge and a platform to connect to the bottom stair landing on the tank. Once again, spending time documenting all this sparks my thinking.

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          I'll need to produce an access bridge over the wall for staff to get to the tank. Perhaps a vertical ladder on both sides...

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          • Refinery: New Design and More (Part C)

            Here's the load rack in its final position. I won't fasten it down until I fit the feed pipes to it. The connect to the underside of the loading tubes and it will be easier to get to if I can work with it not fastened down. Still have to attach those access stairs. Notice that I had to cut the Masonite base around that Ross switch machine. I had to remove the ballast around that machine and was using a curved craft knife to scrape it off. It's amazing how solid well-glued ballast can be. And of course I hit the yellow wire to the machine with the knife and severed it. Luckily, there was enough slack that I could strip the end and re-connect. One of the feet on the rack was a wee bit short and it too two pieces of paper to shim it up so it was level with the other three. Since the concrete pads are masonite as is the base, I'm going to try and use PVA cement to glue it down. Simple is better. I'm happy how hiding the LED wiring has worked out.

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            • Refinery: Lots of work... not so much progress (Part A)

              Today was a weird one... with lots of effort, but not so much to show for it. I woke up thinking about the steam and gas lines to the flare. You know your life is pretty stress free that the only thoughts on your mind are how to detail and imaginary refinery on a toy railroad. Life is good! I need to get some steam to the flare. The only logical place to get it without modeling another piece of equipment. I decided to have the heater also have a steam generator in it so there would be two sets of lines working from it: product and steam. It also needed some other enhancements. There was no way to generate any heat in that heater so I started crafting a blower and gas burner after looking at some internet sources. Again, it's highly simplified and it's more symbolic than prototypical.

              The first thing I did was determine where the steam line would go from the heater to the flare. I used the surface gauge to determine the center height of the flare's steam inlet and scribe that point on the heater. I drilled and inserted a #4 Plastruct pipe and added a nozzle and valve. This picture shows the alignment, with a shorter pipe. The actual location will not be so close, but the pipe will be level. I trying to save as many elbows as I can so any direct runs will work for me.

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              While this was going on I attempted to put the Sinclair decals on the big tank. I didn't pre-coat the decals (at first) with Microsol Decal Film and here's what happened when the decal was ready to slide.

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              Total disassembly... kind of like when you cross the streams (Ghostbusters reference). Plan B. Use the round Sinclair logo. This time I did coat the decal hoping for better results. Oh... and I had to respray blue since the clear gloss I applied by brush sort of dissolved the blue exposing some primer. I then used spray gloss which was less aggressive. This decal started out okay, but it too split in places, but I used it anyway. I used more MicroSet to get that crack to settle down a bit and then when dry touched it up with some white and red paint. It'll work, but I'm not happy.

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              To create the blower, I drew a quick sketch on paper, but realized it was a simple design and went directly to working on 0.020" styrene. After making the two sides I measured and cut some thick styrene spacers to hold the sides square and stiffen it a bit, then made a wrapper out of 0.010" thin styrene. Worked okay, but it was a bit sloppy until I sanded the sides smooth.

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              I have some Plastruct motors left over so that would be the power source. I needed to put a plenum into the heater with the gas line input and burner. I used the largest size tube I have left over from sphere legs. That tube's i.d. is too big for the #4 tube which was going to lock it into the heater, but too small for the next size I had so I chucked the medium-sized tube into the lathe and reduced it's .250" o.d. to .177" which is a slip fit into the bigger tube. This sandwich was then drilled out a tad with the #31 drill which is the a perfect fit for the #4 tubing. This was butt glued to the blower with a piece of .080" stock to strengthen the thin ends of the blower wrapper. The line coming out the side will be the gas line.

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              • Refinery: Lots of work... not so much progress (Part B)

                For a support I cobbled together some Evergreen H-beam that was left over and this sites on a Masonite "concrete" pad that's the same height as that holding up the heater. This all necessary to raise the apparatus to engage with the heater.

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                And here's the blower attached to the heater.

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                Still needed is a source of water into the heater and terminating the gas line somewhere. I may put a faux pressure reducer on the gas line (like I'm also going to add on the flare gas line) and run the line into the ground. When painted all this stuff will look sufficiently busy to be interesting.

                The last thing I did was to paint the big tank dam with another concrete concoction. This picture shows the tank sitting in the dam and the touch up painting on the decal. I still have to craft the stair assembly to get over the dam. The tank's stairway starts a little below the dam I created. If I was really smart, I would have sized the dam to coincide with that height. I supposed I could cut the dam down, which as I think about it may work. Otherwise, I'll have to make the access stair go over the wall then come down about 1 step to meet the lower stair landing on the tank. Even though I attempted to mask the stair area when re-spraying the blue, the stairs now have a blue tinge that needs to be touched up. Like I said, lots of activity today, but not as much progress as I needed.

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                On another unrelated point. I took this picture of a very large raptor sitting on our neighbor's fence in the very heavy rain that was Harvey's remnants. It took off soon after I took this and its wing span was huge... at least 3 feet. One of my friends said it could be a young eagle. I shot this with my iPhone at max telephoto and then cropped so the resolution sucks. Any ideas about what kind of wonderful animal this is?
                It's Friday so while I don't usually work on the weekends, #2 grandson isn't done his school project yet, so if he's working down there, so am I. Otherwise, see y'all on Monday. Stay safe and stay dry.

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                • Refinery: Saturday Session

                  As predicted, #2 grandson came this afternoon after tennis lessons and worked on his wonderful project so I was able to do some more work on the monster. Got the tank dam access stair cobbled together and went back to the heater's burner assembly. Got the air intake built and the gas feed system.

                  I did spray the tank with Dullcoat to seal the decal and normalize the surface a bit. I then touched up the aluminum on the stairs so it's ship shape.

                  I'm definitely getting better building stairs with Plastruct. This was a tiny little project. I made a double layer of the thin ABS sheet, fit it so it would go inside the tank stair railing. It was a good decision to make the stair and not attempt to chop off a scale foot of the dam. That would have been a mess.

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                  I reinforced the undersides with some Plastruct ABS angle and to add more surface to which to glue the railings. That piece of I-beam holds up the inside end.

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                  Back to the heater. I found just the right size thin wall brass tube to make an intake horn. I then glued some of my fine mesh black tulle onto the tube end using thin CA. I dipped the tube in a little CA puddle then pressed it down onto the tulle. Trimmed it with a sharp #11 blade.

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                  Then I realize that I didn't paint the inside, so I popped it off and painted the inside of the horn and the blower with Nato Black.

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                  All that was left was to create some kind of gas flow system. I saw a picture of a large gas regulator and made a facsimile using some plastic discs stamped out of styrene sheet with my hollow punches. I added a control valve and behind the regulator and a stop valve in front of it. I started painting it when grandson finished his project and we went upstairs to dinner.

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                  All that's left on the heater is a water inlet pipe and valve. Can't make steam without water. I don't know if plant process heaters are ever used to produce steam, but it was the only heat source in this project so I had to get creative. Tomorrow's Sunday and I'm pretty sure I won't be in the shop... although, tennis will be on all day (my wife's favorite sport) so I might get some time after all.

                  I need to make a similar gas apparatus for the gas line going into the flare stack.

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                  • Refinery: Heater Work

                    We're heading to Hawaii on Thursday so I've been running around doing errands, but still got an hour to work today and got the detail work on the heater painted. I used Tamiya, Vallejo and some Liquitex tube acrylic. For the orange I used the Vallejo (red and yellow), for the steel, electric motor and the burner box I used Tamiya, and for the light blue steam line I used the artist acrylics. That was an experiment. I thinned it with Liquitex extender/flow enhancer to make more like model paint. It worked... sort of. It was the perfect hue of light blue I wanted and I didn't feel like fussing with Tamiya blue and white to make it. It took several coats, but it kind of works, although I wouldn't recommend it.

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                    Still have to install a water inlet pipe and then this baby can go into service.

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                    May get some work done tomorrow, but maybe not. I just found out that I was riding around with an expired driver's license. In fact it expired on my birthday and the was July 30. I went with my wife when she renewed hers in April and looked at mine and noted that I had 3 months left and then time flew by. I need it to get onto the plane on Thursday when we go to Hawaii so I know what I'll be doing for part of the day tomorrow.

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                    • Refinery: Site Construction Begins

                      Tomorrow we leave for 11 days in Hawaii so I got in one last shot in the shop before the hiatus.

                      I started installing equipment on the site, starting with getting the loading rack nailed down since it's the farthest away from the front and needed to be finalized before anything went in front. I then installed the HP Spheres and it's attendant ladder. During this I knocked the flare of the base (it was just sitting there, not finally glued) and I caught it falling towards the concrete in mid-air. My death grip broke the lower caged ladder off the tower. At the end of the session I fixed it, but that wasn't so easy.

                      First up was adding the pipe supports for the final product piping that feeds the filling pipes. I used some Plastruct I-beam glued to the vertical supports, and then made some individual pipe supports to glue to the beams. This was all done with the loading rack in the shop. I then added the two pipes feeding the fillers. Then I moved it to the layout and glued it to the base with Aleen's PVA. I put weights on top to hold it down while the glue set.

                      The stairs sit on "concrete" pads which I cut from some Masonite. I glued these to the base with PVA and then CA'd the ladders in place. I then painted the base with "aged concrete" paint. It took several coats to cover since the paint is absorbed by the Masonite. I've left these pipes white. This pic was before the painting.

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                      I located the product feed pumps so they lined up with each other and then so they each fed one of the product pipes. There was a slight altitude difference which I matched with some elbows and short pipe pieces. For pipe supports here I used Plastruct H-beam (which I have very little left) and again some pipe supports made by drilling the correct sized hole in some plastic bar stock and then splitting it down the middle to make two pipe supports. After this picture I painted the supports the dark green I'm using for structural steel.

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                      I put the Spheres in spacing them so there was clearance for the product piping. Again, I'm holding it down with PVA since it's Masonite to Masonite (the foot pads are Masonite).

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                      The last thing I did on the layout today was install the first light pole. Again, held in place with PVA. This may not work and I may resort to epoxy.

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                      So now back to the bench to reinstall that ladder. I first drilled with the 0.021" carbide drill and then used the same size brass wire to pin the ladder supports back together. Great! Then I used too much force trying to get the last ladder holder's pin in deep enough and the whole deal blew off re-breaking the remaining ladder holders at their base. Time for Plan C. Having no more Plastruct ladder holders I had to make them from scratch. I did this using the 1/16" brass rod. I drilled out the places where I could for the larger rod, but the top one I had to drill a new spot a little below the original since I also broke off a small carbide drill when drilling the pilot and you can drill onto a chuck of carbide. I got the ladder re-attached, but ran out of time to get it repainted. When I had that tall flare just sitting there near where I was working that little voice in my head mentioned how unstable it was and that it could fall. I'm 72, you'd think that I'd learn to pay attention to that voice!

                      That gouge is where the previous ladder holder with the piece of brass wire sticking out of it went into the ether. Frankly, using the 1/16" brass to support

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                      Aloha... see y'all in a little over a week.

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                      • Back from Hawaii: Refinery Erection Continues

                        Well fans, I'm back! We did have a fantastic time in Hawaii. My son in law's been bugging us for years to go and we finally did. 11 days split between Maui and Kaua'i. We stayed at Hyatt properties both places which were spectacular. We had great food at every place we ate whether it was a fancy 4-star restaurant or a local fish house. It just didn't matter. We saw as many sites as we could in the time allowed and even got some pool/beach time in. Here's just a little taste for those of you who've never been. This was a "typical" sunset on Maui's south coast, taken from the porch at Merriman's restaurant.

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                        We got home yesterday afternoon and today I got back to "work" on the trains. Made some progress on piping and installing refinery equipment.

                        I made a slightly different pipe support driven mainly by having so little of the Plastruct H-beam left. In this case I used some 5/16" square "concrete" Plastruct tube as the support and then a piece of H-beam drilled and split to actually support the pipes. Works! These are glued to both the pipe and the base using CA.

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                        I installed the output line from the HP spheres that come out of one side of the bottom feed and join to a single pump leading to the load rack.

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                        The other output pump line comes from one of the top two outlets on the top of the big tank so I was fix'n to install that, when I realized that the small stair wasn't painted so I took a few moments to prime it, spray the yellow rails and then mask them for the bare metal spray. Of course I broke off the small rail and had to CA it back on.

                        I screwed the barrier dam down with a single screw, but later went back and added one more since the Masonite base was not laying down flat. I also enlarged the past-through hole for the LED wiring since the tank was not positioning where I wanted it and the wire was preventing sliding it sideways enough. I then glued the tank to the barrier dam using contact cement dots. I first tried PVA, but it wasn't going to hold on the ABS tank bottom well enough. The contact dots worked well once I got it settled in.

                        I piped the overhead line to the pump.

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                        Measuring for the pipe runs isn't hard, but you have to remember to allow for about 1 pipe diameter less for each place that has a "T" or elbow. You just back the measurement about 1/8" per elbow and it fits nicely.
                        The rest of the pipes from these two installations go to the pipe rack and back into the bowels of the refinery which meant I had to install the pipe rack supports to continue working. I glued these down with PVA enhanced with medium CA. I used a convenient long straight edge that has measurements on it; a 4' level. I spaced it off the front of the platform with a small combination square and clamped it to the table. I used the same square to square up the glued posts. I placed them 15 cm apart. Why centimeters you ask? It was the scale on the bottom of the level so it was convenient.

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                        The last thing I did was glue the blue pump in place in front of and to the left of the big tank which will connect to the horizontal output on the left bottom of the tank. It will be dry and ready to connect tomorrow. I need to add to valves to the HP lines before they get to the pumps and decided to paint them before hand since these are snap-on Plastruct fittings and I don't have to break the line to install. So I'll finish painting and install them tomorrow also.nComing up are the most confusing pieces with the tank platform and the distillation tower. Both have many interfaces with the rest and will take some doing. As I'm doing this it's coming clear that building it off the layout would have been troublesome. The re-design was the way to go.

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                        • Refinery Piping Fully Underway

                          Spent yesterday and today piping the refinery. It's a slow and mildly tedious process, since I'm taking time to measure distances, building the piping array and then taking it into the shop and air brushing the correct color. When dry, bringing it back to the layout and installing it. Then measuring and doing another. I'm getting about three runs done in each session. Here're some examples:

                          This run was particularly delicate since the CA joints hold the butyrate pipe sort-of. Any sudden moves caused them come apart. The solvent cement were worse.

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                          These yellow pipes were a pain since they kept coming apart from the previous stubs that were added before the tanks were installed. There are at least three more pipe runs that emirate from this platform.

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                          The clothes pins are use to weigh the pipe down into the pipe support grooves when measuring and while the CA cures.

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                          In this instance, the lower red pipe in the background was harder to install than it looks since it's in the back of the layout and I'm reaching around a lot of stuff in between. I've already broken the glue joints on four out of the five pipe racks. I knew when I installed them that I'd be reaching through them all the time and I WILL HIT THEM.

                          I made the pipe stanchion to hold the pipe level so I could get the vertical measurement component made. This is a long run since it goes to the input side of the yellow pump seen in the pictures above. I ran out of the Plastruct .312" square concrete-colored tubing that I was using for the pipe stanchions. I'm now using 3/8" square basswood. Use whatever works. I'm hoping I don't run out of pipe fittings. I'm running quite low on the larger diameter elbows and don't have any T's. I'm going to need this for the flare relief valve piping.

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                          Leaving again tomorrow for a long weekend back East due to several family events. Will be back in the shop on Wednesday. I'm not even over jet lag and we're out again. Whew! Being retired is hard work. Whenever I complain about some task on the railroad being difficult, my wife doesn't want to hear about it. "It's your hobby! It's not work and no one's telling you to do it! You're doing it for your own enjoyment, so don't complain." Sometimes, she has a point.

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                          • Refinery: Back on the job...

                            Got back from the trip back East and it was a doozy. Five hotels in 6 days. When my wife got up this morning I reminded her that the bathroom was "That way". After being in so many different rooms and beds I could have been running for election. It's no wonder that rock stars have those big buses so they're waking up in the same bed even though they're in a different city.

                            So, finally back in the shop putting in some more refinery piping.

                            But first, I want to share this. I worked with Walt Gillespie at Rusty Stumps Models to 3d Print the Victorian details for the elegant Bronx corner structure that I drew earlier this year on SketchUp. I was planning on just having one each of each detail and then resin casting the rest, but after the sample was printed I asked Walt to print all the parts I would need. The good news: they came out amazingly. The printer he has produces very high resolution acceptable for O'scale with little or no graininess. Just a little touch-up and they'll be perfect. The bad news: Walt isn't going to produce any more custom work since he needs all his time to produce his own products.

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                            Here'a close up of the cornice details which would have been a real bear to scratch build. I made the drawings with the details properly spaced to improve build efficiency. I need two more big cornices for the corners so I made two more sets to give me them.

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                            And here are the large window eyebrows.

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                            As a reminder, here's the building they're eventually going to become part of. There are little doodads under each cornice that I wanted to print, but they're too small so I'll do them by hand.

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                            I didn't do the first floor window tops since their straight parts and I can build them out of styrene strips. It was all the fancy curved stuff that presented the biggest challenges. Having those cornice assemblies. I had him also make those difficult oval windows in the mansard roof. I still have the rest of this building to figure out, namely, do I use brick sheet or have it all laser cut like the distillery. I have time to make that call since I still have a lot of work to do on the refinery.

                            So with no further ado, here's today's refinery progress.

                            Finished the second and third pipe sets for the methanizer, and figured out where I'm going to pierce the reflux drum for the heat exchanger water lines. I was only working for about 1.5 hours today. Tomorrow more will be accomplished. I'm leaving the newest line white. I have one more support to install, plus the picture doesn't show the support holding up the left end near the curve. Water lines will go into the right side of the red reflux drum.

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                            • B2010,

                              Quite the impressive detailing! You're really going whole hog on this - my hat is off to you!!! One question - what material are you going to use for covering the refinery grounds? Some sort of modeling gravel, correct? And, how are you going to adhere it to the baseboard?

                              Hank

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                              • Refinery: Base Question

                                Thanks! Yes, I'm going the gravel route like I did on the substation base. Depending on the locale, these kinds of plants have different materials as ground cover. I've been in plants on the Gulf Coast that used crushed sea shells. Here's the substation base as a reminder.

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                                I usually paint the base with earth colored latex paint and while still wet sprinkle the ground cover. After it sets a bit, I spray some Woodland Scenics spray adhesive onto it to secure it permanently.

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