PIPE FOUNDRY Part-10

I wish I could report better progress but things have been going a bit slower than expected.  I seriously underestimated the amount of time needed to get my daughter packed, moved, and safely off to college.  I must have spent four hours just setting up her new laptop alone.   I also took some time on friday night to attend a model railroader picnic - I'm not sure if it was the south Jersey chapter of the NMRA or something called the South Jersey Operators Group, but either way, a great bunch of guys.  I plan to get more involved with this group.  It's something I've wanted to do for awhile but just haven't gotten around to it.  I guess you could say I have been somewhat of a loner model railroader for many years, but groups like that, and the upcoming Steel Mill Modeler's Meet have shown me another side of the hobby.  More on this when I have time.

A fellow at the model railroaders picnic gave me a suggestion on making scrap loads in a blender - we need a few loads plus tons of scrap in piles.  You can see the preliminary results of this method - very realistic and very easy.  Once we set it in the piles and car loads we will spray or wash it black and then dry brush rust colored.    There are a few other pictures of the Free-Mo module under construction.  It was more difficult than I thought to construct the module and follow the guidelines.  On problem we ended up having was with the placement of the coke dock.  To place it in the prototype location we would have had to extend the module length by around two or three feet - so we changed the location but ended up with a problem concerning the conveyor belt.  To solve this we built a small building to simulate an elevator.  Another coke dock issue was that we weren't able to use an elevated dock , although the prototype in Alabama didn't have a raised dock like the Burlington plant.  

This will probably be my last post until I return from the Steel Mill Modeler's Meet about a week from today.  I'll post many pictures then of the Meet and our module.  Hope to see some of you in North Carolina