Tap Creek

The Chicago & North Western Tap Creek Branch

 

The same area again, but now seen from the other side of the creek. The vehicle is a toy car, on which I lowered the wheels and then painted. You can read about the barn in the background if you turn to the backdrop construction section on the 'story' page.

Spotted freight cars and a caboose. The gondola and the box-car are both Intermountain models, which I had a hard time disassembling to get rid of their steel weights that interfered with the magnetic uncoupling. But now they both operate nicely.

Wayne's warehouse has both walls and roof made of corrugated steel. I simulated this with aluminum foil, on which I rolled a plastic bottle cap, from a plastic soda bottle. This left a "wavy" imprint on the foil, that looks as the pattern of corrugated steel.

CNW 1664, or is it CNW 1663, a SD-7, at Wayne's Implements.

This the MPL Cement Company, which is a facility that receives bulk loads of cement in covered hoppers. From the plant, the powdered material is trucked to local read-mix plants where concrete is produced.

The model is a Cornerstone Series kit, which a gave some extra detailing, painted and weathered. I also equipped it with a scratch-built office building and a scale house.

The name, MPL, is derived from the initials of the family members: Markus, Pia and Lennart. The picture shows CNW 1122 doing switching cores at the MPL cement plant.

The hill behind the plant is removable, to gain access to the curving main line behind it.

The fence around the plant is made from some curtain fabric I found in a drawer (I got my wife's permission to start cutting pieces from it).

Gallery 3

Industrial Area

This is an overview of the 'industrial area', nearby the creek. Here we find the local Oil and Fuel dealer, and Wayne's Implements that deals in tools, tires and farming machinery.

The oil tanks are a Plastruct kit that I painted and weathered, while the office building and Wayne's warehouse are scratch built. Wayne's got its name from my youngest son's rag-doll.

The field in the foreground is built using a light-weight spackling compound that I 'plowed' with an ordinary fork and then painted.