Thanks for the likes!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
