There's actually enough organic chemical smells in my workshop all the time to provide the ambience.
Exercise day... finally getting back to routine since the Hawaii trip. What did get accomplished was finishing the assembly of the new work platform and started building the flare gas control cabinet.
I adjusted the platform length so it came out to an even number of Plastruct ABS railing spacing. I took about 1/8" off each end and it worked. I glued on the railing and then went about fitting the steps. Plastruct ABS stairs have a notch at the top that nestles into the platform to which you're gluing it. I cut a piece of 1/8" Masonite as the concrete bottom step and measured the staircase so it would work out reasonably well at the bottom. After cutting, I luckily found out that the Plastruct stair railing also fit with a an even number of rail sections. This too was glued onto the stair. Then this assembly was glued to the platform with some help from medium CA and Tamiya solvent cement.
Took this assembly to the refinery to see how it fit. The foot pads' width on the tank side kept it from closing in tight and the flare pipe ran right down the middle of the platform. Too bad I didn't think about this platform before I ran that pipe since I could have raised it above a O'scale plant operator's head. That train has left the station. I'm not touching that pipe! So I trimmed the foot pads to give me a bit more clearance. Our worker will still have to climb over that pipe to get to the other two valves. I won't tell OSHA if you don't. Plastruct should have included this platform on their plans since those valves would be unreachable without it.
I took the assembly outside and gave it a coat of Tamiya primer gray and left it to dry over the weekend. I did refit it back on the layout to see what it looked like. Now that I'm studying this picture, I may modify that pipe after all. I can move the vertical portion back to the relief valve. It would require and new pipe support. It's not too hard to break those pipe joints plus I now have a lot of large elbows and large pipe to make new stuff if I have to. It would make that platform much more sensible.
For the gas control cabinet, I'm just cobbling together some 0.040" styrene with some 1/8" square legs. I'll put on a pair of separate doors and hinges to provide some interest and will have a gas inlet and outlet. The inlet pipe will come out of the ground and the outlet will go to the gas line on the flare. This is a very early picture so the box looks pretty crude. It needed to dry overnight (or Monday) before I can finish sand it.
