Well Jesse, I kind of added some smells today when I rattle-can sprayed the Tamiya bare metal onto the gas cabinet and new platform. Basement has a nice pleasant petrochem smell today. My basement is very dry and has no musty smell at all. I really dislike that smell.
Took a day trip to Marysville, KY on Saturday. It's a neat river town about 55 miles southeast of Cincy on the Ohio River. It's kind of a place that time forgot and is a real diamond in the rough. There's two reasons why it isn't flourishing as a tourist destination that I think. First, the town council seems reluctant to really attract artists and the real food scene that a tourist attraction needs. I don't know why they're so. Second, there's an imposing concrete flood wall that blocks street level views of the river. There's a plan to put a walking/biking trail on the river side of this wall that could help, but to get a river view you have to be on an elevated floor. It's keeping this city from washing away when the Ohio frequently floods.
But the architecture is precious! Lots of late 1800s and early 1900s Victorian, and new empire/french. Turrets and fancy stone work typify this very American town.
I believe this is the Cox building.
How'd ya like to 3D print this iron work?
The problem is typified by the fact that all the businesses save a few were closed at 3:00 p.m. on Saturdays. We got there about 3:10. Even the museum was closed at 3:00. They have a noted miniatures collection there which I wanted to see. "Dollar short and a day late!" You can't bring a town back to life if everything shuts down at 3.
The town on my layout is too small to include all the neat architecture that I think I'm capable of building these days. I noticed something interesting (to me at least). The Nighthawks Cafe building is three and a half stories and the Bronx building is four, but towers over the Nighthawks. I got worried that there was something inherently wrong. It turns out that ceiling height really makes a difference. On Main Street in Marysville, there were three story buildings that were almost a complete story equivalent higher than an adjacent three story building. The difference? The obvious higher ceiling heights of the more regal looking building than its neighbor.
So... I'll have two buildings of differing heights based on their internal dimensions and both will be correct and consistent with the real world.
Back to the refinery: The piping is now officially 100% complete with the addition of the gas control cabinet next to the flare. I decided to not modify the relief line on the demethanizer. I started to wiggle it to see if it would come apart easily, and of course, it would not. I decided not to make a mess of a beautifully installed and painted pipe run so I left it alone.
I painted the new platform and the gas cabinet and installed both on the layout. I then cleaned up the work bench a bit and am getting ready to make the ops building. Here's the completed unpainted gas cabinet. The doors are 0.010" styrene overlays with some small round rod as piano hinges. For the latch, I cut out some plastic and scribed some lines. I took the cabinet to the layout to capture exactly where the gas line should tie into the cabinet to line up with its mating half on the flare tower. I then marked and drilled that location. Before painting I glued the bottom and side pipes in place.
I painted the new platform with the same scheme as the others, bare metal walkways and stairs, yellow railings and Japan IDF green for the structural steel. Bases were painted concrete color. Gas cabinet is also bare metal with orange piping. I still have to paint the vertical "concrete" pedestals holding up all those pipes.
Here's the new platform installed next to the demethanizer.
To me, walkways, stairs and ladders really jazz up and industrial installation. You can't have too many of them.
Talked to Andre Garcia recently and we're going to probably cut the Bronx building sometime in December. Now that I've invested in the 3D printed parts, I really need to get it built. I finished up the laser-cutting drawings today. Andre is out of pocket for at least another month so I'm holding onto the drawings until he's ready to act on them.
