The Other Side of the River

Hello,

Followers of my blog who have seen pictures of the car float at West Mill yard know that I've commented that the coal hoppers on it are heading to "Port Owen's Power Plant".   The power plant is an imaginary "off layout" destination...or at least it was until now!

"Stay at home" orders during the pandemic gave me time and a desire to build something.   I kept thinking about creating another interchangeable industrial scene on my shelf layout expansion of the Kings Port Division and finally decided the project would be Port Owen's car float and power plant.

Some online searching for photos of power plants to model yielded this image that I liked a lot. It became the inspiration for Port Owen's coal fired facility.

Coincidentally, we had just ordered a new computer desk that arrived with hard wood panels like this to brace the inside of the cardboard packaging.  I immediately saw their potential as building materials!

 I had some leftover plastic corrugated sign stock that I added to the wood panels to suggest the gray part of the power plant in the "inspiration photo" above.

The basic configuration is now set up to see how it fits.   I set my yard-tracks module in front of the building on the shelf layout to suggest a large facility that might handle several hoppers.

I sprayed the components with rattle can paints.  The red is a primer color.

Windows, details, and weathering added....

Turning my attention to the car float part of the Port Owen scenes, I gathered miscellaneous parts I had on hand.  The "windows" used for the power plant were leftover parts of a mini paint roller grid.   Two old Model Power signal bridge supports will serve as the uprights for the float apron weight system.  The blue top of the paint grid will join them together.  I had an Atlas bridge plate with tracks that I cut into two small sections.  The actual float bridge was constructed from scrap wood.

The car float apron starts to take shape with a little help from some square wood dowel stock cut to crate concrete bases.  The "water" is a rigid vinyl tile leftover from a downstairs bathroom renovation, spray painted gloss black and over sprayed with gloss medium a few times to make it shiny. 

I found a photo of a switch tower online, cut it out and mounted it on cardboard as a back drop building.  SD9 # 6925 seen below (needs a front coupler!) will serve as the power at Port Owen...

...and as a mirror image to its sister unit #6922 working the car float in West Mill.

I used a piece of 1" X 6" pine board to make the car float.   I tried to make it look as much like the one at West Mill as possible so it would appear to have made the trek across the river to reach Port Owen.  Corrugated metal sea walls set in place behind it as a "for instance" in this picture were made from cardboard packaging materiel from our new computer desk.

More details were added to the float apron weight system.

 

I thought the scene needed another background building to make it less obvious that the mountains are the same backdrop used in other scenes when I interchange my shelf layout industries for photos and videos.  It occurred to me to create a new industry that could also receive and send cars on the car float between West Mill and Port Owen.

Port Owen Brick Co. is born!  Ill do some research to figure out how to include car movements for this industry in our virtual ops. 

Look for Port Owen to appear semi-regularly in future P.C.C.M.s!