Soap factory model planning

My next model will be a soap factory.  In my layout era (1939) soap factories were in some ways similar to chemical factories.  The ingredients in soap at that time were kind of nasty including such wonderful ingredients as various acids (auric, myristic, palmitic, steric, oleic, linoliec, and ricinoleic), sodium, potassium, oils, fats and alkaline solutions - fun stuff.  My wife knew of neighbors who in the 1960s would make their own soaps.

Below is a 1916 photo of the Procter & Gamble soap factory located in Ivorydale, Ohio.  It is significantly larger than what I will build but there are some elements I will be using such as a power plant and chemical tanks.

The process of soap making in that era, while it varied to some extent, in general it started with boiling a mixture of animal fat or fatty oils with a one or more of a variety of acids.  When the mixture was properly blended, the resulting material was placed in some form of drying environment ranging from racks to drying tunnels.  The soap was then cut into bars for packaging and sale.  There were of course other processes using other ingredients.  The soap products of the time had some fanciful names - one of my favorites being Goblin Soap with the image of a little goblin on the package.

As usual, I drew a rough sketch of what I intend to build which essentially consists of three buildings, the center being the power house.  It will be against the wall so presumably the factory extends to the rear through the wall.  Below are some soap factory diagrams.

Above is a cross-section of a soap factory plant.

And here above is a floor plan of the same plant.

And above is a general view of a small soap factory with cylindrical soap pans.

This is a photo of the tops of soap pans.

Above is a photo of soap driers.

I have started constructing two of the three buildings.  More later.

End of layout hillside

A while back I built an L shaped extension to my layout in the next room, reached by a tunnel trough the wall.  I have been building structures for this extension and it is filling up.  I am currently designing another factory building to go against the wall and I have realized I am running out of room and approaching the end of the layout extension.  Beyond this is a series of cabinets and shelves where I store my modeling materials.  Since I do not want to move those things (I really have no convenient place to move them to) I will next put an extension out into the room creating a C shaped extension).  So since that end of the layout has no wall I decided to build a tall hillside as a view block.

For the purpose of this photo I placed a sky and cloud block to hide the shelving behind it.  The tree line to the left is a photo cropped from the internet.  The hillside is  built with a wood frame, plaster castings and scenic material.  Most of the scenic material is by Silflor and Heki.  There are a few bits of super trees embedded in it.  The tree line will likely have an industry in front of it eventually.

The photo above shows the end of the layout and the start of the wood frame for the hill side.

I am currently designing the next factory model.

HO Monthly magazine

I used to subscribe to almost every model railroad magazine and had most issues dating back to the 1930s or 1940s,  I finally sold them off and have very few left, and I do not subscribe to any model railroad magazine any longer.  There is an abundance of information available on the Internet.  One magazine I kept was volume 1, issue one of HO Monthly magazine, later called HO Model Trains.  I had every issue of this magazine up until they were bought by Model Railroader and folded into their publication.

Above is issue #1 - may 1948.  It includes a history of HO gauge by Eric Lanal (the pen name of Allan Lake Rice).  It also includes a list of the HO scale manufacturers of the time.  The list includes Mantua, Varney, Silver Streak, Ideal, Ulrich, Megow, Parks, A-C, Athearn, Manor, M. Dale Newton (Redball), Walthers, Lehigh and Sterling.  A few of them I am not familiar with.  Most are no longer in business.  It is fascinating to read about the history of our hobby.

Want to buy a locomotive?

The ad above was listed in 1911.

Damaged reefer car model complete

I have completed the damaged reefer car model.  It did not turn out as well as I had hoped as the card stock sides were difficult to torture properly.  Also a reefer is not the best type of car for doing this but I had car sides so - what the heck.  I will probably place it on a shelf as I have no convenient siding on the layout - we will see.

The end of the car is bashed in somewhat like the prior prototype photo I posted.  The side door on this side is also popped open a little and the near ice hatch is popped up a little.

Perhaps you can see the slightly open door in this photo.  I searched for an actual photo of an open reefer door but could not find one.

I did some fairly heavy weathering with chalks to make the car look poorly kept.

Olde Frothingslosh Beer car

Since I am on the subject of reefers, here is a car built from an old plastic kit by my father for his Troll & Elfin model railroad.  It is an Olde Frothingslosh beer reefer.

"Olde Frothingslosh - the beer that is so light the foam is on the bottom" originated on Pittsburgh radio many years ago as a joke ad.  The name captured the imagination of many people so the Pittsburgh Brewing Company actually marketed a beer with that name as a specialty item.  I do not know if the beer is still available.  The NMRA also published card sides for this car in the Bulletin many years ago.  I have a set of those but am not sure I will ever build them.

Damaged reefer car model progress

The damaged reefer car is partially completed.  The sides and ends are mostly done and there is half a roof.  Still lots of weathering to be done.  The damaged end is more work than I expected.  The fact that the sides are card stock makes it a little harder.

The doors on the other side are partially open.  I don't recall seeing a model with the reefer doors open and I have no examples, so I made them the way I thought they should be.

Below are some examples of other damaged freight cars.

Above are some damaged gondola cars.

In the photo above the locos are damaged but the freight cars seem to be OK - strange.

And here are some damaged hopper cars.

The SS Ltd truck

I have made limited progress on this truck model.  It is an annoying build.  I completed the trailer body and painted it using Scale Coat paint - what a mess!  It ended up uneven and glossy.  I threw all (5) of my scale coat paints in the trash.  Boy do I miss Floquil paints.  I have a few remaining but they are disappearing quickly.  Interestingly, the older square bottle paints seem to be holding up better than the new round bottle paints.  I am in the process of removing that messy paint.  Most of my painting going forward will be done with acrylic paints.