Bob Chaparro wrote:
Your photos and the models are fantastic. Would you care to share with us the techniques you >used to construct some of the items in the grove and the precooler details?
Thanks for the compliment! :-) My model was almost entirely kitbashed from Walthers parts--R. J. Frost Cold Storage, icing platforms, and foundry canopy. The pre-cooler apparatus are four sections of flexible straws, telescoped together and painted. I used Walthers ice decks for the top surface of both decks and the underpinnings of the ice-only deck. The pre-cooler deck has solid concrete walls, so is done with styrene. The shed needs roofing material, and everything still needs weathering. Even at about a fourth of the size of the prototype, it is still a very large building in HO.
The shed is 24" x 12", the main building is 20" x 7" and the machinery section is 7" x
4". I didn't have much room for a "B Yard" itself, so I use it only for reefers--my "A Yard" is my main freight facility on the San Bernardino end of the layout. My "B Yard" will hold about 24 reefers.
All of my 130 or so orange trees were done by my wife Carol, who grew up in an orange grove in Fontana and said she knew what they should look like. Basically they are sponge pieces cut to shape and put on a stick, and then Woodland Scenics foam pieces were hot-glued over the sponge base. Several shapes, densities and colors were used, for variety. They were then sprayed with Scenic Cement adhesive and Woodland Scenics oranges sprinkled on, followed, when dry, by more spray adhesive. She found that you have to go easy on the spray or the oranges turn white.
I routed grooves for irrigation ditches and painted them earth color, then "flooded" with clear varnish. Standpipes are styrene tube with a couple of rows of tape wrapped around them, followed by several coats of thick paint to blend in the tape. Various Preiser and other figures were adapted to orange picking--Preiser makes some nice painters on ladders, which take only a little judicious snipping and painting to become pickers.
I have added a few more photos to the modeling folder I created yesterday.
Tom Cockle
Fieldbrook CA
