Building a Tank House (Part 4 and finish)

 Just in time for the World Water Day, I finished my Tank House. I placed it in an appropriate surrounding for the photo, although this is not the final emplacement.

But to this step, there were still some other to do first.

Using my jig to hold the stringers, assembling the stairs was fairly easy. I attached the stairs to the second floor landing on the upper end and to a piece of plain styrene, representing a concrete footing, at the other end.

Then I glued the posts in place, taking care to keep everything straight.

I used 4x8 strip styrene for the handrails. I've cut the different pieces to size and then sanded each part until it fit snuggly between the posts. A drop of liquid cement attached them permanently.











I painted the structure white and after the paint had dried over night, I installed the staircase. As you'll see I added another sheet of styrene, to represent a concrete slab under the staircase. I tried it without, but the whole assembly would be too woobly and could only be fixed correctly when placing it on the layout.

While the glue was setting, I turned to the roof. I covered the styrene roof panels with double sided tape. This sticks very well to styrene and gives a more secure hold for the shingles.

I inteded to use the tab shingles from AMB Laser Kit, but found the package almost empty, so I decided to use the diamond shingles instead.

The shingle sheets from AMB come on self sticking backing and they are easily attached strip by strip. I approximately measured the strips I needed for each row and cut them to size. Then I peeled the backing paper off and attached the strip to the sticky roof. When finished with one side I just cut the extending strips off along the roof line with scissors.

For additional information I can only recommend the book "Tankhouse, Californias redwood water towers from a bygone era, by Thomas Cooper. I fortunately found a signed copy by the author on the internet. It shows many different types of tankhouses and what the owners made out of them since municipal water management made most of them obsolete.

Finally putting the different sub-assemblies together was a snap.

Here are the views from all the four sides. Only need some decent weathering and than it's ready for the layout.

Oh yes, I also added the shaft that powered the pump. The final place for the tankhouse is still to be determined. I shot it in an appropriate environment for now.

Well that's it for this project. Stay tuned for more to come.