Yet another Tank House

After I had finished my John Krohn Tank House, which consists mainly in one single structure, I wanted to build yet another one, a little bit different.

While browsing the net for pictures of tank houses, I stumbled over the Stanley Ranch Tank House that's actually part of the Garden Grove Historical Society's Stanley Ranch Museum Historical Village.

The tank tower reminded me of a railroad watertank and I figured out that if I would find a suitable model, I would simply plank the timber bents and add a shed to it as a stand-in for a free-lanced close-to-prototype tank house.

The search for a suitable model proved to be not as easy as I'd expected. Most of the recent models were either too big or too expensive. I would only need the timber supports for my project and the rest will go to my parts box, so a cheaper model was needed. Fortunately the Model Power Water Tank did the job.

I assembled the timber bents as per the instructions, using the base of the model as a guide to align the sides until the glue had dried. But before I assembled the supports I sanded the sides smooth to eliminate the bolt heads on the cross braces. I filled in strips of .020 styrene to obtain a equalized surface to glue the siding onto.

As a base for the long shed I used a Walthers office shanty which I had lying around already assembled. I discarded the window and door castings as well as the roof. I cut pieces of novelty siding to size to fit around the tank tower. I made a cutout for a Grandt Line 5-panel door casting.
I also covered the tank platform with scribed siding to simulate planking and lined the sides with strip styrene.

I cut openings for a window and a freight door into the right siding of the shed. On the tank tower I also used the protruding timbers with the small platform. It serves as an access platform to the water tank. This tank house has no interior stairway, so I will lean a ladder against the small platform to get to the tank.

Because the tank tower walls lean inwards, I had to fit the sidewalls of the shed accordingly. This is achieved by a bit of trial and error and a few passes with a sanding stick. Then I glued the two sidewalls to each side of the Walthers shed. As shown in the picture, I used the locations of one side and the rear window as a guide for the openings of the new windows. Because the new side walls are longer than the original Walthers shed, I installed the freight door there. I also fitted the missing floor in between the original shed and the tank using a piece of .060" styrene. 

For the end wall and the window location I used the Walthers shed as a guide and glued the new wall directly to the old shed wall.

Contrary to the John Krohn Tank House, which has an enclosed water tank, this one is open. The tank on the Stanley Ranch Tank House is rather small and the one from the railroad water tank too big. I looked around for something in between. I choose a piece from a mailing tube with 2" diameter. I left the plastic plug in one side and planked the side with 1x6 and 1x4 scale lumber strips cut to size using my NWSL Chopper.
 

I applied a small bead of carpenters glue to the carton base and spread it with an old paintbrush. Then I applied the wood strips. This goes very straight forward.

I made a new roof for the shed using Plastruct Shingle sheet cut to size.

I stained the water tank with a mix of a few drops of India Ink and Isopropyl Alcohol. I applied the stain with an old paint brush. As this was my vacation project I had forgotten to take the stain mix with me. Otherwise I would have stained the wood before applying it to the mailing tube.
 

This view shows the ladder leaning to the small platform to access the water tank.
All the subassemblies and roof are only put in place and not glued yet. Now the tank house is ready for the paint shop.

Stay tuned for the finish.

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.

Modeling an orange grove (Final part)

 This installment completes my orange grove project. Although it is a relatively small spot on my layout, I had to build 50 orange trees. For this grove I only explored two methods of upgrading ready-made trees from Woodland Scenics and Life Like. The cellulose sponge method as described by the Corona Model Railroad Society will be explored on the next grove.

Initially I only had 15 Life Like wire-brush trees, so I needed to add clump foliage to some 35 deciduous trees from Woodland Scenics (# TR1502) These trees are 1 1/4 to 2" tall, but compared to an almost round orange tree, they looked rather bare.

I tried to glue the foliage with carpenters white glue, but quickly found out that it took too long to set and that the foliage clumps did not adhere well, ending in a real mess.
Hob-E-Tac adhesive from Woodland Scenics proved to be the ideal glue for this project. Although it sticks to almost everything, it holds the foliage clumps tight in place.

I already used this adhesive successfully when I covered the San Juan Capistrano depot with vines.

I filled the tree with clump foliage until it had its distinctive round shape

After the adhesive had dried I sprayed the trees with 3M (or similar) spray adhesive and rolled them into a finer grade of foliage.

The final step was an overspray of strong hairspray and then I sprinkled the Woodland Scenics oranges all around.

After the whole batch had dried overnight, they were ready to be planted.

Before finishing the project I continued the orchard on the backdrop, adding one small Woodland Scenics (#TR1501) deciduous tree at the beginning of each painted row

The smaller trees in the left center of the picture above give a bit of distance to the scene. When inspected closer, they could as well be young orange trees.

If I compare the two tree types I would rather use the Life Like trees again, because they already have the round shape needed for mature citrus trees. The filling in of the bare spots on the Woodland Scenics trees takes more time, but therefore gives more variety in the shape of the trees.

Well this resumes my orange grove project. I'll concentrate on finishing my country road and concentrate on another important scenic element for Southern California - palm trees. I have a bunch of ready-made and kit palms, but I'll also try to build some from scratch.

Stay tuned!

Oh, BTW. I thank all my faithfull followers of this blog for their precious help and advice all along this project.  

Modeling an orange grove (Part 4)

The weather forecast announces frost for the night. Time to inspect the orchard heaters and fill them up with oil. The smudge pots were developed after a disastrous freeze in Southern California in January 1913 wiped out a whole crop.

When the air temperature reaches 29°F (-2°C) the pots are ignited. For each additional degree of drop, another hole is opened on the control cap. Below 25°F there's nothing more that can be done to enhance the heating effects.

The citrus growers needed a lot of workers to keep the pots burning.

Photo from a brochure

 

A smudge pot or orchard heater is an oil-burning device used to prevent frost on fruit trees. Usually it has a large round base with a chimney coming out of the middle of the base. The smudge pot is placed between trees in an orchard. The burning oil creates some heat, but more importantly, a large amount of smoke, particulates, carbon dioxide and water vapor. This artificial smog forms a blanket that blocks infrared light, thereby preventing radiative cooling that would otherwise caus or worsen frost. (Low clouds can have a similar "infrared blanket" effect, which is why cloudy nights tend to be warmer than clear-sky nights. (Source Wikipedia)

Century Foundry Metal Works (www.showcaseminiatures.com) sells HO scale smudge pots. I painted the white metal castings aluminum with some black on the chimney and also added some Rust-All. Then I placed them between the rows of orange trees.

This smudge pot has been recently lit off, as the exhaust on a fully hot pot becomes almost invisible with a mere hint of red/orange flame. Note that the filler/flue cap is in the fully open position (all holes open) (Source: Wikipedia)

In this picture from the Library of Congress we see a view of smudge pots in an orange grove on Victoria Avenue in Arlington Heights, Riverside, California. Following WWII, air pollution captured the public's attention and orchard heaters, like smoking diesel trucks and open burning at garbage dumps, were a signigicant and visible source of smod. In 1950, the Orange County Air Pollution Control District adopted a regulation prohibiting the use of dirty fuels, including old tires and used motor oil in smudge pots.

During the 1950s, growers started using wind machines in place of smudge pots. But orchard heaters only fell out of use completely by the 1970's (!!)

The ground between the rows of citrus trees  was regularly plowed and disked to smooth the earth. Weeds were controlled by chemicals like weedoil and others.

Stay tuned for more on modeling an orange grove

Modeling an orange grove (Part 3)

The first row of orange trees is planted. In the meantime I learned some new facts about the "old" method of irrigation. Every row of orange trees has two ditches or furrows on each side. One close to the stem and the other along the drip line of the trees. Unfortunately my ditches were already cut and the ground cover in, so I only have one ditch on each side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've found the two photos above on the Library of Congress site. The left picture shows a weir at the head of a row of orange trees, with the irrigation furrows on both sides. The right view also shows two standpipes that distribute the water to the weirs via underground pipeline. Both pictures were shot in an orchard in Arlington Heights, Riverside, California

I tried Woodland Scenics Realistic Water to fill the ditches with water, but found the next morning that everything had dried up an the water was gone. I wanted that a "wet" look remains along the ditches so I thought that some kind of varnish could possibly do the trick.









A bottle of Testors Glosscote came in handy (I rarely use the glossy). With a pipette or eye dropper I filled the ditches again and the gloss seeped into the ground around the ditch leaving a wet appearance

My first batch of trees was ready to plant. In Part 2 I described how I upbraded the uniform Life Like orange trees with added foliage and Woodland Scenics oranges. To plant the trees I cut the simulated roots platform off and pushed the trunk as far into the hole in the ground until the trunk was completely inserted. On mature trees, the trunks are not visible.

 Now I only need to upgrade some 35 Woodland Scenics trees to fill the rest of the orchard

 The Life Like "wire bottle brush" trees look very realistic after additional foliage is added and they are a cheap alternative versus other brands ready made trees and less messy than the self made sponge trees. In fact no manufacturer produces realistic citrus trees at the moment, leaving us modelers to our own ingenuity.
 

 In the meantime I also started to scenic the surroundings of the orchard. First was the country road that I made from 3mm thick cork and painted it asphalt grey. Weeds and grass along the road will finish off this scene.

Please stand by for more on modeling an orange grove!