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Hello guys! Finally I'm starting a new mini layout. As mentioned in the title, it will be an industrial layout. I'm thinking on a size of about 90x60cm. As base I´m using the Greenmax factory kit and additional pipes kit and the Walther's North Island Refinery. I'll define the layout later as I'm just starting with the buildings and will play a liitle with their position to define the track position. Another thing I'm considering is to light all the complex using fiber optics, but it will be a process that'll take pretty much time to do, so it's still in consideration. The running material will be a DE10 and some Takis. I'll see as I go along. Well, as always any ideas or opinnions are most welcomed. Martin

As part of my work building out the the cement facility based on the Taiheiyo Cement Fujiwara Plant in Inabe I've designed and printed a bunch of structures found at the facility. This project contains a slurry tank for mixing wet materials together. You can find the reference in the Taiheiyo plant here. For some reason in the Google Maps satellite imagery the tank looks incredibly green but most reference photos looked more like a milky, concrete color. The main body file is designed with a center bit on the bottom to place in a drill for painting. I placed a brush with various colors at marks that aligned with the mixing paddles and rotated the drill to get the circular patterns. I'm currently debating adding a model water resin with a milky white color in a thin layer on top of this but haven't decided if it would look right yet. It's comprised of STL files for the main body, the walkway and the two pieces of machinery (rough models of a motor to control the mixing paddles and a motor to control the rotation of the walkway.) The file for the walkway is admittedly unnecessarily large because of the complexities of the mesh used for the slurry collecting on the paddles. After printing I realized they were much smaller (and far less visible) than I was thinking in my head. I did not modify since printing so you get what you get here. The files are available on Google Drive here. Feel free to print and use them on your own layout and modify as needed. No commercial use.

As part of my work building out the the cement facility based on the Taiheiyo Cement Fujiwara Plant in Inabe I've designed and printed a bunch of structures found at the facility. These industrial storage tanks are made to replicate this area on the grounds and using this industrial tank as a reference. Obviously not exact to what is on the grounds but using creative license to compress the space is necessary. It's comprised of STL files for each of the three tanks (due to differences in the top railings), the crossing plates (print x2) and the base plate. The files are available on Google Drive here. Feel free to print and use them on your own layout and modify as needed. No commercial use.

So. For many modellers the gauge 1 layout that was a turning point in scenic 10mm modelling was my 'Mardy Colliery' built in the mid 1980s. I had become more and more disillusioned with 0 scale and the rapid commercialisation of the scale and wanted to do something more obscure. Gauge 1 in those days was principally live steam with a mixture of clockwork and various electrics systems thrown in. The Gauge 1 Model Railway Association had done an incredible job of promoting the scale and rescuing it from obscurity. I had made a start on modelling the London South Western Railway and my infamous Beattie 2-4-0 (the longest project I ever did) was progressing nicely but the plan for the layout, based on the Swanage branch, was already looking impractical so a rethink was on the cards. As the then chairman of the Sheffield 0 gauge group the other members had allowed me to lay a third outer rail on the test track spaced at 45mm so I could test and run in the locos and rolling stock What was needed was a highly detailed scenic layout at 10mm to the foot but with small prototypes and lots of operational possibilities so the obvious route to go was industrial modelling. The NCB (National Coal Board) was an obvious choice with its varied fleet of Industrial locos shunting main line wagons. tight curves, steep gradients and a generally run down appearance. One of the principal requirements was a steep, curved approach to the colliery from the hidden sidings and the requirement to run round to get the wagons into the coal screens. In this way there was no simple run in and run out method of operation, you had to do some serious shunting. The incline was just guesswork with some test trains proving it would work although there were issues with buffer locking of which more, later. Under construction in one of the photographic studios at work The track up the incline and along the front was Tenmille flexitrack and points and at the rear Marklin points and set track. This threw up a problem at the first show as the locos sparked badly when they were running on the Marklin track. This was traced to the cast iron driving wheels mismatching electrically with the stainless steel rail. First show with very bare scenery! More tomorrow kev