Industrial Chic?

nevard_120603_CQx_DSC_5315_WEB, a photo by nevardmedia on Flickr.

6 weeks of so ago I mentioned the need to get on with unfinished projects, with a new siding and aggregate loading facilities being my prime focus of my current personal projects.

I like to adapt existing kits when possible, especially for fiddly industrial stuff. For the loading thingy here, a Ratio coaling tower (547) has been made up over a couple of afternoons, and obviously it needs a nice paint-job and dose of patina to make it come to life. This is an older style of kit, older in that it uses a huge number of parts, which could have been moulded in single tougher parts. For this reason I don't think it's a kit for the total beginner, some of the parts being more akin to a scratchbuilder's aid due to lack of locating lugs and markings esecially when it come to the laddering and handrails. Still, I hope you agree even in its unfinished state it mas built up into an interesting and maybe even exciting structure.

Whilst the kit is structurely complete when it come to how the manufacturer intended, I'll be adding extra bits to make it suit the location better as a means of loading aggregate and minerals into open wagons. One of the additional features will be an aerial conveyor much like the one just seen in the distance, and if I'm clever I might even try to devise of a way of making it possible to actually load wagons with a loose load hidden which runs through from behind the backscene. But there again I might not because I'm not one for mechanical ingenuity!