The JSSX This Week (3/02/19)

Well, this week I got that styrofoam mound painted in rust and brown tones as the base for a pile of rusty metal in the scrap yard. The pile is about 2 feet long, so approximately 175 HO scale feet. (As a side note, when I painted 2 smaller pieces grey (as a base for piles of scrap aluminum) with enamel spray paint, the styrofoam reacted with the paint and off-gassed, bubbling away outside for about 35 minutes afterward. Lesson learned.

I also spread a bunch of ground cover dirt (the real stuff that Brian gave me, sifted) around the scrap facility too, so the area is starting to look a little more like I think it should.

The mound on the far side of the gondolas is the base for a pile of rusty scrap metal. I brush painted it with rust coloured acrylic craft paint, and then added a few passes of brown and grimy black with the air brush to vary the colour a bit. I don't know what I'm going to use to cover the whole thing with individual pieces of steel.  At 2 feet long, that's going to be a lot of little bits and pieces to cover it all.

I have 2 of these scrap dumpsters, which are far too new looking for a scrap yard, so they'll have to receive some weathering, and the little shed serving as the yard office as well.


I ran across some loading dock doors in a box pf spare parts that I could use for that building with all those broken windows over at South Industrial Blvd. My plan had been to find some photos of dock doors on-line, but I never really did see what I was after, which was beaten up and graffitied doors. I was going to edit and print such pictures out on paper, mount them to styrene and install those in the doorways. Our home printer has broken down anyway, with some phantom "carriage jam" readout on the display. We can't find any evidence at all of the darn thing being jammed.  Planned obsolescence by the manufacturer, I'm sure.

Also for that building, I've finally gotten around to adding the missing wall to the upper level at the one end.  That took me about 10 minutes, or 3 months, depending on how you want to look at it. It looks a lot better now anyway.  I still need to find a fire escape for this end of the building, and some roof-top details, like ductwork, etc. as well.

There's an old JSSX flatcar temporarily spotted in front of the loading dock where I've finally installed 3 roll-up style doors.  At the top of the structure is the wall that I made from a piece of styrene siding.  It's painted to more or less match the grey brick colour of the building and I've added a bit of rust and grime streaking.