Those New Storage Silos at MidWest Plastics

Work progressed on the new set of silos at the local Midwest Plastics plant. In fact, the silos are finished up, installed, and actually they are looking pretty good.  

Now, this was not the easiest of kits to assemble, for me anyway, as to begin with the silo halves didn't really mate up as well as I had expected.  There were also a few of the piping parts that did not mate up properly, but I wonder if that might be because I had decided to only use 3 of the 4 silos. I'm happy with that decision though.  Odd numbered groupings of just about anything always seem to look better to me for some reason.

I spray painted the 3 silos with Rustoleum "Chalked Aged Grey". and then weathered them before I put them onto the base. That became a problem as they didn't fit over the locating rings that were molded in place. When I tried to press them onto the base the weld seams on two silos split apart.  An easy repair, but still not something you'd expect to happen.  I ended up shaving the round locators off of the base and then gluing the silos down.

The rest of the kit went together a bit better, but the hose and pipe pieces didn't line up quite as I would have hoped either.  That was overcome by slightly bending the parts and use of CA type glue.  I painted / weathered most of the remaining parts while they were still on the sprues.

The new silos are spaced differently, so before I installed them I had to increase the size of the notch in the building by about 3.5 inches or so.

Here's a look at the plant with the old silos:

And a close-up of those old silos:

Here are the 3 new silos coming along nicely on the workbench.  The railings and the ladder assembly were hand painted with Armour Yellow and then sprayed with Modelflex Rust.  Once installed, I added more weathering by hand, using artist type acrylics. I found that streaking the rust straight downward on a cylinder is not the easiest thing to do as the brush tended to want to wander to the side.

And with the building modified the whole assembly is set into place.  The walkways at the top are in place, and I added a chain link fence (with an access gate) across the front of the storage area.  I also added a personnel door to the building near the right-hand silo.  I made up a couple of flexible hoses and ran them across the ground beside the gate.  The hoses are lengths of solder painted black and grey.

And an overall view of MidWest Plastics as it stands now.  I've still got a bit more that I want to do on this plant, such as adding some detail to the roof, a rail access gate, and some more piping.

Also thinking now of maybe adding a 2nd storey wall to run the length of the building behind the silo area.  Maybe made of brick or cement block.