Hudson Cement becomes Empire Grain

[Ralph]

I haven't posted a picture in a long time so I thought I'd start a thread about my efforts to turn the unrealistically massive Hudson Cement complex on my layout into a hopefully believably massive grain elevator. In addition to my concerns about the believability of the size of the cement plant I have many more cars appropriate for grain traffic than cement. Some research about grain facilities along the Hudson River and also at Buffalo NY made me think it would be reasonable to have a large grain complex on a Northeastern based layout.

I am not a very good modeler of structures. It isn't my favorite part of the hobby. I'll confess to having some limited skills including a lack of patience and poor abilities controlling a sharp blade when trying to cut square windows. I'm also a cheapskate...er...a thrifty person, who likes to see what can be done on a budget.

So, what follows are my own uniquely Ralph-like efforts at making this happen.

Here is the old Hudson Cement plant:



First of all, to make the complex look more like a grain elevator I needed material for more silos. PVC pipe is very popular and not too expensive but I happened to notice a display of mailing tubes at a local liquidator store for 50 cents each. They were two feet long and 3 inches in dameter.



I bought ten and cut them in half with the finishing blade for my miter saw.