A year later

I'm surprised that its been a year since my last post. I had it in my head that my last post was in the late summer of 2012. I wasn't going to post anything on this blog that wasn't related to work on The Waterfront modules, but I think it would be good to broaden the subject as long as it still involves HO modules.

I've spent most of the last year rebuilding a module for a buddy of mine. It was my idea and I wanted a break from working on the Waterfront module. Building a module of a small eastern North Carolina town is pleasantly different from an industrial waterfront.
I have also been working with a few friends on building scenery on a third friends modules. Jeff Patterson, Randy Costanza, Richard Raburn, with help from Robert Cutman, Mark Neugent and Sam DeShong worked very hard on Joe Balint's ramp and flyover modules. I think the Flyover module project was sufficiently large to justify is own blog. So I'll have to set one up and put a link in here somewhere.

I'll start with some images of the module I rebuilt. "Nottingham" was built by Hunter Jones almost 20 years ago but now belongs to Thomas Hall. As part of the reconstruction I renamed the module (with Tom's blessing) to Nashboro. The idea behind the name was to have a name that sounds so familiar to those who know North Carolina well, that they would be sure they had been through the town or at least heard of it.

The two images above show Nottingham in good condition when I received it. At this point my intention is to remove everything but the track and ballast.

The image above is of a similar angle and shows much of what has changed.The original brick structure has been reused and only moved about 3/4" for track clearance. The oil depot office was glued down so well that I would have destroyed it trying to remove it, so it stayed. The tan colored area in front of the large concrete building is the new but unfinished driveway. All the new structures along the back are part of one industry,  that makes specialty paper but ships in the pulp in boxcars from elsewhere.

 Above we have the newest part of the industry: the pulp warehouse.

 Two boxcars are spotted for unloading pulp behind the chemical storage tanks. At this point the concrete walls to catch a chemical spill have yet to be installed. The brick structure behind the green warehouse was made with a King Mill Enterprises Image. I laminated two images together and added the roof downspouts and roof overhang for added detail.

 The brick maintenance building also houses the pumps for the tanks. The large opening in the building in the background is to the boxcar loading dock. The finished product (paper) needs to be protected from the elements. The dock can accommodate (2) 50' boxcars.

Not much to Downtown Nashboro. The Station platform is to the right, the local grocery and hardware store. Not shown is the Volunteer Fire Dept on the far right.

There is lots of detail that has been added since I took these images and delivered the finished module. When I get a chance I'll take some photos and add them here for a final look.