Building EP Minerals - Part 2

This is the 2nd installment of my effort to build a model of the EP Minerals processing plant in Lovelock, Nevada for my layout. This time I am turning my attention to those vertical silos with the angled roofs,  I found another photo of the prototype on the internet that shows these both as a single and as a pair.

I started with 1/2 inch plastic electrical conduit cut at a 45-degree angle at each end.  Then I attached .020 styrene sheet to each end.  While I mostly use Plastruct liquid solvent for styrene-to-styrene bonds, I find that ACC or Super Glue works best on these plastic pipes.  The edges of the styrene ends were cut and sanded smooth with the contours of the pipes.

To simulate the three horizontal ribs seen on the tops of the silos I used .030 x .030 styrene strip. 

The horizontal bands that are noticeable in the porotype photo were done with .020 x .060 styrene strips.  I used a pipe cutter to mark rings around the pipes that the strips could be aligned to.

The strips were first curved by wrapping them around a rod, then attached to the pipe little by little with ACC.  

I ended up making 4 of these silos.  I don't think I am satisfied with the way the legs came out and may redo them.  These will join the other components waiting to be painted.

Building EP Minerals - Part 1

At the west end of the Lovelock expansion section is an industry called EP Minerals which I had introduced to the layout in THIS POST back in October of 2022.  The time has come to actually build a model representation of this industry.  The photo below shows the spot on the layout that this industry will occupy.  It's about 18 inches square which should be plenty of room.  The track shown entering the site is not glued down as I have not decided on a track arrangement yet.  The real plant has at least 3 track spurs and I plan to represent that in this model.

The photo below is from Googlemaps and is a Streetview from Upper Valley Road near where the railroad spurs enters the plant.  What catches my eye in this photo are the rotary kilns and the towers with the sharply sloped roofs.  So those are the features that I will focus on with the remaining parts of the plant being more freelanced.

A photo from another angle shows that there are three of the rotary kilns and I plan to have two of them in my model of this facility.  I did a bit of research on what these actually do and found that they are used in many mineral processing operations.  I am surprised that I have never seen any models of these offered in kit form.  Not finding any kit or 3D models available I set about scratch building these.

Got off to a bit slow start on this.  First tried to wrap .040 x .020 styrene strip around a styrene tube to represent the support bearing rings.  This did not work well so picked up some 1/4 inch and 5/16 inch tube at the hobby shop with the idea that the 5/16 inch could be cut into thin slices to use as the rings.  That was easier said than done.  I had trouble getting a straight cut using my chopper or a hobby knife.  After much experimentation, the method that finally worked was the put the 1/4 in tube inside the 5/16 inch tube, then place a screwdriver in fitting tightly inside the 1/4 inch tube.  Then I used a tube cutter to cut the small rings needed.  The screwdriver kept the tubes from crushing.

So after most of an afternoon at the work bench I got the basis of a pair of rotary kilns.   I will need to make a trip to the hobby shop for some additional materials to finish them but it's a start.

This project will be the subject of several posts over the next couple of months.