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.
