I could not resist getting these when I saw them for a good price. I have a vision of these two bad boys over at my cokeworks contrasted against the large smokestacks of the coke oven batteries. To me they say "industrial."

This specific prototype is based on European hybebolic wood/steel natural draft cooling towers and were designed by Hans-Joachim Balcke from Germany in the 20's. In the US, however, the main design of the time came from Marley of Kentucky and were more squat and squarish but these hyperbolic deals are just too darn iconic AND cool not to pass up.

Is this like Bethlehem Steel sending plant Engineer/Designer John Fritz over to Europe to investigate European practices? Perhaps so shhhhhhhh

So I had (2) Walthers Northern Power and Light kits left over and decided to scrap the previous iteration of the powerhouse in favor of this one which in my opinion is a stronger building and detailed much better. Now for a cokeworks I thought the building should be dumbed down a little and not as pretty as the kit form suggests. The windows were the key to fix this issue. I took the left over boiler room wall panels and used them to brick in most of the large windows on the sides except the top portion. This is an idea that came to me a year ago but at that time I had no way of acting on it. In so doing the building looks a little more plant like and less stand alone town like.

The boiler portion at the end is a left over construction of Walthers Cornerstone Modulars and a stack from the Walthers Blast Furnace kit.

This building takes way better view shots than the other one which was based on a Heljan Kit.





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I have a habit of building a magillion little buildings and losing sight of scale sometimes. The cluster of buildings which were the welfare and laboratory neededm to change. I had too many little buildings clustered and it needed a bigger building to even things out. I pulled this big one off the shelf, added a small addition to it, swapped out the benzol building, and made a little yard to park trucks. The laboratory and welfare will be placed on the module that will eventually be built beside this one.

The building in the background (benzol building) just said cokeworks to me as it was originally mis placed over by the blast furnaces:


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In leaving the stacks to the sides of the coke ovens I realized I had a problem on one of them with coke dump trucks and the loading facility as far as access goes. In order to fix this I simply placed the stacks in a more traditional position which is at the end of the coke oven batteries.



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The original 250' smokestack I have on the cokeworks module was from the Walthers HO Tri-State Power Authority kit and desperately needed a friend. Well, it finally got one along with a built Tri-State Power Authority structure and a storage structure from the Walthers HO Concrete plant that's be part of my Sinter Plant. All for $22 due to the rather odd (and thick) fleck stone paint job on the Tri State Power building. That's currently in the stripper bin btw.

Here is an original image from the mid 50's at Sparrows Point showing the scale of the stacks in relation to the coal bins on top of the coke ovens.

They're huge!



and so are mine!



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I had added a bunch fo details but not going too overboard I tend to think. The weathering treatment is the typical rust and grime as elsewhere in the cokeworks. Those fins on the right of the image is a heat sink piece from an old graphics card I had lying around. Kinda a cool piece.



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So I had to build a base for a large portion of the by-products plant in order for ease in transportation and practicality. It's hard to take images of this part close and I figured I'd save that for after weathering. I added a bunch of detailing like railings, tanks, stacks etc.



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Not only did the Welfare building swap with the main office but the rear addition was also revised. The addition now comes from the Walthers Vulcan Manufacturing kit and fits perfectly onto the building as the roof already accomodates the pilaster bump out. I custom built a water tower in the rear of the struicture to act as the water supply for the Welfare building.



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Today I weathered the gas holding tanks and while doing so tried to vary the degree of rust from one to the next. But that didn't exactly work out as well as I thought it would. In order to get in all the nooks and crannies at the supports I had to go pretty heavy on the color which makes them almost appear reddish. Since prototypes get this discolored anyway it didn't bother me as much. Overall it came out pretty good. One thing I learned on this one was it's much easier to dirty up railings by smudging a very dirty finger over them. Also, I liberally applied the black powder in places and left it un-brushed and only spray dullcoat over it. That allowed for som extra detail normally difficult to attain on smooth surfaces when doing powder weathering.

I found it a little difficult getting behind the lattice work but didn't really worry about the look so much there....

Also, I did add safety caged ladders by Gold Medal Models prior to doing the weathering to snap up the detail a little. Otherwise the structures are kit built.



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I applied the weathering treatment to the booster house and used the same methods as the previous brick buildings. The part that really makes it pop is the sanding with metal sanding sand paper. Nice and rough. I've also completed all the conveyors at the cokeworks.



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