Playing with mock-ups

Well, I made a little headway on my smelter module this weekend. A couple of sheets of foam core and some printed textures, and I have most of the structure mock-ups sized and placed. Just a couple more left to fabricate and place, and then I will start working on the dock. Keeping me busy wile I am waiting for some flex track and a couple of turnouts to arrive. I hate to think how many times I built, and then rebuilt, some of them in order to get them to look right and to fit the cramped quarters!

The large building to the right of the tall chimney was known as the Cupola Building. I built it last winter as a "reintroduction" to model scratch building. I am not altogether pleased with it, and will probably remake it this winter. The small grayish building in the foreground is the power building - thus the large purchased chimney.

The hip-roofed building in the foreground is the warehouse where copper plates and ingots were stored before shipment. There will be a large dock in front. The building with the dual tapered chimneys is the furnace. The small grayish building with the ugly asphalt shingle roof is the assay office where the copper was tested. From right to left, the three buildings in the rear are: the mineral house, the limestone house and the briquetting plant where the refined copper ore was formed into briquettes prior to final smelting.

Here is the mock-up with the background removed. I only put windows and doors on three of the mock-ups. There was a series of 18" gauge hand-pushed carts which moved materials through the complex. It was a labor intensive operation, but will offer some interesting modelling challenges!