Jupiter Pump and Compressor

Some years ago, when my layout and I were still living in Pittsburgh, PA, I envisioned an industry on the layout which would manufacture and ship both water pumps and air compressors, and I chose the name “Jupiter” for it. The name, of course, was chosen to denote big, powerful products. I did have a spur designated as Jupiter on my then-layout town of Los Olivos, and some switching of cars to and from that spur was done. But no structure was ever built to represent the Jupiter plant.
     With my new layout in Berkeley, there was no space for the Los Olivos part of the old layout, so some new location had to be envisioned if there was still to be a Jupiter company. That was about as far as thinking had progressed, until the beginning of Santa Rosalia tracklaying (see my description at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/05/flash-tracklayers-enter-santa-rosalia.html ), when I could finally recognize a space that could be usable for Jupiter.
    My ideas were that Jupiter had its own foundry for cast iron parts, and would also fabricate parts from sheet steel and rod, then ship a wide variety of pumps and compressors for mining, farming, shipbuilding, and other uses, meant that there could be a substantial variety of loads inbound, and plenty of loads outbound. This would nicely balance all the agricultural shipping already in place in Ballard.
     My starting point was a very old kit structure, a Suydam corrugated metal Pacific Foundry (kit 19) I had assembled when I was in high school, using one of those massive copper-block-tip soldering irons heated in a gas flame (in the school metal shop). Partly because it is all galvanized metal and real durable, it has survived pretty much unscathed, all the intervening years. (Incidentally, I note there are plenty of these kits available nowadays on eBay.) Windows never got installed.

The building needs a dirtier roof and some indications of rusting corrugated sheathing, all of which I will add with my usual acrylic washes. For more on them, see the Reference Pages at the top right of this post.
     I envisioned this structure as a receiving facility for the Jupiter plant, so cars could be spotted inside the building. The doorways are not tall enough to permit that, so the structure needs to be raised by placing it on a foundation.
     First step was to lay an entry siding off of my track between Ballard and Santa Rosalia. The area is shown below (the structure with a green roof is a space-holder). The rectangular space at left rear is to be the site of the Suydam mill building shown above. In the foreground is the main line between Ballard and Santa Rosalia, and the switch which doesn’t connect to anything will be the lead to Ballard’s Track 7, the rear industry lead.

     In the photo above, some bare plywood can be seen. This is the last such area on the entire layout, and for track support, I chose to use sheet cork. A piece was cut and fitted to the plywood area you see above.
     To the left of the area shown above, there is a substantial gap between the layout surface and the bottom of the backdrop. The next photo shows more clearly how this looks, with the Suydam building (now weathered) in place to indicate where it will be located.

     At the left edge of the photo above, you can see that part of the gap has been covered. I have used a method of “closing” such gaps, without  rigidly attaching the backdrop and layout surface together, with a folded strip of manila folder stock. (See my post at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/12/joining-layout-and-backdrop.html ). My next step, then, was to use that method in this location. When glued down (only the horizontal part is glued), the manila looked like this.

Alongside the new manila space-filler, you see a building flat. This is a part of a KingMill Enterprises product, included in their “Radical Flats” Commerce St. series, sheet no. 9. The part that you see in the photo above is what was left over after I cut out part of this KingMill sheet to make my Caslon Printing Co. flat, which I described in a previous post (see it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/02/background-flats-2-kitbashing.html ); there you can see most of the full Commerce St. no. 9 sheet before cutting. The KingMill website ( http://www.kingmill.com/ ) reports that they no longer sell these products, but it is rumored that the line has been sold to Scenic Express, so these fine backdrops may become available again.
     Incidentally, there was one more building on the Commerce St. no. 9 sheet, a corrugated metal building. I reorganized that building by cutting and fitting so it had vestigial sides, and used roofing from another KingMill building sheet, glued all the parts to foam-core board, and created my Pismo Marine Service building at Santa Rosalia. The description of creating that structure kind of got buried in another post, which was mostly about kitbashing the cannery at Santa Rosalia. If you’re interested in the KingMill building I made, here’s the link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/05/kitbashing-santa-rosalia-cannery.html . Now that I’ve mentioned it, I should show a better view of that building, which I was pretty happy with, once it was in place. (You can click on the image to enlarge it, if you want to read the signs.)

     The site for Jupiter is coming along nicely. Given the wide range of both inbound and outbound traffic associated with this business, I look forward to its contribution to operating sessions!
Tony Thompson