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Saturday, September 22, 2018

Walkways and sidewalks, Part 4

This thread about walkways and sidewalks is really a kind of reporting of my own efforts to remedy my lack of these features on my layout. Anyone visiting industrial or railroad facilities will find that almost any area frequently traversed by employees, or worked in by employees, is paved in one way or another. I realized I was lacking those features in many areas, and so needed to do some paving. The previous post in the series (see it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/09/walkways-and-sidewalks-part-3.html ) described my efforts to improve the walkways at my Pacific Chemical Repackaging industry.
    At the same time, I also surveyed my Associated Oil Company dealership, to see what might be needed for walkways or tank pads there. It was immediately obvious that there is a great lack of appropriate walkways in the area at left.


The two larger tanks outside the containment berm, and even the small tank, need concrete pads, and the short walkway at the pump house needs to be extended in both directions, especially to include the unloading rack at far left. I proceeded to cut and fit paper patterns for all these needs. As I have shown such patterns before, I won’t repeat the ideas here.
     I was also aware that the warehouse/office building at the Associated Oil facility needed a walkway too. I simply fitted a shape around the left end of the building (shown below) so that the doorway in the near wall was accommodated.


This walkway is straightforward, just a right-angle walk from the doorway around to the left of the building. Here is how it looked when completed;


     The situation on the tank-car unloading spur was more involved. In the photo at the top of the present post, you can see there are three tanks, a propane tank and two storage tanks (one fairly small), along with a need for walkways along the unloading area and a pad under the high-pressure unloading rack. The only complicated one was what I designed for the small tank. Shown below is my set of completed walks for that area, with the propane tank pad not in place.


These walks, however, are merely painted a concrete color, and are not yet weathered to convey the usage and spills that would be inevitable in such an area. Here are the finished walks, with a propane tank car spotted at the rack:


     This industry now looks much more realistic to me, with the addition of obviously-needed walks. I may add even more at some point, which will not be excessive compared to bulk fuel dealerships I have seen over the years.
Tony Thompson

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