Vermont Talc Plant in N Scale

This is a trackside view of Gary's N scale talc plant. I added the numerous structures to a piece of Gatorfoam with some basic scenery to finish it off. The roadside view was seen in last weeks Wordless Wednesday.

Earlier this fall my friend Gary Pembleton asked me if I could paint his talc plant white or something close to that which resembles the Gassetts Vt. talc operations. I had the structure for sometime while I looked over photos I had took at Gassetts and others found in Sept. 1976 RMC. I had never done any N scale modeling. I called Gary and asked what colour he wanted on the complex as it appeared to have been viewed differently over the years. I also asked if I could mount the structure which would make it easier to work on. He gave me free reign to do what I want, so here is what I came up with...the captions tell the story...George Dutka

The finished diorama with the photos and RMC article I used as inspiration to complete Gary's talc plant.

This is how the talc mine looked when it arrived. It appeared to have been painted a couple times and the paint was really building up. My plan was to give it a light spray coat of light gray then use powders and chalks to add the colouring.

I did some minor changes to the structures that would give the most bang for the buck. I removed all the loading platforms which looked way out of scale, replacing them with scrap strip wood. On one structure the roof was in poor shape, corners missing and holes drilled in the roofing. It also had very rough and heavy looking paint applied. I made a new one from scrap styrene. I also added a awning over the end loading door, something that it needed to resemble the prototype. The parts are really glued together making it really difficult to remove the few pieces I did. I held back from pulling any more off.

The talc mine is named for Gary's good friend Larry Brinker who had built some of his N scale structures. The original sign had a high gloss finish so I colour copied it, weathered it then glued it on.The chimney was painted Floquil boxcar red, followed by soot and used brick powders.

I added some details and scrap around the base of this structure. I used HO scale 2by4's for the lumber laying around. I also cut some fine wire and coloured it rust resembling steel rods. I made a few sacks from scrap brown paper bags. The steel drum is a small HO scale BEST tin can. All the signs seen around the structure are HO scale. I used the smaller ones found on my sheets. Some are cut and leaned against the building.

The entire structure including the roofing was given a coat of Floquil SP lettering gray. I then coloured the wooden walls using Bragdon green grunge on the bag loading and receiving structure as seen in my photos. The rest of the structure was covered with lime white and ash. A lot of it was used on the roofing. The concrete base is coloured with grimy gray powder. Grimy gray was also applied to some of the windows and doors using a small brush. Others got a dab of green grunge powder.

A look down at the loading area for the Talc plant. I used one length of the old loading dock as a walkway.The loader and cylinder tower was originally painted silver. All I did to these two was mist it with Floquil rail brown, then SP lettering gray. I gave it a good dose of lime white and grimy gray powders.

I stopped by our local hobby shop to see what was available in N scale detail parts...not much...but I got a package of 24 pallets made by Micro Engineering (80-144) for $4 which was a good deal I though. This scene used the package up quickly.