LIONEL COALING TOWER --Rebuilt & Now Finished

Nice job on that repaint.  I agree the color, as new, was always wrong.

I like it!

 

Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful job my friend!!  WOW.....hey, mine is one its way to your place.  Let me know when you will have it shipped back to me with the same treatment...

 

Alan

No problem Alan, only takes a couples day for turnaround

That is cool!  Nicely done.  

Put a couple LEDs on it with some Plastruct lamp shades. This tower will be modeled so that the coal cars dump directly under the tower since there is no chute underneath. Steam engines will be fueled on the outside track where the chute is. Space limitations made that decision for us

 

 It's finished now and ready to be installed. Got a better picture with better lighting. 

 

 

 

 

It will sit right between the water column and the ash hoist. The wood base is already in, but covered with coal/dirt for this photo.

 

Nice job. The concrete paint looks much better than the Lionel tan it originally came with?

Doug,

That looks fantastic. Nice job.

 

Alan Graziano

Doug,

A vast improvement, you did a great job. Malcolm

Very nice, LOS!!

Doug,

 

It look's great, very nicely done!!!

 

Doug are you guys coming to York ?

 

Alex

Thanks Alex,

 

I don't think so right now as plane tickets are absolutely ridiculous.  We had every intention of going until we shopped for plane tickets. We been watching all year and I just refuse to pay that kind of money to fly... I could buy another Legacy steam engine for that price

 

I even planned a week of vacation during that York weekend, and now I gotta figured out something else to do........ hmmmmmm what to do, what to do?

Very nice job.

Very nice job Doug! It ill look great in your engine service area.

 

 

Great makeover from plain to a concrete coaling tower.

What a nice job!  I'm looking to do something similar with mine.  Would you mind sharing your painting method and colors?

Glenn the hardest part was getting the thing apart. Screws and glue hold it together but I was able to get it apart without breaking anything.

 

I used spray cans to paint everything. A light grey primer for the main body, brown for all the walk ways, platforms, and ladders, then black for the roof sections. Then I put it back together, clear coated with a flat, then weathered with an ink/alcohol wash and weathering powders.  

Very nicely done.  It is a tremendous improvement.  You weathering is particularly realistic, at least to me.

Do you have it installed yet?  Can't wait to see the pictures of it with the beautiful RH in the background.

 

I like your choice of motive power in the previous picture also.  Just saw your youtube video of the BB at SD 3 Railers-AWESOME!

Boy how did I miss this...what a huge improvement!  You really have a good eye for the weathering.

Right on with that job !

Great paint and weathering.

That tower will look great on the layout.

 

Eliot

Yes, I imagined that taking it apart might be a lot of work, and I don't think I'm up for that right now - maybe a future go-around.  I'd just like to knock down some of the in-your-face tan color for now.  It's pretty stark, even for a out of the box Lionel product.

 

I know nothing of weathering powders but I'll take a look at them.

 

Again, really nice job!

Kit built version.  I have the Lionel tower as a kit.  Started working on the details with some modifications.

 

A few photos showing modifications are attached. Also overall repainting shown. Many more details including lighting need to be added.

 

 

It woulda been a lot easier to do what I did if mine was the KIT instead of a built up. It just took patience to get the thing all apart. I think I spent the most time cutting the styrene to fill the legs, eliminating the hollow look. 

You did an expert job on the tower and I am have made a place on my layout for it....just waiting for it to arrive...

 

Alan

You might have to wait a little bit Alan, as it has already been glued in place and wired up.

Wow well done!

weatherizing is great.

thank you for sharing

Andre.

 

That really looks great!  Your engine service yard is incredible.  A picture was covering the back of a magazine of mine, just spectacular. 

LOS, Perfect.. Grimy looking!

That looks great sitting in place, and I have to echo what marker said.  That engine facility really captures the look and feel of the real deal. 

Excellent modification.  I really like it.

I also reworked the legs as shown.

Doug, You have a great looking enigne facility.  What roundhouse have you used?  Regards,  Pat B.

It's a Brennan's Model Railroading kit. Dennis Brennan is a forum sponsor here, and advertises in OGR Magazine as well as others. Give Dennis a call and leave him a message if he don't answer.

One thing that puzzles me with this type of tower is how was the coal raised up to the storage bin?  I don't see any kind of hoist or conveyor.

The coal is conveyed by a "bucket" that delivers coal from an underground coal pit.  This detail does not show very well since it is on the back side of the model in the photos. On the model I am building there is included a covered coal shed where hopper cars on a separate track dump coal into an underground bin.

If you look closely at this photo in full size, you can see the tracks/rails on the back of the coaling tower. Because we were limited on space, and the tracks are on a curve, we modeled this facility so the coal cars unload/dump to a pit directly underneath the coal tower. The bucket (which really doesn't exist on this model) is down in the pit to raise the coal to the top and dump inside the tub. There is no chute underneath the center anyway, so we unload raw material underneath, and load the engines with the chute on the outside (outbound) track.

 

Just like the sand house not being next to the track, we will use a conveyor to unload the sand hopper to transfer sand to the sand bin. Not really how we wanted to do it, would rather have the sand bin right next to the track, but because these tracks are on a curve, the articulated engines would not clear the structure.

 

In the real world, a lot of these service structures were crammed in small spaces, even more so in the O scale modeling world. We had to get them all in, with limited space, so the imagination has to come into play a little bit here.

 

 

Great photo. You did a terrific job. I have two of the Lionel coal towers which I never used as I bought the GGD tower. I did take the shed and painted it brown to match the GGD tower.

 

What did you use to paint the ash tower and the yard lights?