Suncoast Coal Tower

Absolutely beautiful Joe!!  I love coaling towers and you did an expert job on this one as you always do!!

Thanks,

Alan

I'm not sure what is more impressive, the coal tower or your work shop.  Well done on both counts.

The Suncoast and GloorCraft coaling tower kits are popular and hard to find....wish my

dinky shortline could justify one.  Like Cass, it should probably be shoveling coal from

an overhead ramp.  Besides those two, Suncoast and GloorCraft, what other O scale

tower kits (NOT that Lionel round concrete thingey) are out there?  It looks like logical

improvements were made to the kit.  Any time they want you to build stairs or railings

piece by piece is time for Plastruct.

The Suncoast and GloorCraft coaling tower kits are popular and hard to find

Suncoast kits are easy to find.

http://www.hobbylinc.com/cgi-b...r_s=suncoast+coaling

Yikes!  I thought I had a GloorCraft kit...and no Suncoast, instead in the bottom of

a kit stash box I find two of the Suncoast 200 ton kits, one of the Suncoast small Fairbanks Morse coaling tower kits, and no GloorCraft kit!  Will look further for a

GloorCraft one, but may not have it.  I thought a third one had been done by a hobby shop now closed in Lancaster, Ohio.  I have one of their trestle kits (can't find it quickly), and they did a covered bridge kit I have had no luck finding. 

Great job Joe.

Alan Graziano

It's a beauty, Joe. 

That came out beautifully. I love the stair cases. Well done.

Smoke Stack Hobbies is the kit builder I think made a third O scale coaling tower kit.

I have never seen one, but do have a couple of trestle kits by them. The Suncoast kits I have are in old green boxes.  No chance, if Hobbylinc has that yard office, somebody is still making Suncoast?  That yard office has occasionally come up on the bay.

To All:

Thanks - I appreciate

Joe

Smokestack hobbies is correct as having offered a wood coaling tower kit. It came in a large white box with a photo label showing assembled kit. It is in my opinion the best of the three kits mentioned. I sold it when I left O scale in the 80's and do not have any photos, DANG IT!

The yard office has no interior detail or lighting.

We completed a kit last year and I probably have the plans. Plastic with a minimal amount of wood - pilings, etc.

We detailed the interior, added lighting, etc.

Please e-mail me and I wil try to send the plans to you if I can scan them. They may be too large but we will do what we can.

Joe

Just placed an order through your website.

Thanks

Bill

Thanks for the info

It's great so see someone doing actual model building!

Impressive structure.

Hobbylinc must have found a warehouse stash of those Suncoast towers, IF they are

not still in production.  I was just startled to go through their O scale building offerings, and found those Suncoast towers currently offered.  (may explain why I have two of them) Actually found they had a couple of O structure kits I was not familiar with, including a little "Slapshot" BTS branchline station just dying for a kitbash with a freight door addition.  There were several different icing platforms offered, too, including the Suncoast one.  Quite a few O scale building kits to water what I have

considered a pretty dry desert.

Walthers is another good source for Suncoast.

http://www.walthers.com/exec/s...ructure&split=30

Bob: I was a woodworker for many years. When I got back into model railroading I started making my own wood bridges. They kind of caught on locally so a garage business was born. The plastic structures were a natural extension and now make up about 90% of my business. 

Joe

Okay, Walthers seems to have a stash of Suncoast, too, which leads me to again ask

if it is still in production by somebody somewhere?  Suncoast has been around decades and decades. In spite of having that 200 ton "concrete" kit, I like the looks of the wooden ones better, as well modeled on another running thread...just looking for a photo of a small one somewhere....but would be a no-hurry back burner project.

How hard is this to build? Could an amateur build it?

Trainhead:

For a first timer - not really. But this is mainly a plastic kit which makes it much easier to assemble than say the Suncoast ice platform which is mainly a wood kit and much more difficult to build from my perspective.

The diagrams are amazing. The instructions were accurate but seemed like one long paragraph. If they were broken into sections I think they would have read better. When you open the box and see all the pieces you may wonder what you got yourself into. The parts are not marked so other than the obvious ones (sides etc.) I was somewhat confused about which ones to use where.

I ended up reading the instructions to understand the flow then relied on the diagrams for the build since all sizes are marked on the diagrams. I had to go through the parts and measure till I found the appropriate sized ones to use.

If you decide to build this kit then to make things easier:

1 - buy some extra sheet styrene in 040, 060 and 080 thickness for the oops factor.

2 - buy premade stairways and railing (this is a big one).

3 - I am not to fond of gluing plastic to wood which is used for bracing in the kit so wherever possible I substituted plastic for the wood. Using Bondene or Plastic Weld on plastic to plastic makes an extremely strong joint.

Keep all the wood. It will come in handy for making docks etc.

Joe

In the related, but FWIW Department....

John Rendall is the current owner of Suncoast Models.  He is also the owner of JV Models, which has a nice line of O scale kits.  Both of these are, indeed, available through Walthers/dealers.

Just checking the Walthers website, it appears that both lines currently have very good stock availability.

KD

Thanks!  I thought it was funny so much "old" (it ain't old) Suncoast was surfacing.

(I think what I have in old green boxes, is old, but glad they don't have to be hunted

down like antiques)

I don't see the O scale version on their website?

Joe that is fantastic work, wow. 

Definitely a nice looking tower.

One of our members finished this same kit a few months ago.

Simply awesome!

A really nice job. Thanks for posting.

Here is an example of the Suncoast Coal Dock, modified for me by Stu Gralnick, Model building Services. I wanted two tracks for coaling locomotive tenders, with the third track off to the side for supplying coal to the elevator for the coal dock. Photos show the coal dock area still under construction without scenery completed.

Here is a view of the completed coaling facility.

HW

Very nice. How about a picture of the finished scene.

I am currently working on the same principle using the GGD tower in our roundhouse area. Unfortunately the spot I have planned for the Suncoast tower does not have room so the service track will be under the tower.

Another view of the completed servicing area.

Looks great!

Thanks for the pic

Sweet. What kind of material is the platform made from?

Hardwood, maybe maple. Stained dark.