Olin-Chlor expansion, part 1

Since Mother Nature decided to give us break today, 54° and sunny, I decided to swing through Malvern and see if anything was new on my way home from work?

As I pulled into town I noticed that the Razorback must be out on the road as the only thing sitting at the house were the new ALCo's, which looked to be untouched since the last time I visited.  So I jumped in the truck and headed out of town to see if I could catch up with it.  As usual, the engine house was deserted, so it was up to the scanner and I to locate the afternoon train by ourselves.

On the way out of town I did see that progress was being made at the Olin-Chlor plant.

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After playing with the new building one evening I decided it was a bit too big and was crowding the tracks more than I liked.  I got the lower section cut back about an 1" and refitted with a new front, this gave me enough room where a maintenance truck could fit between the building and the loading tracks.

On the Crushmoore building I used Evergreen Corrugated siding, but this time I wanted to try something different that I've read about elsewhere.  Others have posted on some of their blogs and forums that instead of buying the expensive sheet styrene from Evergreen or Plastruct, they have used the cheap plastic "For Sale" signs.  

While at Menards one day I picked a 16" x 20" "For Sale" sign for $1.69 and another tube of glue to stick it to the building with.

The sign was pretty thin, probably around .020" or so, but it should work since this building would look more like a poured concrete structure when done.

 

I laid the sign on the workbench, the building on the sign and then traced the sides of the building.  Being so thin I was able to cut the sides out with a good pair of scissors easy enough.  I left the pieces larger than the building so I could trim it to fit with a utility knife after I got them stuck in place.

Within a few minutes I had all the pieces cut to size and they were ready to stick. 

I'm happy to report that cutting, covering and trimming this building only took about 30 minutes!

I still need to go back and fuse some of the corners with the liquid glue and then file them smooth a s well the top edges.

"Hey wait a minute?  Only 30 minutes?  Crushmoore took almost a week to get all the sides covered and glued into place."  What gives?

When I was picking up the glue and sign at Menards, I stumbled across some different type of glue, it was a spray adhesive made by Loctite!

Upon closer inspection of this new wonder glue, I read where it's Re-positionable and Permanent!  You spray on a thin even coat, wait a few seconds for it to flash out, then you have 5-15 minutes to reposition your piece!!!  Just what I was worried about when I was first working on Crushmoore.

After applying the first side of the building, I gently grabbed one corner and pulled, it came right off without disturbing the layer of glue!  COOL!  I pushed and prodded the first piece back into place and applied pressure for a good seat.  I grabbed the next piece and got it stuck into place, on and on I went until I had all the sides covered.  In some cases I had to take my sharp utility knife and trimmed some of the corners flush before applying the adjacent piece. 

The only thing I did different with this building, due to the spray, was to tape off any areas of  newly stuck plastic sides so I could keep them clear of any over spray.  The next night all the pieces were stuck nice and tight.

 The next job is to start adding the trim around the roof and then apply the vertical ribbing.

Edit: Click here to jump to "Olin-Chlor expansion part 2"