Biddle's fueling pad

I've been working on the fueling pad for the Biddle loco facility last week.  I've been trying to keep it simple, with the just basics but as I progressed, I kept finding myself sliding down that steep rabbit hole.

I started with two strips of "0.60 black styrene for the main pad, glued them together and scored the concrete relief cuts.  I also pre-drilled the holes for the fuel piping and safety guards.  Then painted it with a concrete color and used a sponge to "pad on" several different colors of gray, I followed this with several colors of Pan Pastels and sealed it with Dull Coat.  The fresh fuel spills was made using Tamyia's Black Panel Line Accent Color lightly dripped in selected areas, in some cases I applied it three or four times.  

Next I started glueing down the little details.  The fuel piping and guard rails were made from "0.40 brass rods. The piping support came from some scrap styrene "I" beams.  The fuel hoses were stripped 22ga wire, soldered to the end of the brass rod, painted and glued in place.

The tool cabinets were made from chunks of styrene, painted & weathered.  The barrels were just cut from styrene tubing and the MU rack came from the Botchmann diesel fueling kit. The MU hoses were short chunks of 22ga wire, cut, bent and glued to the rack.  When everything had dried, I sealed the entire thing with a final coat of Dull Coat.

All in all I'm happy with how it came out, just enough detail and not overdone.  In time I'll get at least one worker glued in place and frozen in time.

Next I needed some lights, because the union workers would throw a fit if they had to work in the dark!  I'm not a big fan of lit layouts, while they do look good, I was starting to look down that rabbit hole again.  So I debated about buying the Woodland Scenics PlugNPlay light poles which would give me the option later to power up the lights. But I came to my senses and just made a few instead.

I started with some copper rods for the main poles, and again used some of the "0.40 brass rod for the arm and soldered these together.  I found some small brass tubing for the light housing and scratched my head trying to figure out how to make the globe until I stumbled across some craft beads.  These were 8/0 "Seed Beads" in a clear/pearl which I just glued on the bottom of the light housing. After that I painted the poles and arms and sealed with Dull Coat.

With everything done I sat it in place, located and drilled three holes for the light poles.  I'll leave these loose so I can finish working on the area and will probably just leave them loose so I can clean the tracks later.

Just a few more details and then I can start ballasting this area and the rest of the yard.