Last Spring when we took down Dick Smith’s Port Orford Coast Rail Road he asked me to rescue any buildings I thougt might be salvageable. Unfortunatly there weren’t many. This water tank looked like it might be put back in service with some work so we brought it home. I would really liked to have been able to rescue the double water tank but it was just too far gone, the wet coastal weather and a few years of no maintenance really did a job on his mostly wood structures.
Anyway I got the tank out of the storage area last week and started looking it over and decided to give it a try, pictures follow.
This is what we started with, the rooof structure, Acrylic panels and Styrene strip, was all loose and water had gotten inside and soaked all the glue holding the siding loose from the under structure. The trestle wood was all rotted and falling apart because the pins used to assemble it were all rusted through. Hmmmm, where to start??
The roof seemed a likely place so I stripped off all the joint coverings and cleaned the panels throughly then added new Styrene strip as joint covers after sealing all the seams with Silicone. Then I cut a new cupola and glued it in place.
Now what??
I found the paint that seemed to match what Dick had used, a medium stone finish in charcoal gray, and sprayed the roof and reinstalled the grabs and hatch, came out looking pretty much as it must have back when.
The next steps were pretty involved, I peeled off most of the siding planks, as there was nothing holding them except rusty pins, then had to clean all the pins out of the under structure and sand off the failed glue. The under structure is 2 X pressure treated so the wood was/is sound just the joints had let go. I was able to pull the joints back together using screws without having to disassemble the whole structure, thank goodness.
In this picture all the siding has been glued back on with only a couple dozen new boards being needed. Then all sides were sanded to smooth out the weathering and peeled paint, not too smooth, I left it a little rustic out of habit I guess. A new trestle is built and installed. Now here is where I started changing things, Dick modeled in 1:24/ 1:22.5 and I needed it to work in 1:20 if it was going out on the Shasta Pacific. So the new trestle is cut from 5/8 square timbers and I made it 1 and 1/2 inches taller to fit better with the larger scale.
A couple of pictures of the finished tank. A new 1:20 ish ladder was installed but the spout assembly was left pretty much original, just painted and re-weathered. Of course I painted the tank in the Shasta Pacific colors.
This tank will take it’s place in the future yards of the town of Fields Landing, construction starting soon.
It will be wonderful having this tank on my railroad to remember Dick’s beautiful Port Orford Coast line.
Fun project
Rick
