BUILDING A COALING TOWER

 All my steam engines need coal.  So the railroad company built one.  It was a kit I purchased a few years ago on ebay.  It turns out it was manufactured in the 1950s.  Back then there were no plastic building kits.  They were all wood, cardboard and lead metal pieces.  When I opened this kit, it was a bundle of "sticks", a few metal parts and a nicely detailed instruction sheet.

                                                     

I had started construction here.  The box things are parts of the building made from VERY thin sheet wood.

  A better view of the main parts of the tower.

  Lots of sticks, all hand glued into position.  

Most were precut the to correct length, I just had to figure out which piece went where.

Ready to paint

The stairs were cast lead.  Just had to glue in place.  BUT the hand rails all had to be cut and carefully glued in place.

All painted and ready for finishing details.

The kit included 2 small brass lamp shades. They were designed to be dummies glued to the end of a piece of wire then glued in place.  You can see how small compared to a penny.

But it's modern times now.  So I got some micro LED lights and modified them to actually work.

That little yellow square thing is the LED.

Looks almost real!!

This little shed sits behind the tower and is the "lift" motor and mechanism that lifts the coal to the top of the tower and then it gravity feeds into the coal car when needed.