Cosmetic Job On The Pola N250 Quarry

In my last post, I talked about the hstory of the Pola N250 quarry kit that eventually became the Model Power Blue Coal Depot, in which form I used it to represent a coal loader on an N scale module. Once I understood it had started out as a quarry, I recognized the detail I needed to either remove or de-emphasize to make it look more like a coal loader.

Viewed from this side, there are bins at the bottom level that represent grades of crushed stone that are apparently sold direct from the quarry and not shipped out by rail. These are a distraction and need to be minimized if this is going to be a coal loader.

On the next level up, there is a shed that apparently holds some sort of crushing and grading machinery. This might be sort of credible, so we'll keep it. There is also a cover for some sort of conveyor up to (or down from) the loader itself, maybe halfway credible. At least it's a conveyor

I said in my last post that I would try to use vegetation to distract from less credible features and focus on what looked most like a coal loader. Here's the result:

I filled the bins at the bottom with Woodland Scenics Foliage Clusters, held in with Elmer's Glue. I planted more of the Foliage Clusters around the rest of the base on this side and then planted some JTT trees to focus the view on the credible parts of the coal loader idea. Here are a few pictures that I used for inspiration:

It'll serve for now, there's just very little available in N that isn't a much larger facility. If I get inspired to scratch build something better, or if a new, better model comes along, I'll either swap it out on this module or build a new module. That's one advantage of doing things in small steps this way.

The Model Power Blue Coal Depot

In my last post on the "found item" module, I mentioned the industry, which I referred to as a Pola coal mine kit from the 1960s. In the incarnation I found it, it had become a Model Power Blue Coal depot that I found on eBay. This appears to be out of production. An HO equivalent model seems to be easier to find.

As a result of discussion on a Facebook post, I located something like the histoy of this model. As I said in my post, it really doesn't seem much like a coal loader or tipple, either European or North American. In fact, it appears to have been issued originally as a quarry or ballast loader as the Pola N250:

The photo is from an eBay listing, as is the one below. As far as I can tell from this post, Pola was a German manufacturer of plastic building kits in at least HO and N. Some of them were, or could be interpreted as, North American prototypes and have been marketed at various times by companies like AHM, Model Power, and Walthers. The original owner of the Pola company passed away, and some of the European buiodings in the line were taken over by Faller, but apparently not the North American style buildings.

This particular quarry model seems to have taken some design features from the larger N245 coal mine model.

This is much more clearly North American, since it was based on a Model Railroader series, “How to build a coal mine”, by Jack Work in the October, November, and December 1959 issues.

My aim has been to simplify the N245 kit's profile and do as much as I can to distract from the extraneous features and make it look a bit more like an actual coal loader. Here's the current status:

I'm going to continue covering the extraneous parts with vegetation. The ivy is made up of Elmer's glue brushed onto the model full strength, covered with Woodland Scenics fine turf pressed into the glue.

"Found Item" Module

While I was working to convert my Inglenook micro layout to Kato Unitrack amd Kato Mini Diorama/Pocket Size Module standards, which I covered in this post, I beganm to think abou8t other small module possibilities. I found am irrwegular piece of 5/8" plywood about 8" x 20" in my garage and decided to turn it into a module that could be connected to the Inglenook or any Kato Mini Dorama/Pocket Size module that follows the 25 mm deck height and Unijoiner standard. Here it is, just finishing basic electrical, trackwork, and connectivity tests:

The Kato switch is controlled by DCC, thus the terminal strip in the corner. There is no clearance for it or a switch decoder under the board. I'll have to figure out a way to hide it. But the point is that as with T-TRAK, the DCC bus can go from module to module via the Unijoiners. This expands the possibilities for lighting and control.

The industry on the sidinmg is a Pola coal loader kit from the 1960s. I'm not sure if it looks like any coal loader in the real world, but little else that size is available in N, and it was fairly inexpensive on eBay. I plan to bury it partly in a hillside and cover much of it with ivy or kudzu.

The main line at the front can connect with other Pocket Size/Kato Mini Diorama modules at either end, or with the Inglenook at the near end. Scenery is the net step.