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.