Large Scale Central

POC tank rescue

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

Came out good, Rick!

Great looking save but I will say it is the first time I have ever seen a water tank with horizontal boards, wondering how it supported the load very interesting build thanks for the share

Bill Barnwell said:

Great looking save but I will say it is the first time I have ever seen a water tank with horizontal boards, wondering how it supported the load very interesting build thanks for the share

Bill, The water tank would be inside the wood “house” This was commonly done in cold country to keep the water tank from freezing.

This particular tank was based on the ones on the Sumpter Valley Railroad in North Eastern Orecon.

Nice work. You inspired me to go back and see if I had a picture of it from back when…but the closest I could come up was this, which is obviously NOT the same.

We visited there in April 2008. Some fine memories…That’s a tough climate out there for outdoor structures.

Thank you RicK and Bruce for great pictures and bringing up some great memories. POC was a very interesting railroad. Great ideas that have shaped the present thought patterns.

Thanks for posting that picture Bruce.

The tank on the left was an enclosed oil tank, notice the platform and piping at tender height. The double water tank on the right (fed tracks on both sides) was the one I realloy wanted to try to salvage but it was just to far gone as was the oil tank.

Yea, great memories in these old pictures, here is another

Still waiting on the peach pie and smoked salmon Dick promised me over 10 yrs ago! He said he mailed it but I’m beginning to think he was fibbing?

Rooster said:

Still waiting on the peach pie and smoked salmon Dick promised me over 10 yrs ago! He said he mailed it but I’m beginning to think he was fibbing?

Laf… We were to go up there for a Steak and peach pie dinner about the same time, but with wife’s illness that came first and we never make it. Richard and I both worked for the same Trucking Co. for years and over years re-connected on here with LSC. Now I have a pc. of his rolling stock from Marty. (A Box car with one door that’s slides to the Right and other door slides to the left. That’s a Richard’s one of a kind… lol.)

Rooster said:

Still waiting on the peach pie and smoked salmon Dick promised me over 10 yrs ago! He said he mailed it but I’m beginning to think he was fibbing?

Perhaps the salmon took a detour? Or maybe you should be happy this never showed up?

As for the pie, maybe it, too, was not quite what you expected…

And THANK YOU, Rick!

A real trip down memory lane. Richard came up with LOTS of great ideas and some really neat models.

A couple I like:

Love all the detail here…

But I really like this LONG trestle.

Thanks for the additional pictures Bruce.

Dick really wanted us to save the long trestle but it was just too far gone, all the bents were rotted off on the bottom.

We did however save the metal bridge from the center and will be reusing it on the Shasta Pacific without re-lettering to show its heritage.

Rick Marty said:

Thanks for the additional pictures Bruce.

Dick really wanted us to save the long trestle but it was just too far gone, all the bents were rotted off on the bottom.

We did however save the metal bridge from the center and will be reusing it on the Shasta Pacific without re-lettering to show its heritage.

I really like that some of his stuff gets a new lease on a new railroad.

Bruce Chandler said:

Rick Marty said:

Thanks for the additional pictures Bruce.

Dick really wanted us to save the long trestle but it was just too far gone, all the bents were rotted off on the bottom.

We did however save the metal bridge from the center and will be reusing it on the Shasta Pacific without re-lettering to show its heritage.

I really like that some of his stuff gets a new lease on a new railroad.

Yea, me too.

We arranged a sale of the engines and rolling stock to a newby in the Portland, OR area that was just starting out building a 1:24 scale railroad on raised bench work, perfect fit. Wish I

had kept his email addy as I would like to follow up on his progress.