Finishing up at Bryan Ferry

They say "the last mile" is the hardest, and my layout is living proof.  There are countless bare spots covering only a couple of square feet each, yet they remain unfinished as the trains and years roll by.

Well I'm trying to knock out those eyesores one by one, and the most recent beneficiary is Bryan Ferry, Va..  The mains, hillsides, depot, creek, etc. were all completed back when, but the industrial area has gone begging -- for long enough!  

After adding ballast, weeds, and debris to the spur track, the first priority was pavement and sidewalks -- for the street that runs between the two main industries in town, Kress Milling Co. and the Aidan Castings Inc. foundry.

A while back the Railway improved the main crossing in town (over at the depot) with automated flashers -- and so in trade, closed the less-used Longdale St. crossing.  The former thoroughfare is now a stub that employees of the adjacent businesses use as a random parking lot.

 

The once-elegant brick pavement was obliterated entirely on the main by the ever-rising high iron, whereas on the industrial track... it was just left to deteriorate.  More bricks were unceremoniously pulled up out of the middle of the lanes to sink posts for the guardrail.

Next door, on the Aidan property, concrete storage bins for raw materials -- in the foundryman's four favorite flavors: sand, pig iron, limestone, and coke -- radiate from a single, pivoting unloader.  Both the bin walls and the heaps are sectioned in front, at the fascia, to fit the oddball space.  We talked about building the bins in a post earlier this year (link: "Bulk Storage for Aidan Castings").

In the current effort, the unloader got some finishing touches, including a transfer pit, a ring path for the conveyor's wheels to ride on, and of course, generous amounts of spillage.  

The foundry's yard is stained with rust from the countless  tons of iron that has been unloaded here to feed the furnace.  Much of it has been supplied by Allegheny Scrap Inc., up the way in St. Amour.  So the stockpile was made using chunks right out of the same supply that gons are loaded with.  

And like Allegheny Scrap's crane, Aidan's is also a BILD-OLL product, improved from a basic Walthers Scenemaster model with paint, weathering, cab glass, and foil for the treads.  And of course, a nameplate. (Click here to see the post about completing Alleghany Scrap.)  

Over at the mill, we can see the new order of business in post-war America has come to even little Bryan Ferry, Va., as a national conglomerate has recently purchased the venerable, locally-owned plant.  (If you'd been wondering why those two panels never got any weathering in the past 20+ years, now you know.  Just took a few decades to get around to having blue decals made.)

Kress Milling's lot was constructed the same way as Aidan Castings' yard and most of the other gravel paving on the layout:  a ballast blend is ground into wet plaster using an HO scale vehicle, creating ruts and chuckholes and exposed mud.  Tread impressions are added too, where tracked machines are in use.  The plaster is then painted with a wash of mud color, and then fresh gravel is applied sparingly to the perimeters, where it might have escaped getting driven into the dirt.  

And after all these years, the coal that Kress Milling receives each day finally has a storage bin, and the sideyard under the viaduct has some texture.

The corrugated iron covers an underground conveyor, which feeds fuel from the storage bin into the mill's boilerhouse.  You can see a depression in the coal heap where the conveyor has carried away half a carload's worth of coal.  

So that's (hopefully) one less eyesore.  Thanks as always for reading, and let me know what you think!