Not wanting to hijack the latest Iowa Interstate posting, but the Grimes Line superintendent noted on his new structure that standoff details were really going to help the printed graphics lumber company.  For anyone who is afraid (like I was) that printed graphics laminated to a building shape will make a flat and uninteresting structure - it doesn't have to be so! 

There are so many topics posted that spur me to start new projects, I decided I had to get at least one "in progress" off my workbench first.  My pulp mill's wood chip storage building was the candidate.  It is built the way all my structures have been: as cheaply as I can manage!  

As I continue to pull together tatters and bits of what, sometime within the next 20 years, will be a Pacific Northwest short line of the 1980s, I decided to apply a well-known trick for establishing a time and place: make some signs!  (I have watched the Hollywood folks create atmosphere in filming locations by adding signs, and have seen that this trick works well in 1:1 scale as well as on model railroads).  Since this particular sign is going to be on a road near the parking lot for my pulp mill, I decided maybe a beer sign would be a good investment, and since it is the Pa

I'm still grinding ahead on the pulp and paper mill, and of course, the railroad equipment to sustain it.  In contrast to recent reports that the Olympic Peninsula's Seattle and North Coast Railroad has ceased operation, it can, in fact, still be found hanging on by a minor corporate thread in service to the wood products industry in the nation's far Northwest.  A quick snapshot at the Crown Z mill would seem to indicate that both the railroad and mill are stuck in the early 80s (there are even nearby billboards advertising some of the hottest current TV shows - Mia

After posting the raw parts of a scratchbuilt digester complex for my mill months ago, I have finally made sufficient progress for me to call it (as a wise man recently said) good enough - for now.

The raw pieces were some PVC pipe couplings, a potato chip can, vitamin bottle, some styrene sheet from a "for sale" sign, wood, and masonite.

Building by building, I'm almost finding creating the pulp and paper mill easier than when I previously tried to model an entire layout.  I generally became overwhelmed and discouraged at trying to build a miniature world; planning and completing one building at a time is much more rewarding - I can always see light at the end of the tunnel.

Seeing Caboose 14's outstanding looking paper mill, I thought I'd sneak in with an HO pulp mill I've been scratchbuilding.  I currently don't have room for a layout, but am building the mill, piece by piece, and storing the individual projects until I can finally bring them together in one module.  I originally named the mill for the fictitious Johns Bay Paper Corp., but after seeing another model that was artfully decorated with realistic Georgia Pacific signs, I decided PBP was going to be bought out by Crown Zellerbach (if for no other reason than because I l