Hartford Rayon Foundation

Continuing work at Hartford Rayon in the Dividend section of Rocky Hill . . .

Follow along with the captions . . .

The foundation & docks for the warehouse, as well as the truck loading area/turnaround, being pretty much all set, I started fiddling more with the foundation under the factory/office building.

As you can see from the two pics above, I'd initially thought to have it continue right to the edge of the layout.

The height on the trackside of the building was spot on with a boxcar floor. . .

. . . and I even went so far as to trim the foam to fit.

But it still didn't look right, so I decided to trim the non-trackside back to the edge of the building.

Unfortunately, trimming it resulting in some rough spots which would definitely show up when I color the foam to make it look like concrete.

Fortunately though, a sanding block made quick work of that  . . .

. . . and the result was darn near perfect.

With the foundation done, it was time to step back and assess the progress of the scene.

I'm especially happy with how the foundation/loading dock combo is working out under the warehouse.

But the foundation under the office/factory building is a bit more problematic. It occurred to me later that I should have planned ahead for some truck loading docks at the back (aisle) side of the building. Thankfully though, after soliciting some feedback, Ken Rutherford weighed in with some great suggestions for how to treat this side. . . I'm still mulling them, but stay tuned!

Having hot-glued in the building foundations (though the truck turnaround is still loose), I started to mockup some backdrop photos . . . I sure hope the backdrop here goes quicker than Wethersfield has . . . Heh - wouldn't take much!

I hope you enjoyed this (very) quick overview of how I went about raising some structures so that the loading dock doors would line up with the height of the freight car floors. I'll be especially interested to see whether I can paint this foam to look enough like concrete to be convincing. As always, thoughts and feedback are welcome!

Progress in Dividend is going along pretty steadily, though I'm only able to get to it on Sunday afternoons. Thankfully, I haven't allowed myself to get too bogged down with Analysis Paralysis and - imagine! - I'm actually having fun! It's cool to see this scene developing . . . sure, it may not be perfectly prototypical, but it's pretty darn close. And it's a heckuva lot better than leaving it unfinished and all to the imagination. 

Here's hoping you'll enjoy continuing to follow along as I get to the landforms, a rock cut, and other fun stuff!