Catwalk and Tanks

Building the catwalk

For some reason I neglected to take pictures from the start. I think I needed a battery for my little camera and didn't have any in the house. 

Pay attention to the instructions on these little parts. Ragg's has it figured out and it is easy to mess up if your eyes are as old as mine.

The underside of the catwalk has these little supports that are contoured to go on top of the tanks. There are two different types although I measured them and couldn't find a difference. I didn't have a way to measure the arc but I would have to guess that the difference is in the radius of the arc to fit the different size tanks. There are 20 of these little pieces and they go underneath the 'U' shaped section, shown on top of the weight in the following picture, and the little straight sections that will end up being on top of the larger tanks. These are to be glued on while parts are still in their carrier sheets.

The railings have use strip wood angle for the uprights. These are also glued on while the railings are in their carrier sheets and are actually cut a little longer than they will be in the end. Then a razor blade is used to trim them to the correct height. Now remove all the parts from the carrier sheets.

 The railings are glued on to the catwalks at this time and to each other. The whole structure is surprisingly rigid but fragile.

Here it is assembled, before painting. I painted mine primer grey.

 

Tanks

Start with the tanks by cleaning up any casting flash on the open end. Not much work to be done here. Then glue on the tank ends. Alene's Tack glue and the syringe supplied can be used like a caulking gun here to erase any gap between the end and the tank. Caps are glued on now as well.

Tank Supports

Each tank support is made up of three pieces. A piece that is smooth on both sides is sandwiched in between two other similar looking pieces that the instructions refer to as 'form board'. I honestly had no idea what that meant Due to all the handling of carrier sheets up to this point, while looking for other parts, that they had nearly all fallen out of their carrier sheets. examined these pieces of wood for about 24 hours before I sent an email to Ragg's wondering what a 'form board' was. Then I was looking at them and the light hit them just right and I could see a relief in some of the pieces that looked like concrete forms. Ha, imagine that. Getting old eyes. 

After gluing these pieces  together I sanded and primed and worked on them for a while to get any trace  of the joint to disappear. I was very successful on some off them and not so much on others. I may get some modelers putty and work on them some more. I experimented with the color. Concrete is hard for me to judge. I finished with Aged Concrete like the instructions say but added some grey to make it look a little less yellow. They are shown here in the little jig supplied to place the tanks in the proper location with. More on that later.

At this point, after priming the tanks I placed everything in position. The tanks are placed relative to the small warehouse using the jig. I'm not ready to glue everything down yet so I have just temporarily set up things. I still need to paint the tanks and do some weathering to everything before I continue on. Here they are with the catwalks in place.

And everything built so far.