Faller Concrete Mixing Plant

I spent one full day making this concrete mixing plant kit by Faller in N scale. (kit 222195 Betonmischwerk). I will have to say that it has been a while since making a Faller kit, and I was pleasantly reminded about the precision and straight-forward approach of these kits.

[caption id="attachment_114" align="alignnone" width="581" caption="Parts went together really well"][/caption]

The brass sheet was a surprise, and the excellent detail afforded by brass really made this model. The hand rails, ladders and crane boom are all brass. The box illustration  shows the brass unpainted, but I decided to make the handrails and ladders black to better appreciate the detail and to allow the coat of concrete dust to show better. I left the crane boom brass with some dust as it fits in with the pre-colored crane cab pretty well as is.



Blurry photos, ugh. But you can still see that the model turned out pretty well. The kit was pre-colored plastic parts that even had a wash of weathering applied to it. One could get away with simply assembling as it is, but I added a few bits of weathering just to make it pop some more. Mainly a wash of Poly S "Dust" to give the factory a really used, working quality. Perhaps a little heavy-handed, but my experience around gravel and rock operations is that there is always a slight feeling of junk in the back of your throat as you move around places like this from all the dust in the air. Just looking at the model makes me cough a little. :)



The instructions said to tie a knot in the black thread for the bucket cables. I didn't.This is N scale, and I would still be trying to tie the first one... It looks just fine wrapped around with CA holding it in place. There is some gravel in the scoop and the crane is free to rotate. There maybe a mechanish to allow remote control or animation of the crane as there is some sort of holding device under the gravel pits. No mention is made of this in the instructions, though.



I love the ladders and the protective cages. All of the brass is put together with  Zap a Gap CA glue. I could have used some Zip Kicker, as hlding these small parts together for any length of time without moving is difficult, but I had already run to the hobby shop once this weekend, and didn't feel like wasting another 1/2 hour on a trip. I'll get some for the next kit, though!



I love the corrugated siding and the pipes running between silos and building. My guess is that the cement is in the tanks and the gravel is simply scooped into the top of the pit area (there is a small hole right where the building and pits come together), and then the mixing is done inside and loaded onto trucks below the building.  Good industry to have tank cars of cement and gondolas full of gravel delivered with some concrete trucks to haul away the mix. No concrete rail cars, though, as there is no loading mechanism for them.

A fun kit to put together. N scale is sucking me in; I should build something in HO soon!