Piko Coaling Tower


Railroad Pony

Railroad Pony

Member
I lucked out and managed to get one of the Piko coaling towers for fairly cheap. It's missing the roofs, a section of the bin top wall, and a pulley, but everything else is there and works.

When you get things shipped to you, you hope that they arrive intact. This appeared to be in the condition it was in when I first saw it. As I was unpacking it, some of the bubble wrap was around one of the legs. I gave it a small tug just to watch the entire structure collapse into a pile of parts. I WAS SO GIDDY WITH HAPPINESS! It was now back to kit form. It looks like whowver assembled it the first time used very little glue on it. I plan on some slight modifications and detailing that I want to do that would have required disassembling it anyway.

I only have pictures of assembled towers to go by, but I have managed to temporarily put it back together. Gravity and friction are the only things holding it together right now. Now I see where I need to add details (a ton of NBWs) and lights. The brewery kits I have have given me the roof pannels. They look like they were used to make the original roofs in the first place. I just have to find a pulley for the main chute to have all the parts. This is going to be fun!

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Cool structure! I was looking at one when I was planning a G layout at the old house.
Is it off ebay? I’ve had my share of surprises there, lost a ton of money too! Lol
 
Rico said:
Cool structure! I was looking at one when I was planning a G layout at the old house.
Is it off ebay? I’ve had my share of surprises there, lost a ton of money too! Lol
Click to expand...
Ebay find. I think what scared most people off was the missing roofs and the top front wall of the bin. Other than that, it's pretty much intact. The roofs are nearly identical to the roofs on the saw tooth buildings they make. I have a few spares and cut roofs out for it. Can't tell they're not originals. I'm scribing a new front wall for the top front on the bin. I generated a pile of 'sawdust' scribing on the new woodgrain. It makes it look so much better. I drilled holes for plastic NBWs where all the heavy timbers came together. I am also going to add a steel pin made from brown panneling nails in-between the NBWs. They add a ton of structural stability to the main frame work and they're ribbed so they look like a bolt if you look hard in the gaps between the timbers. They also have a plastic coating on them that seems to sitck to the glue. Right now, I'm waiting on more NBWs. I've gone through 50 and need at least 30 more.

I'm still deciding on colours for it. I want the framing timbers to look a bit like weathered creosote and the boards of the bin to look like they might have been painted brown or maybe black at some time in the past. This is an excellent kit to work with. I don't think it's still in production anymore. Shame.

Not having the instructions has been interesting. I just found some really old eBay pics of one for sale and had a light bulb moment. The top walls and roof of the main bin and the walls of the winch housing on top aren't supposed to be glued to the main structure. They're supposed to be removable for maintenance. I'm gluing them, but will leave the roofs loose.
 
Well, this is where I am at this point. I added woodgrain to all the beams that were just smooth plastic using a fine tooth hack saw blade. To make sure it stays together this time, I drilled through the beams at the corners and put a piece of a plastic coated paneling nail in the holes. They look like bolts when seen through the gaps. Every joint received plenty of liquid glue. I added NBW castings where all of the main timbers crossed to look like it's actually bolted together. Where timbers are butted against each other, I cut a gap between them so they wouldn't look like they were molded in one piece.

The next step is painting. I want it to have the appearance of having been built from creosoted timbers that have begun fading to brown. The more finished boards of the bin will appear to have been painted brown at least once in their life.

Stay tuned!
 
The main framework has been painted and some preliminary weathering started. The colour is railroad tie brown and the weathering is a weathered railroad tie paint. I oversprayed it with weathered black to show the remaining creosote in the wood. All the timbers will have a thin coat of coal dust added to the horizontal beams.

I kept looking at the skeleton of the frame and the D&RGW prototype and got to thinking a small building would fill that empty space under the tower. I have a small Korber yard building that fits under there nicely. I'm going to replace the roof to match the ones on the tower. It looks good under there.
 
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