Ciment St-Laurent - Part 1

It's time to start the Ciment St-Laurent plant project. This large structure will be the focal point in the small layout room depicting Villeneuve and Maizerets. Not only it will dominate the landscape, but it will also generate the largest traffic on the railway including coal, gypsum, cement and many other bulk commodities. We are actually thinking about building the core with MDF, but I’m starting to think we could use some large Plexiglass sheets I have for concerns about dimensional stability over time. I’ve not been impressed by ¼” MDF lately and if we use it, bracing will be a pivotal aspect of the final design. It could also be an idea to try my hand using a laser cutter to make the parts. However, since a lot of fun comes from the process of building a structure, I think we would loose a meaningful project.

The plan and elevations are drawn from pictures, satellite imagery and insurance maps drawn in the 1950s when the prototype was under construction. While I don’t claim 100% accuracy, it should be extremely close to the real thing.

Since many people like to add cement plants on their layouts, I decided to share the plans. The drawing are metrics and at scale 1:5. If printed full-scale on a 11” x 8.5” sheet, they should be quite precise.