Diesel Generating Station
Somewhere in the hinterlands of Ontario, well beyond the reach of Hydro One's power lines, the Acme Resource Extraction Company has built a diesel powered generating station to power its mining operations. The power plant consists of a pair of V10 Sulzer gensets (one of which is off stage in this diorama) for primary power and a 3516B Cat genset as an Emergency back-up. All are enclosed in a metal clad steel building.
This 1/25th scale diorama is a section of this operation. The operators in the process of bringing the Sulzer Diesel on line.
Models Used:
3516B Caterpillar generator is a Norscot diecast
Sulzer V10 Generator is from the Revell Germany 6-axle Flatbed Trailer kit
Evergreen and Plastruct structural styrene
Walter's HO scale refinery piping kit
Many, many items from the parts box
Other than the two basic models everything else has been scratch built.
This is an overhead shot of the plant layout. The Cat unit is self sufficient but the Sulzers require many auxillary services to operate.
The Norscot diecast 3516B genset. I added the battery bank and exhaust stacks. Red pipes are firewater sprinklers. The ladder leads to a maintenance platform and roll-up door that leads to the cooling tower.
The cooling tower for the Sulzer Gensets. It cools the engines as well as the lube oil and generators.
The Sulzer genset with lube oil and stator cooling heat exchangers. Green piping is cooling water, Yellow is lube oil.
Front end of Sulzer with inter-cooler and cooling water circulating pumps. The operators are making adjustments to the intercooler's cooling water temperature control valve.
the Generator ends of both machines
The V10 Genset that Revell included in the flatbed trailer kit does not appear to be based on a prototype. It looks like it might be based on a V12 or V16 Sulzer machine. That's what I went with. Scratch built items are built on the scale of 1 mm = 1" (1/25.4) I tried to create a reasonable representation of a powerhouse in this diorama, however I didn't let the laws of Heat and Thermal or Fluid Mechanics get in the way of a good story.
Since this is a new power plant and the operators take pride in their equipment That means that there is a minimum of weathering required.
Thanks for looking
Carl