Custom Industrial Piping from Scratch

Ever have a need for industrial piping on your layout? There are many industries that use piping for one thing or another but the first one that usually comes to mind is the petrochemical industry. Ever take a close look at a refinery? There are pipes going everywhere. Take a look at Figure 1.

Figure 1 Refinery Piping

Piping is not limited to the petrochemical industry though, for example, what about a city waterworks, a paper mill, a power plant (be it Thermal, Nuclear or Hydro to transfer steam and water). Anywhere there is a need to transfer fluids/gases there is a need for some type of piping. Now, take a look at your model railroad layout and if you haven’t already thought about it where should there be some piping to make the scene more realistic?

What prompted this post was the author taking that look at his layout and noticing his heating oil distributor (which has a large oil storage tank on the other side of the tracks) having absolutely no piping in place. See Figure 2

Figure 2 Author's heating oil distributor

How exactly does that oil get from the storage tank to the distribution tanks, magic!?!? Having some piping in place not only would make the scene more realistic but also make it just plain look better!

The Problem

Now for the problem, there is a very limited number of kits out there that contain piping you could kitbash to fit into the scene I mentioned above let alone the right type of piping. Walthers does sell a couple of kits that contain piping and some pumps for it. Take a look at Figure 3 and Figure 4.

   Figure 3 Walthers part 272-130487

Figure 4 Walthers part 683-215

These are ok as long as what you need is contained in the kit. Hacking these up to fit your design is not easy and changing your design to fit these kits rarely, if ever, accomplishes what you wanted anyway and can be less than satisfying.

The Solution

So, is there a solution to this mess? Yes, there is! Plastruct has individual parts that allow you to build your piping solution exactly as you want it. An example is shown in Figure 5. This shows a distribution pipe flowing into a single feeder pipe complex. Think about it for a minute and you can see the possibilities. The additional bend in the lower right is just an elbow turned 90⁰ (to vertical). The wood blocks to merge the pumps can be bought at any local craft store and cut to size. They also serve as an interface between the different sized pipes. These styrene parts come in both white and black but obviously can be painted any color you wish including silver and even Testor’s chrome and then weathered a bit (piping doesn’t stay pristine for long).

       Figure 5 Plastruct Example Piping

You can download Plastruct’s Catalog and 2017 price list here.

The author hopes this will allow you to add a little more realism to your layout along with some additional fun time.

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