The ROCK 3.0: Factory Construction + Farm Report

Factory Construction Report
Today, I pulled out my collection of styrene sheets, measured off the space for the Libbey-Owens-Ford (LOF) #7 Factory plant and started reviewing options for the structure.  I'm unable to model the plant accurately due to its immense size, but there are a few features I would like to capture (see circled below).

1. LOF # 5 and #7 buildings will look the same (sheet metal siding, large factory windows)
2. The large smoke stack.
3. The silica sand storage silos with headhouse.  

For the #7 Building (the one closest to the aisle) and largest of the two structures, I was thinking of building something like this.

The two loading tracks in the foreground are for loading float glass on to 50' box cars.

The chemical track on the far side of the building receives in limestone via 3-bay covered hoppers.

Drawing of the face of the factory as seen from the aisle.  Four dock bays spread out to match 50' box car loading on two tracks.  All windows above the loading tracks.  I would also add two exit doors with staircases down to the ground level.  

Actually, after laying out the window pieces, I think I will space them out more like this, but with sheet metal siding.

This evening, I rummaged through my building parts to see what I can use for the factory windows.  I have enough windows, rail dock and truck dock doors leftover from the numerous Walthers George Roberts Printing kits to use for LOF.  This still leaves me plenty for the Westclox building.  I went ahead and cut out those parts to make sure.  The LOF #7 structure is 21" long on the aisle side and 20" long long on the far wall side due to the plant sitting at an angle.  

Farm Report:
Today, I received my order from Scenic Express, but I don't like the Silflor mats I purchased.  They look nice online, but are way too thick with the backing and look toyish on the N Scale layout.  I was hoping to use these as a quick way to add the rest of the static grass I need, but I'm not so lucky.  I will return it to Scenic Express and just purchase more static grass.  I'll be glad when this chore is done.  Static grass gets EVERYWHERE!

I attempted to apply some Woodland Scenics static grass tonight.  No such luck.  I've tried with it before and tonight tried again.  It just doesn't do near as well as the Silflor static grass.  I ended up scraping it all up and will start over again when I have more in stock.

It seems like everything I tried to do this evening failed miserably (Silflor mats = failure, Woodland Scenics static grass = failure, dishwasher acting goofy, iPhone acting crazy not allowing me to log in iMessage, and couldn't access my own wireless network for while, but everyone else in the house could.   By the end of the evening, I was just in a foul mood as nothing was going like I would have hoped this evening.  I guess I did manage to sort out the design of the LOF plant plus found some useful stuff for the Ottawa Silica plant buildings, but I was really hoping to make some serious progress with scenery.  That was a complete failure.   I guess I will just try again tomorrow and hope for better results.