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Building a USN Port Around a HogIslander

At about this time I decided to have the ship alongside a quay wall. A perusal of the White Ensign Models ‘Dockyard Mateys’ soon had me planning grander schemes!
I obtained from WEM dock sections, steam locomotive(s), numerous railway freight cars, some buildings and a host of other goodies. I then decided that a handsome dockyard crane was a must-have! To the rescue came Loose Cannon productions, who have a good variety of dockyard cranes as resin/PE combo-kits and an extensive range of beautiful buildings.

These are truly models within themselves, featuring recessed laser-etched(?) window frames, and printed card overlays, to be stuck onto the Perspex carcass. As I was unable to have the space for the complete structures on my chosen base, I modified the buildings to suit my bas-relief purposes by chopping, mixing and adapting the parts supplied.
After adding rain guttering, down spouts, ridge tiles, and chimney stacks, I was able to return to matters nautical!! It was an interesting exercise in model making; I found myself when stuck in traffic observing the weathering pattern of buildings by the roadside….
Having placed the pier side on its base, I decided that being square to the base made it dull visually; so I angled the entire pier around 8-10 degress to the long edge, and glued and screwed the resin sections, filling the recessed screws with auto-body filler.
Only then I realized that I had to also saw off all the backs of the buildings at the same angle...this was tricky to do with these delicate, assembled, finished buildings…so I re-enforced all internal seams with Araldite epoxy, fastened the structures to the dockside and base; and when hard, using a high-speed angle grinder(!!) I ground off all overhanging building parts...it really does pay to PLAN AHEAD, which I evidently did not!!
After placing the big ship alongside the pier, it all looked rather sparse, so the freight train was built, and placed into position. Prior to this I had hollowed out the 2-8-0 locomotive’s cab, installed window frames of ex–radar PE, thinned down the crank and connecting rods, drilled out the smokestack and raised the chassis level to reduce the ‘daylight’ below the boiler.
The railway track and turnouts were drawn alongside some suitably dimensioned adhesive trim-line tape, lightly tacked down with a sharp pencil; it more or less scales to a gauge of 4ft 8.5in..!- The tape was then removed, leaving perfectly parallel lines, effectively simulating track let into a flush surface. The wood cargo stacks were made using styrene strip suitably coloured to represent lumber. I used the cast BFM crates piled up, along with some cable reels made from GMM parts. The rope and cable coils were made of copper wire.

At this stage the BFM tugboats arrived, along with an oiler and a garbage vessel… these were mini-projects within themselves. The oiler had some alterations carried out to make it look like an older variant; pipe-work was added, as well as valve wheels, along with the very sturdy masts, used, I surmised, for hoisting the heavy oil delivery pipes.