Price: $60.99 each (nos. BR5867 “Old” and BR5868 “New”). Features: Plastic construction, rotating blades, cattle detail pieces. For more information go to www.Woodlandscenics.com
There were a few odd spots where a boxcar or tank car had been parked in the middle of nowhere. The only exception to this whole lot of nothing I was seeing was a notable number of forlorn trackside cattle-loading ramps. No houses, no cows, no stations. Nothing. Except, that is, for a nearby windmill.
The Woodland Scenics windmill is the answer to anyone with a small farm or farmhouse, a field with cows, or a barren field with an abandoned cattle station.
The O gauge windmill comes in two flavors: the no. BR5867 “Old” version and the no. BR5868 “New” windmill.
The windmill itself is a compact structure measuring about 9 inches tall and 2 inches wide at its triangular base. The beams have wood texture and “steel” reinforcements and bolts as critical joints.
The turbine’s blade and fin assembly has three supports on a topside platform. A ladder for maintenance runs up one side to the top. The windmill rotates 360 degrees, and the blades are functional and rotate. The rear fin is rigid.
A “pipe” runs up the center of the structure and arises from a rep pipe and a wood floor that must surely cover the wellhead! An additional pipe runs out at a 90-degree angle from the structure. This supplies a round wood cattle trough.
There is a third piece in the set – a hay rack for storing cattle feed.
If you have about a foot of green or brown real estate (and a few O gauge cows), plop this windmill down and you have a ready-made story to tell.
The “Old” version of the windmill is definitely “distressed,” with rusty and missing turbine blades. The detail pieces are nicely varied – a hand pump, a small trough, and two oblong stock tanks to be fed from the well. You could put both of the windmills together on the same farm, and it wouldn’t be a duplication – new has replaced the old.
These clever structures are well made and compact and will add greatly to the story of your railroad.