Animating Maastrecht's Mill

Ever since I was eight years old I've admired the work of Ben King who spent many years building his small Timber City and North Western  Railroad. Ben's gift was detailing and scratchbuilding, the few structures on his layout were beautifully conceived and constructed. He wrote several articles for Model Railroader over the years, including several documenting the building of these structures. The articles included his plans.

The May 1994 issue of Model Railroad had an article by Ben King on building Weimer's grist mill. I was taken with this model and always wanted to have a crack at building it one day. Alas, I've not had the patience to give it whirl.

A while back I came across the MakeCNC website which was selling plans for CNC routers. They had a plan for Heim's Mill. I pulled out the article from 1994, sure enough, the two structures were very close and the CNC plans clearly used Ben King's plans as the base for their model.

I found a CNC kit maker in New Zealand who was producing kits using these plans and purchased a kit for NZ$20. The kit used 1mm plywood, so some of the details are a bit thick. But I've found they work nicely as when painted and weathered and are not placed to close to the layout edge.

I made the kit up about a year ago but I could not decide on a location for it on the layout. It was clear that if it was going to go on the layout, I was going to have to do some scenery surgery. I'll post on the integration with the layout another day. However, I knew that if I was going to put the mill on the layout, I had to animate the water wheel.

Water wheels turn slowly, so I needed a motor with a gearbox to provide that nice slow turning motion. I turned to AliExpress and found this very reasonably priced motor with a built-in gearbox.  It turned out to be a great choice.

The small motor and gearbox from AliExpress

After drilling a hole for the wheel shaft I made a mount for the motor and simply glued it into place inside the mill. The video shows a test of the wheel and motor inside the model.

Ben King called his structure Wiemer's Mill, but what to call to mine? I've settled Maastrecht's Mill. Maastrecht was my Mother's maiden name, so its named after my Nana and Oupa. To my knowledge, we did not have any millers in the family but never mind. I have a tradition of naming places and businesses on the layout after family and friends. Moreover, my Nana Maastrecht was the one who introduced me to trains, building my first layout for me when I was three years old. Given that, I think it's fitting that a structure I've admired for so long is named after her. Anyway, I think the name has a nice ring to it.

The next step is to install the mill on the layout. I'm going to have to make space...