O.P. Berry Excelsior Mill

This thread will include all the blog posts and additional information on the construction of the O.P. Berry Mill complex in Wolfboro New Hampshire.

The mill complex was one of a number of industries around Lake Winnipesaukee. For most of its life it made Excel CR, which is the material that was used in teddy bears. It is a paper byproduct.

There are several buildings in the mill complex as well as a main building and power station. It sits just below a dam with a rail line running in front of it. Down closer to the lake is the machine shop, which is the first part of the complex that I am building.

I’ve made cardboard dummy buildings for the remaining structures in order to get a sense of the relative positioning of all the structures.

I’m using plans that were made by Paul Turner of North Carolina who published a series of research materials on the mill complex, including full size HO scale schematics.

The completed machine shop:

Shortly I’ll be posting some images of the entire mill complex as it originally existed, some photographs of various kits that were made of parts of the structure over the past 20 years, as well as my own photographs of the area as it exists today.