02-22-2010, 09:47 AM
Ken;
We seem to be thinking along the same lines regarding a way to model this distillery and how it would be laid out for viewing and operating. In fact, I was just sitting with my handy dandy notebook sketching out how I would model it. Like you, I'd arrange it so that you would be looking over the case house and "main line" toward the distillery building. Much easier to reach over a low height structure that is just a few scale feet higher than a box car then to try and reach over a high building.
The coal trestle was level and no more than 8 or 10 feet above ground level. The terrain more or less just began to slope off from about mid point of the distillery building and the trestle started at that point. The stock pile of coal would have been maintained about half way up the height of the trestle when the distillery was in operation.
Should be able to compress the track lengths and still have enough room to duplicate the car spots. Reduce the case house to one car spot, then a car length for your barrels and another car length for the feed car. If I'm guesstimating correctly, about 24 inches from clearance point to end of track would work. Even if the cars had to remain coupled together - still works just fine. More or less the same for the distillery track. One car of coal - then a car length open - then a car of grain.
You could fudge a little and have your feed car load on the distillery track. I never quite understood why they piped the feed across three tracks to the bonded warehouse when it looked to me like there would have been room to load such cars between the coal trestle and the grain car spot. In fact, it may well have originally been done that way, but I don't know that for sure. Regardless, in such a case, you'd have a car of coal, then a car for feed loading, then a car of grain. All of which could remain coupled if necessary to save space. In my sketching, I thought of doing just that on the distillery track.
At most of the distilleries, the "standard" car spot arrangement (if there was a standard) on the distillery or plant track as they called it, would be from end of track: coal - grain - feed. But of course there were variations. That was the arrangement at Old Grand Dad and Schenley. But I'm getting off our subject again!
The barrel ramp as I call it - was more or less just a flat concrete pad not unlike a concrete driveway. It was 10 or 12 feet wide and more or less level with the top of the rail. It extended away from the track for probably 30 feet. Barrels were rolled out of and in to the cars on a simple ramp made from two pieces of iron or steel angle and tied together by flat steel pieces welded to the "rails" - in other words, it rather looked like a rusty piece of American Flyer 2 rail S gauge track. Hope that gives you an idea of how to model that.
Unloading new empty barrels would have been fairly easy work, but pushing full barrels of whiskey up that ramp would have been too much work for me! Have to say though, that I've watching distillery employees roll those full barrels of whiskey around like they weighed nothing at all!
I had stated in an earlier posting that the case house was made of brick, but now realize that it was a wood frame structure. Mind was playing tricks on me and I was confusing what the Buffalo Springs case house looked like with the one at Old Taylor distillery, as they were similar. The one at Old Taylor was brick and had a platform level with car doors and an awning over the platform. It had two tracks in front of it with 2 car spots on each track. Sorry about the mix up there!
Back to the viewing of the distillery in model form. It would be really interesting to be able to look into the case house and see cases of whiskey stacked on pallets with a fork lift preparing to load them in to the car. You could also have a nice view in to the warehouse, with its rows of barrels. Sure would require a lot of Grandt line barrels!
The ideas just keep on coming! I can see right now that a distillery, not unlike this one may well wind up being the major industry on my "Somewhere & Someplace" shortline! (No, that's not a name that I'd consider using!).
Ed
We seem to be thinking along the same lines regarding a way to model this distillery and how it would be laid out for viewing and operating. In fact, I was just sitting with my handy dandy notebook sketching out how I would model it. Like you, I'd arrange it so that you would be looking over the case house and "main line" toward the distillery building. Much easier to reach over a low height structure that is just a few scale feet higher than a box car then to try and reach over a high building.
The coal trestle was level and no more than 8 or 10 feet above ground level. The terrain more or less just began to slope off from about mid point of the distillery building and the trestle started at that point. The stock pile of coal would have been maintained about half way up the height of the trestle when the distillery was in operation.
Should be able to compress the track lengths and still have enough room to duplicate the car spots. Reduce the case house to one car spot, then a car length for your barrels and another car length for the feed car. If I'm guesstimating correctly, about 24 inches from clearance point to end of track would work. Even if the cars had to remain coupled together - still works just fine. More or less the same for the distillery track. One car of coal - then a car length open - then a car of grain.
You could fudge a little and have your feed car load on the distillery track. I never quite understood why they piped the feed across three tracks to the bonded warehouse when it looked to me like there would have been room to load such cars between the coal trestle and the grain car spot. In fact, it may well have originally been done that way, but I don't know that for sure. Regardless, in such a case, you'd have a car of coal, then a car for feed loading, then a car of grain. All of which could remain coupled if necessary to save space. In my sketching, I thought of doing just that on the distillery track.
At most of the distilleries, the "standard" car spot arrangement (if there was a standard) on the distillery or plant track as they called it, would be from end of track: coal - grain - feed. But of course there were variations. That was the arrangement at Old Grand Dad and Schenley. But I'm getting off our subject again!
The barrel ramp as I call it - was more or less just a flat concrete pad not unlike a concrete driveway. It was 10 or 12 feet wide and more or less level with the top of the rail. It extended away from the track for probably 30 feet. Barrels were rolled out of and in to the cars on a simple ramp made from two pieces of iron or steel angle and tied together by flat steel pieces welded to the "rails" - in other words, it rather looked like a rusty piece of American Flyer 2 rail S gauge track. Hope that gives you an idea of how to model that.
Unloading new empty barrels would have been fairly easy work, but pushing full barrels of whiskey up that ramp would have been too much work for me! Have to say though, that I've watching distillery employees roll those full barrels of whiskey around like they weighed nothing at all!
I had stated in an earlier posting that the case house was made of brick, but now realize that it was a wood frame structure. Mind was playing tricks on me and I was confusing what the Buffalo Springs case house looked like with the one at Old Taylor distillery, as they were similar. The one at Old Taylor was brick and had a platform level with car doors and an awning over the platform. It had two tracks in front of it with 2 car spots on each track. Sorry about the mix up there!
Back to the viewing of the distillery in model form. It would be really interesting to be able to look into the case house and see cases of whiskey stacked on pallets with a fork lift preparing to load them in to the car. You could also have a nice view in to the warehouse, with its rows of barrels. Sure would require a lot of Grandt line barrels!
The ideas just keep on coming! I can see right now that a distillery, not unlike this one may well wind up being the major industry on my "Somewhere & Someplace" shortline! (No, that's not a name that I'd consider using!).
Ed
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"