02-23-2010, 02:17 AM
Charlie;
Those are some great photos of a very large distillery. That grain elevator looks like one you'd find where grain was being shipped out by rail rather then for storage! Big operation. The Schenley Distillery here in Frankfort was one of the largest in the state and the plant would be comparable to the one in those photos. Not as many warehouses though, but the ones they had were very large.
I drove out past the Old Crow and Old Taylor distilleries this afternoon and in spite of the fact that both have been closed for many years now, most of the buildings are in good shape. I'm hoping that when the weather clears, I can "con" my way inside both of them and get some photos. One of the warehouses at Old Taylor has collapsed like the one in your photo. As you mention, those warehouses are all just shells around tiers of racks to hold the barrels.
Ken;
That loading ramp would be quite suitable for use at the distillery. The thing I tried to describe was a very simple looking affair, but no reason you couldn't use something like that.
There is one more detail I thought of at the Buffalo Springs distillery that we haven't talked about and that was the loading facility for the dried mash (feed). Will do my best to describe that.
At the spot were the car was loaded, they had attached a rather flimsy looking metal framework to the corner of the warehouse. Best description I can think of is it resembled the scaffolding you see around construction sites. If you are standing on the track looking at the end of the warehouse, it was located on the end wall at the left corner. It was about 8 feet wide - 4 feet deep and stood about 15 feet high with a ladder up the left side and just enough of a railing on the top platform to hopefully keep a man from falling off.
There was a short foldout platform that would allow a man to walk out on top of a covered hopper being loaded. The loading pipe came down the warehouse wall above the platform and had a flexible (canvas?) end on it, which could be placed into either the roof hatch of a covered hopper, or directed into a box car door.
The loading pipe appeared to be about 10 inches in diameter. That dried mash looks like a dark corn meal and smells great! Person could package that stuff and sell it to people for a breakfast food rather than feed it to the livestock! I love to walk out the back door in the fall and spring when Old Grand Dad is in production and smell that dried mash. I live about a mile from Old Grand Dad, so you can really smell it on cool crisp mornings.
It appeared that the piping from the distillery to the loading chute thing must have been suspended by a cable to carry it over the tracks, but can't say for sure, as it was no longer in place when I used to go through there on the train. You could see that the loading pipe had been connected to another pipe so that's a guess on my part. If it had been held up by some sort of poles or legs, they were long gone.
Wish I had a photo of this or something similar, so I hope you can figure out what I'm talking about from my description.
If I were going to model this, I think I'd probably do like I mentioned in a previous post and put the feed loading spot over on the "plant" track at the end of the main building between the coal trestle and the grain elevator rather than across the tracks at the warehouse. Would save a little space on the case house track and fill the unused space on the plant track.
Ed
Those are some great photos of a very large distillery. That grain elevator looks like one you'd find where grain was being shipped out by rail rather then for storage! Big operation. The Schenley Distillery here in Frankfort was one of the largest in the state and the plant would be comparable to the one in those photos. Not as many warehouses though, but the ones they had were very large.
I drove out past the Old Crow and Old Taylor distilleries this afternoon and in spite of the fact that both have been closed for many years now, most of the buildings are in good shape. I'm hoping that when the weather clears, I can "con" my way inside both of them and get some photos. One of the warehouses at Old Taylor has collapsed like the one in your photo. As you mention, those warehouses are all just shells around tiers of racks to hold the barrels.
Ken;
That loading ramp would be quite suitable for use at the distillery. The thing I tried to describe was a very simple looking affair, but no reason you couldn't use something like that.
There is one more detail I thought of at the Buffalo Springs distillery that we haven't talked about and that was the loading facility for the dried mash (feed). Will do my best to describe that.
At the spot were the car was loaded, they had attached a rather flimsy looking metal framework to the corner of the warehouse. Best description I can think of is it resembled the scaffolding you see around construction sites. If you are standing on the track looking at the end of the warehouse, it was located on the end wall at the left corner. It was about 8 feet wide - 4 feet deep and stood about 15 feet high with a ladder up the left side and just enough of a railing on the top platform to hopefully keep a man from falling off.
There was a short foldout platform that would allow a man to walk out on top of a covered hopper being loaded. The loading pipe came down the warehouse wall above the platform and had a flexible (canvas?) end on it, which could be placed into either the roof hatch of a covered hopper, or directed into a box car door.
The loading pipe appeared to be about 10 inches in diameter. That dried mash looks like a dark corn meal and smells great! Person could package that stuff and sell it to people for a breakfast food rather than feed it to the livestock! I love to walk out the back door in the fall and spring when Old Grand Dad is in production and smell that dried mash. I live about a mile from Old Grand Dad, so you can really smell it on cool crisp mornings.
It appeared that the piping from the distillery to the loading chute thing must have been suspended by a cable to carry it over the tracks, but can't say for sure, as it was no longer in place when I used to go through there on the train. You could see that the loading pipe had been connected to another pipe so that's a guess on my part. If it had been held up by some sort of poles or legs, they were long gone.
Wish I had a photo of this or something similar, so I hope you can figure out what I'm talking about from my description.
If I were going to model this, I think I'd probably do like I mentioned in a previous post and put the feed loading spot over on the "plant" track at the end of the main building between the coal trestle and the grain elevator rather than across the tracks at the warehouse. Would save a little space on the case house track and fill the unused space on the plant track.
Ed
Ed
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"
"Friends don't let friends build Timesavers"