Friend took that photo of us crossing Bridge No. 3 from the Stagg line. One of those hardy souls on the front of the engine was me. In spite of its appearance, that bridge was a substantial structure and never worried us - can't say the same for some of the wooden trestles. I have photographs I took where Bridge No. 4 collapsed under a loaded covered hopper of corn on our way to Old Grand Dad one evening.
In the photo, the box car is one of the L&N Dual Airpac box cars for whiskey loading and the tank car contains grain alcohol for bottling as gin and/or vodka!
I too am a short line fanatic. Every one of them is indeed a down home thing and unique in its own right.
Ken;
Good find! I'm no good with German either, but some good photos. The one identified as "Tanks" was of course the grain elevator.
I took a ride over to Stamping Ground Friday afternoon and its all gone now! Not a trace of the distillery buildings that I could see from my truck. Only the F&C right of way can be seen, in fact the ROW is clearly visible (thanks to the snow) from either direction at Stamping Ground and many places along a couple of back roads between Switzer and Stamping Ground. There is a two story housing facility that has been constructed more or less on the site of the distillery building.
To answer your question - the track at the distillery was straight. It curved in from the West on the North side of town - stayed straight for little over a half mile after leaving town and then turned East and crossed KY Highway 227.
On those photos with German captions, is the one marked warehouse the bonded ware-house on your plan? Also the grain elevator looks totally different to anything I have seen and would definitely make for an interesting model, it seems to be clad in tiles of some kind.
I agree with you about the Kadee boxcars - have you seen what Exactrail are doing? They have an L & N boxcar but is is marked for paper loading.
On the <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bourbon-whiskey.de/c_buffalosprings.html">http://www.bourbon-whiskey.de/c_buffalosprings.html</a><!-- m --> page, the building referred to as a warehouse would be the building where case whiskey was loaded. It was a rather simple affair as you can see - simply a couple of doors and a platform next to the rail. As I recall, the loading platform was slightly lower than the floor of a box car. Two - 50 foot cars could be spotted for loading at that building. Just to the right of that building would be the concrete apron where barrels were unloaded and beyond that, the Bonded warehouse.
About the best example of what the warehouse looked like can be found on this page:
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The one shown at the Wild Turkey distillery was larger, but otherwise pretty much the same style of building. Wood frame covered with corrugated siding - about 3 or 4 stories tall (very low stories at that). It's pretty much a standard style of warehouse building and there are numerous similar structures still standing and being used around here.
At Buffalo Springs, the narrow end of the warehouse was next to the track. Dried mash (or feed) was pumped or air-blown through an overhead pipe from the distillery building and a simple loading chute or pipe was mounted on the end of the warehouse where the feed car would be loaded. Very unusual compared to how it was handled at other distilleries.
I'm sorry to say that I don't know what that style of block was called, used on the grain elevator - more like brick than block. Each distillery had its own unique grain elevator and this one certainly falls under unique to model heading. Wish I could find a photo that showed the complete elevator!
Another of my favorites is the elevator that was at the Old Taylor Distillery. It still stands and I intend to make it out there one day very soon and photograph it. If the current owner will let me on the property!
This link: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bourbon-whiskey.de/oldtaylor/oldtaylor1.html">http://www.bourbon-whiskey.de/oldtaylor/oldtaylor1.html</a><!-- m --> has some photos that show most of the Old Taylor elevator: 5th photo down the left side - 7th and 10th photos on right side of the page.
As you can see from these photos, the main portion of the Old Taylor elevator had poured concrete walls and there were 4 small silos inside it. The upper portion or "head house" was corrugated metal with several windows. There were some interesting piping configurations and a dust collector too.
The unique feature of this elevator was the method used to unload the covered hoppers. A pan was placed between the rails under the hopper chutes and a vacuum hose attached to the pan actually "sucked" the grain up and into the silos as it was discharged from the cars. That vacuum pipe can be seen as the thin pipe extending away from the elevator in photo 10 on the right side of the page. The track had a capacity of about 5 cars and 2 or 3 would be spotted for unloading. As each was unloaded, it was moved toward the end of the track by a cable car-puller until the last car was over the unloading pan.
Was just looking at the ExactRail website and their new Southern 50 foot waffle side box car was a type often seen on the F&C, at least as long as the F&C operated to Georgetown. This would be suitable for either case whiskey or whiskey in barrel loading. The L&N 400,000 series Dual Air Pac cars were almost identical to these too. The ExactRail Gunderson 5200 cf box car in L&N (paint out the paper loading markings) - C&O and SP (sold out it says) would also be suitable cars.
All this discussion of the Buffalo Springs distillery has got me seriously considering modeling it myself. Although I'd call it something different and it would be on my "freelance" short line rather than the F&C. It's just a perfect model railroad size distillery with an interesting track arrangement. Mine might even be sort of a mixture of features from several of the distilleries I'm familiar with. These distilleries are just too interesting to not consider for a major industry on a short line, industrial or "big time" railroad. At least in MHO.
Hope my rambling about the Old Taylor grain elevator doesn't confuse you. I need to stick to the subject at hand!
Here are some Walthers structure kits that I feel could be used for modeling the Buffalo Springs Distillery and Stamping Ground
1: 933-2807 - Golden Valley Depot
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Perfect for a station at Stamping Ground - even resembles F&C stations.
2: 933-2844 - Drumlin Forest Lumber
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Could be located along or near the Stamping Ground siding/team track to justify inbound shipments of lumber and/or building products. There is in fact such a lumber dealer now located at the site of the Stamping Ground station, siding and team track, although it didn't exist in 1969.
3: 933-3009 - Water Street Freight Terminal
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(no longer available at Walthers)
The freight house portion would be a good representation of the case house and the office portion could be used to model a portion of the main distillery building
4: 933-3024 - Milwaukee Beer & Ale Brewery
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3024">http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3024</a><!-- m -->
(no longer available at Walthers)
Man! This structure would be the perfect building for the main distillery. The model appears to be of a stone type construction, but even if it's of brick construction - it still has the look of a distillery. Lots of similarities between that building and the "typical" distillery building. Some kit-bashing here and there - possibly reducing the height of the structure - and you'd have a great distillery building.
5: As for the bonded warehouse - I'd just find a good photo of a typical corrugated metal warehouse and use plastic corrugated siding to build up that structure.
6: The grain elevator would have to be scratch built too, but other than trying to duplicate the look and color of the block used in its construction, would not be difficult.
Depending on the available space - in all likelihood, most of the buildings would be low-relief structures - so the Milwaukee Beer & Ale building could be made into a much longer structure, if desired. You'd only need to model a portion of the warehouse too.
Your ramblings about the Old Taylor Distillery do not confuse me. I consider it a privellege that you are so generously sharing your knowledge and experience.
I keep asking you these questions because I am after the essence of rail service to Buffalo Springs. You have painted a very clear pictures and these various photos fill in some of the gaps. As you say it is about being inspired by it rather than slavishly copying it.
Thanks for the suggested structures, mine will definitely have a strong element of low-relief!
What stands out for me as a layout, is the main line runing through it with a spur either side. I have not seen that on a model, usually the spurs are all one side.
Finally I may be British but I am also a big shortline fan. Wish we had them over here.
I reckon the way to approach modelling Buffalo Springs is selective compression - whilst keeping the operation you have described. Essentially this means shortening the spurs and maybe shrinking the buildings a bit.
For me this will be a shelf layout with the viewing side that of the warehouse, so you look across to the distillery and elevator. This will mean slicing the cased whiskey shed and the bonded warehouse. From the pictures you referred us to this means you will be looking at the shallow floors with barrels (need to get large supply of Grandt Line barrels) and for the cased whiskey building looking through loading doors.
The distillery is then low relief, either kit-bashed from your suggested models or scratch-built using a stone siding and approximating the windows from photos. The elevator is as you say a straightforward design but the cladding is distinctive. There may be something on this site that could be used to wrap around some tubes:
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You are looking across to the coal trestle - is there anything you could say about what this looked like, was it level or inclined up? Then you have the pipe coming across to the bonded warehouse for feed loading. The barrel ramp makes a nice feature and you also get to see where the barrels go.
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!).
Hi all, I just found this thread, and I'm sorry to be so late, but I do have some old pictures of the Schenley distillery in Schenley, Pa. I spent 14 years in the area and did manage to come up with a few old pictures that might help. They are not my pictures, but some are 100 years old so I doubt the copyright is any thing I have to worry about. Schenley had 144 different labels that were bottled in Schenley, and they had over a million barrels of booze at various stages of aging at all times. The plant closed around 1986.
Charlie
One more view from the air, looking down the Allegheny River. Pittsburgh is 30 miles downstream. The tracks on the left of the plant ate the Allegheny Valley Railroad, which became PRR in 1910, and are now owned by the Kiski Junction.
Most of the buildings were barrel houses and have been torn down because all the were were covered barrel racks. The picture below is one that is a cutaway view as the building was falling down on its own. They finally brought in some equipment to finish the job getting it down, but it is still just a pile of 4X4 rubble
Charlie
Ed, I thought the concrete ramp was a concrete loading dock with a ramp, but what you describe sounds much more interesting. Made me think of this:
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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.
Here are a couple, one shows what was left of the pipe across the tracks, which was supported by a cable, and the other one shows the support structure on the plant side of the tracks.
Charlie
Another detail that could be added is the small railroad track that was used to roll the barrels from one building to another. it appeared to be about 18" beween rails, and there were even "grade crossings" in the black top roads. (There were no "barrel crossing " crossbucks)
Charlie
Of course we are not "dry" here, so there was a bar across the tracks and up the hill. I don't know if the crossing guard was a railroader from the station which is just to the right, or a distillery employee.
The bar was called the "Silver Top" . It was also the apartment (upstairs) that we rented for 3 1/2 years. The bar was closed years ago. The bar is also visible in one of the earlier pictures I posted in this thread.
Charlie
