Freelance 2013-2 (MAW)

[jwb]

Now that you're dealing with agricultural territory, I can at least provide some agri-related rail info from the San Joaquin Valley. I've gotten really interested in the San Joaquin Valley Railroad in the last few years (and have provided info on it to Charles Freericks for his upcoming revised edition of his Southern California Locals book). There is a tomato paste factory on the Buttonwillow branch that loads tomato paste into Railboxes.
   
   
What you see in the background appears to be stacks of tomato paste boxes. My guess is that an awful lot of the products from this part of the San Joaquin Valley, tomato paste, onions, garlic, and cheese, goes into frozen pizza!

Here is the end of a train on the Buttonwillow branch:
   
I believe the Railboxes are carrying tomato paste. The tank cars are carrying liquid fertilizer ingredients, I'm pretty sure. This is another agri-related Industry you can consider.

[FCIN]

jwb's posting reminded me that many grain handling facilities these days have evolved into year-round farm supply centers that also receive covered hoppers of fertilizers (ammonium nitrate, potash, urea, to name a few) and tank cars of liquid fertilizers, including anhydrous ammonia. Thus you have more or less year-round inbound and outbound rail traffic. Fertilizers in the planting season and grain shipments during the harvest season and in many cases year-round.

Such facilities can be found all over the mid-west and the Rydman & Fox operation at Frankton, IN (owners/operators of the Indian Creek Railroad) is one such example. If you look at the Google aerial view link in my previous posting and follow the track to the northwest, you'll see their fertilizer facility. I've been by there a couple of times in the late winter/early spring and seen numerous tank cars and covered hoppers of fertilizer on line waiting to be unloaded.

A common site around such facilities are ammonia tank trailers such as these:     Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any HO scale models of such tanks, although someone else may be aware of some. There would also be fertilizer storage sheds and trucks for delivering and spreading fertilizer such as see in this view:     Also note the large ammonia storage tank which would be identical to the LP Gas tanks available from Walthers.

Just some ideas for a mid-west agriculture related rail line.

[torikoos]

Hi Reinhard, you seem to go from project to project, looking forward in how you will model this one.

Good luck and I'll be having a look on this thread from time to time on what you've been doing. :-)

Koos

[nkp_174]

There are several rail-served elevators up my parent's way. I'll try to get some photos the next time I'm up there. One of them has a 25t GE diesel just like Grandt Line's 25tonner.

[Brakie]

Reinhard,Having visited the MAW I would say freelancing would be the best way to model this railroad..I would add a active grain company and anything else I fancied that is found along the MAW.

I might add a industry or two.

[faraway]

It was a busy day yesterday and a lot of glue has been used.....

The two wet/dry bins from Walthers are taller and much more detailed than expected. I hope the matching elevators have no problem with the overhead cabinet and it's doors.



ps. MAW understood my track length constrains and ran trains suitable for me
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2105/57847...133d_b.jpg

[railohio]

The railroad actually ran a lot of long, 25-35 car, trains. What would happen is there'd be a derailment and the crew onboard would drag whatever cars it could ahead of the derailed car on down the line while a second crew worked to rerail the derailed cars and fix the track:


CNUR5SilosNapoleonOH5-12-10 by railohio, on Flickr

[faraway]

The railroad actually ran a lot of long, 25-35 car, trains....

I know. I was just kidding.
ps. Did you notice the baby blue horn of the MAW4? It is silver/metal on some older photos. Do you know how they got that "outstanding" horn (flea market)?

[Mike Kieran]

Hey Reinhard. Are you doing a separate line from the Maumee and Western? Say, the Indiana Industrial Railway?

[faraway]

Hi Mike, I have no intention to become more prototypical by a more specific prototype.

ps. When a stranger tells you to put eight sticks upright in the air and connect them with eight free hovering crosses don't call him a fool. His name is Walthers and you work on his surge bin kit! This kit drives me nuts

[Mike Kieran]

If only we were born with eight arms.

[kamerad47]

It looks good!!!!! there is only one problem the tracks are to straight & even for the MAW!!!!!!!! http://youtu.be/0TaNeam-J-g

[faraway]

I asked some day ago how grain trucks are unloaded at the elevator facility. Here are two nice examples and explanations useful to build something close to the prototype
http://www.agri-systems.com/drag-conveyor.php a nice photos of the pit
http://www.agri-systems.com/dumpit-system.php
http://www.lowrymfgco.com/receiving-stations.html more technical information

and this is a nice PDF-text for people like me that know nothing about farming and elevators.
http://www.epa.gov/ttnchie1/ap42/ch09/fi...0909-1.pdf first pages describe the process

[faraway]

Completed the surge bin and did the raw work on the concrete elevator buildings with a bridge. There are two more wet/dry bins to go. The newer Walthers elevator and silo kits are beautiful but a real challenge to me.


A test with the concrete silo extension. I think it does not fit very well but brings the concrete vs. steel impression out of balance. Will see if two additional steel bins may help.

[sailormatlac]

Reinhard,

I agree steel and concrete silos doesn't blend perfectly. However, I've seen many concrete silos later cladded with vertical corrugated siding. The large elevator I'm building on the club layout has such clad silos (thought I'm modelling the older non-clad version of the late 50s).

Maybe the steel bin between the two row of concrete silos is out of place. Looks very "rural" to me to be there. It would be more realistic to have it placed after the concrete silos, as a cheap extension of the grain elevator complex. The same as you did with the surge bins.

Matt