97 Coal Elevator

[mikeberry]

Wow man!  That is awaesome!  I wish I had that kind of skill.

[customer1]

Test/Customer Service

[steve24944]

Thank You

[cbtrainman]

Wow!  Looks Just Like my #97!   IN MY DREAMS!   I really admire a person with the talent and vision to create something special out of something ordinary.  Great job!

[steve24944]

Thanks for the comments.   Any one else have 97 Elevator pictures to share ?

Steve

[DennisB-1]

Nice job!

[Dave632]

 Nice, looks much better than the original.

[sir james I]

Nice work, now you have a one-of-a-kind loader.

[LL675]

that looks really good!

[steve24944]

Back in May 2011 -  I picked up an old 97 Coal Elevator from Mizell Trains in Denver which went out of business this past spring. ( Mizell Trains was a great Hobby Shop )  The 97 Coal Elevator was well used and a little dinged up but the motor and the tray coil and the unload coil worked fine.  I cleaned her up, straightened the bent metal as best I could and gave her a new paint job.

I custom built a uncouple / control rail section of track from a old 6019 Remote Control Track that I took apart. This allows a car to be switched and uncoupled to the unload position and then the car can be unloaded into the tray.

I then decided to kitbash the 97 to make her look less toy like.

The safety cage ladders are Plastruct.  The bottom of the ladders are set into two small holes drilled into the wood.  The top of the ladders are secured to the catwalk by magnets, so they can be easly removed.  The stairs are also Plastruct, but the handrails are thin balsa.  The top of the stairs landing platform and the catwalks are a mix of Evergreen Styrene pieces.  The decking for the catwalks is a plastic mesh used for Cross-stitch.

 A cheap HO scale tank car for added detail.

The corrugated metal roof is painted corrugated bass wood sheet.   The area under the tower legs I glued sand to a square of cardboard cut to fit the space.

Nothing is glued to the original metal of the 97,  so it can all be removed ( with some difficulty ) to get back to the original.

The Bakelite Base I countersunk into the 1/2 inch thick Celotex  ( Homasote ) that is over 1/2 inch plywood.  I ran the wiring through the plywood to the underside of the layout.  The 2 wires for the unload coil up in the upper portion of the Elevator I ran through 3/16 styrene tube that I hid in the inside of the tower support leg.  You can see the tube in the above photo, back left leg.

Here is the underside of the 97.  Note the terminal strips I added for wiring.  You can see the countersink into the Celotex.

Terminal strip on the under side of the layout.  The 2 wires on the left are for the control rails to unload the Lionel Dump Car.  The 3 wires on the right are for the 97 motor functions, which I have connected to a 9.6 volt DC power supply.  ( An old Radio Shack wall plug type power supply for an old answering machine or cordless phone )  The black flex tube goes to my hand held controller.  See below.

When I bought my 97 there was no controller, so I made one.  I took apart a controller for a UCS Track and re-wired the 2 push buttons.  The left button for the upper unload coil, the right button for the bucket conveyor + tray coil.  The doorbell button is for the control rails in the track to unload the Lionel Dump Car.

I have been working on this 97 elevator project for quite some time.  As you can see ... still more work to do,  track ballast,  ground cover, etc ....   

And that poor 394 Beacon.  I also picked that up at Mizell Trains, cleaned it up and gave it a paint job,  but missing the red-green top.  Right now it has a blinking light on top.  The tower is there to hold up the blinking light, and the blinking light is a warning that the tower is there.

Steve