I am building a coal mine. I would like to include as much animation as possible . Any ideas?
Will
The most obvious 'animation' for a coal mine is to incorporate it in an 'empties in, loads out' exchange (with a corresponding 'loads in, empties out' industry or interchange on the other end of the layout (track schematic)/opposite side of the scenic divider(scenery.)
There was an article in MR, repeated in one of their books, detailing a live-loader built around a wood auger drill bit running backwards and a windshield wiper motor.
You could build and use real conveyor belts carrying real coal - one way to fill the hopper above the live loader.
One mine I'm familiar with used a pair of self-dumping skips running in a slanted shaft to bring coal to the surface. Very interesting action, and an intricate piece of scratchbuilding to reproduce it. (each skip was of 15 ton capacity - as much as the cars that were being loaded under the loadouts.)
The crusher and other pieces of machinery are noisy. If you can find a suitable recording and a small player with a good speaker you could hide the speaker in the scenery and play 'noise' at a suitable volume.
If you have enough space, you could model the skips that built the 'gob mountains' of waste rock.
Actually, with the exception of the 'gob mountains,' I've pretty much described what I intend to do with my own major coal mine. (I don't intend to animate the 600mm gauge tramway that connected the minehead elevator, the shops and the gob mountains - it would be a backyard filler in Gn20!)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with 2 animated coal mines)
The live loader article was by Jim Ferenc (who also wrote an article about a working scale for weighing cars).
Regards,
Charlie Comstock
tomikawaTT wrote: You could build and use real conveyor belts carrying real coal - one way to fill the hopper above the live loader.
I thought of that when I saw the title of the thread, but I would simply glue 'coal' to the conveyor and hide the ends. That way you get the animation of moving coal, but no mess.
WaxonWaxov wrote: tomikawaTT wrote: You could build and use real conveyor belts carrying real coal - one way to fill the hopper above the live loader.I thought of that when I saw the title of the thread, but I would simply glue 'coal' to the conveyor and hide the ends. That way you get the animation of moving coal, but no mess.
If you've ever been up close and personal with a coal mine you'ld know that 'mess' is the name of the game! (All of my color photos look like my black and white photos!)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - including 2 coal mines)
A few years ago Joy Global, who makes P&H mining equipment, built a nice N scale layout for display at a trade show, and they were nice enough to show it at that fall's Trainfest here in Milwaukee. It was a simple loop of track that went around a large hill. near the peak of a hill they had a large strip mining shovel (one of theirs obviously) that slowly turned back and forth over a large dump truck (one of those monsters that towers over everything). It really looked massive even in N scale, and because it moved so slowly you hardly noticed that it wasn't really DOING anything.
But the real highlight was the coal gons in the train. One of their engineers on staff had devised a simple flipping coal load in each car, triggered by a whisker that stuck out the side. As the train would roll slowly under a flood loader, the whisker would be tripped, and each empty car would emerge from under the flood loader fully loaded! The train of loads would go through a tunnel just before the flood loader and the load would be reflipped. the underside of each load was painted to look like the empty bottom of a coal gon. They must have been perfectly balanced. It was mesmerizing. There might be shots on the Forums somewhere from a Trainfest posting but I cannot find them. I had thought that the Kalmbach booth guys would write up the layout (which I believe has now been dismantled) but nothing came of it.
Dave Nelson
dknelson wrote: But the real highlight was the coal gons in the train. One of their engineers on staff had devised a simple flipping coal load in each car, triggered by a whisker that stuck out the side. As the train would roll slowly under a flood loader, the whisker would be tripped, and each empty car would emerge from under the flood loader fully loaded! The train of loads would go through a tunnel just before the flood loader and the load would be reflipped. the underside of each load was painted to look like the empty bottom of a coal gon. They must have been perfectly balanced. It was mesmerizing. There might be shots on the Forums somewhere from a Trainfest posting but I cannot find them. I had thought that the Kalmbach booth guys would write up the layout (which I believe has now been dismantled) but nothing came of it.
Those guys should patent and market that thing.