I have a curve near the back of my yard area that had to have a curve to accomodate a coaling tower and need an icing setup. I have room for the FSM icing platform main house (already built) to be on the straight but the track starts to curve just after the start of the separate platform. If I was to use the platform as is it is a scale 1 1/2' off of straight after cutting an angle where the main part meets the platform. Now should I do this and say good enough or should I slice and dice the platform. Could not find a prototype of this proublem but I am sure it must have been a neccesity somewhere.
The main problem I see would be that most icing platforms I'm familiar with use some kind of chain conveyor to bring blocks of ice out of the house and along the platform. Seems like a problem to run the conveyor on a curved platform.
I used to watch reefers being iced from a scissors-lift platform truck at a yard near me. Could you kit-bash such a truck and stage it near the platform to load up on ice then drive them out to the cars to be iced?
Tell visitors that the platform used to be longer but a trackage realignment required shortening it and now the trucks fill in for "remote" loading.
Good Luck, Ed
The answer(s) to your question, with photographs, appear in the book "Pacific Fruit Express" by Anthony W. Thompson, Robert J. Church, and Bruce H. Jones, Signature Press, ISBN: 1-930013-03-5. Page 296 has a photograph of the Colton CA Ice Manufacturing Plant (IMP) with its curved, island type icing deck. The curved, 20 car island type platform which replaced a straight, ten car deck at El Centro, CA, Ice Transfer Plant (ITP) in 1923 is shown on p.321. An IMP as the name implies, uses ice manufactured by PFE. The ITPs use ice manufactured by another firm and sold to PFE.
Although it is true most platforms were built straight for obvious reasons, they COULD be curved if necessary. True, the ice in standard 300 lb, blocks was moved up onto and along the icing deck by a continuous chain conveyor. This chain engaged the ice (on PFE's decks) with steel lugs spaced 5'6" apart. This chain traveled at 186 feet per minute, delivering 37 300 lb blocks or, 5 1/2 tons of ice per minute. Of course none of these curves equaled the sharp radii of our models, but a reasonably curved platform is legitimate. The one at Colton even used blue signal lights instead of blue flags when the cars on a track were being worked.
BATMAN If you wanted to add another detail, smaller icing stations and even larger ones that would get backed up would employ these Ice service cars to help clear a backlog. The cars would run along on a parallel track and load the blocks from these cars across to the reefer. You could employ such a car on the curve.
If you wanted to add another detail, smaller icing stations and even larger ones that would get backed up would employ these Ice service cars to help clear a backlog. The cars would run along on a parallel track and load the blocks from these cars across to the reefer. You could employ such a car on the curve.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
You could also run a platform at grade off the end of the raised platform along the curve and use it for crushed ice loading.
The icing platform is for hand loaded ice for a small operation. Even though the FSM one is not proto it gives a small layout this service and it is plausable size and shape. When building a small layout, U shaped 6 1/2x11x12 1/2' with a yard and continuse running it can be hard to fit it all in and not make it look like speggetti but with separations and veiw blocks it can be done. Wish this forum made it easier to post pics.