Thanks steinjr, you make some very good points in your post, im will for sure have to do a little re thinking on how this is all going to work out.
Awesome looking elevator tomnoy3
thank you everyone else who has thrown your opinion in on this
Ill chime in as I have tackled a large elevator project from scratch. Theres more detail on the thread link but I believe the silos are 13" to the top and the top of the leg is 21" which is impressive at a 52" layout height.
More info here: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/105989.aspx
Heres a quick pic:
I have added an annex silo with overhead conveyors but do not have any pictures yet.
-Tom
BN Grain Hauler dngnrr, not trying to dissagree with you on this but just from driving by ENG elevator they are different in heights so maybe one of them maybe 100' tall but then the other is either taller or shorter. The measurements I got from google earth which im sure are not 100% right but somewhat right was right around a 18'-20' radius on the silos depeneding if it was the north or south elevator set. The ENG is on the west side of 27th and the AGP and the Cargill elevators are on the East side of 27th.
dngnrr, not trying to dissagree with you on this but just from driving by ENG elevator they are different in heights so maybe one of them maybe 100' tall but then the other is either taller or shorter.
The measurements I got from google earth which im sure are not 100% right but somewhat right was right around a 18'-20' radius on the silos depeneding if it was the north or south elevator set.
The ENG is on the west side of 27th and the AGP and the Cargill elevators are on the East side of 27th.
You have described your layout as being 16 foot long and 5 foot wide.
And you have described (as I understand you) wanting to make an elevator complex that is exactly to scale, and will turn out to be about 8 feet long (not 8 scale feet - 8 scale feet is in H0 scale about 8 feet x 12 inches/foot / 87.1 = 1.1" on your layout), 5 feet deep and 18 inches (ie about 130 scale feet) tall.
Are you building a layout where you intend to run trains, or is your primary goal to create very big exact scale diorama of a single elevator complex?
The reason I ask is that if what you want to do is to create the impression of "large elevator", the sensible thing to do is not to create an exact 1:87 scale replica of every silo in the elevator in a an 8 foot by 5 foot area 18" high.
It is to get your layout up high enough that the tracks are at chest level, put in a viewblock along the center of the table, and model a facility you only see the front of between the aisle and the center viewblock.
Make it say 15-20" deep instead of 5 feet deep, and make it tall enough that the elevators look significantly taller than the trains. A H0 scale train is about 2.5" tall. In comparison, Walther's ADM elevators is about 10" tall including the head house on top of the silo, so the ADM elevator is about 4 times taller than the trains.
Or put another way - if the tracks is at chest level for a grown man, the top of the elevator is at eye level, so you can see the detailing of the top of the elevator.
Have a look at the elevator in RedGrey's youtube video (earlier in this thread). About 2'40 into the video. Silos there are 15" tall (about 6 times taller than the engine), and 26" long (as opposed to your 96" long), and layout surface is about at elbow level. It still looks pretty big compared to the people around the layout and the trains.
An 18" tall silo with a 1" tall head house on top would be about 7.5 times taller than your train, and the top of your elevator (at 34" max height) would be above a foot over the head of a 6 foot tall man, if the tracks are at chest level - say 50" off the floor.
As for the length - it depend on how many cars you want to be able to spot along the elevator.The real thing apparently have room for 110 when taking into account all car storage tracks - ie a modern unit train.
Looking at the elevators using the bird's eye view in bing (http://www.bing.com/maps) the elevator to the west of 27th street (the one with the two rows of elevators with the space in between) looks to be about 15 car lengths or so long total, but has fairly long double ended loading tracks, whereas the smaller one to the east of 27th street seems to have room to handle about 10 cars at a time on each of it's two tracks - with room for loaded cars between the elevator and 27th street for the stub ended track, and between the covered shed and the mainline for the other track.
But on your layout, those cars will have to come from somewhere else on your layout (unless you are making a diorama), so you probably should not make the elevators longer than what seems sensible from the number of cars you plan to spot there.
A 40 scale foot box car (typically used to haul grain in the period you want to model) is about 5.5 inches long in H0 scale. So 10 car lengths is about 55" - call it 4.5 feet.
Say you want to handle cuts of up 8 cars at a time while switching the elevator - that means you should plan for 44" (3.5 feet) from the loading shed to the end of the track for a stub ended track - meaning that the elevator probably should be around 5-6 feet or so long total.
Put a couple of extra tracks in front of the elevator for spotting more cars for the elevator, and you have an elevator where you can do quite a bit of switching, involving e.g. 16 inbound and 16 outbound cars a session .- that is an almost 8 foot long grain train.
Or you can go down to handling cuts of 6 cars - 12 cars total - for a 5 1/2 foot grain train.
Or go up to 20 cars grain trains or whatever.
Do some mockups - put a cardboard "table" at the height you want to have your layout. Then put in something to show you how tall and long your elevators will be. Put up some cars. Does it look good to you?
Think about the rest of your layout. What will you do apart from spotting cuts of grain cars at the elevator? Will you have room for everything else you want?
That is - if what you want to make is a functional layout that will be fun to switch.
If what you want to make an exact scale copy of an elevator, and the trains just are there as part of a diorama, then you don't really have to think about things like whether you have enough of a switching lead to handle long cuts of cars, or where cars will be coming from or going to.
No matter what you end up doing, good luck with your elevator!
Smile, Stein
Grainhauler,
I will join the chorus and suggest you not be overly concerned about the height of whatever grain elevator you choose to model. They are so massive that a few feet either way is not going to be noticed by anyone except yourself.
As to the PVC, try to get the hardware store (or irrigation supply) to cut it on a pipe lathe. All the pieces will be the correct length and the cut will be smooth and square with the sides of the tubing.
For what it's worth, my latest grain elevator is a free-lanced version of the one in Greenfield, OK. There's a photo of the head house somewhere on this forum--I'm too lazy to look for it at the moment but you might find it of value in building yours.
John Timm
dngnrr Grain Hauler. I just called Eastern Nebraska Grain in Lincoln and was told their silo's are either 14 or 16' in diameter and 100' tall. If it is the one in Lincoln that you are modeling this should help. This is the one by 27th street.
Grain Hauler. I just called Eastern Nebraska Grain in Lincoln and was told their silo's are either 14 or 16' in diameter and 100' tall. If it is the one in Lincoln that you are modeling this should help. This is the one by 27th street.
jmart4173 Sounds like you have plenty of space to do this. For those that are space challenged I just saw this picture today on Railpictures.net of a grain loading facility in Portland with actual 45 degree curves for the loading tracks. The picture is here: http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=339228 Here is a Google maps link that I created with the overhead angle view: http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&q=cld+pacific+grain&fb=1&gl=us&hq=cld+pacific+grain&ei=TVqiTOLJHMH_lgesiOmfBA&ved=0CC8QtgMwAw&hnear=&radius=15000&ll=45.529369,-122.668662&spn=0.004103,0.00618&t=h&z=18 Looks like it would make a good diorama subject or a smaller facility if you don't have space for something huge but wanted some grain operations... Joe
Sounds like you have plenty of space to do this. For those that are space challenged I just saw this picture today on Railpictures.net of a grain loading facility in Portland with actual 45 degree curves for the loading tracks. The picture is here:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=339228
Here is a Google maps link that I created with the overhead angle view:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&q=cld+pacific+grain&fb=1&gl=us&hq=cld+pacific+grain&ei=TVqiTOLJHMH_lgesiOmfBA&ved=0CC8QtgMwAw&hnear=&radius=15000&ll=45.529369,-122.668662&spn=0.004103,0.00618&t=h&z=18
Looks like it would make a good diorama subject or a smaller facility if you don't have space for something huge but wanted some grain operations...
Joe
Holy cow!! That's the tightest radius I've ever seen on the prototype!
Michael
CEO- Mile-HI-RailroadPrototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989
The DINGER line Free Lance Steam to Diesel
Pastor Bob, Thanks for sharing the website of your layout. Very fascinating and informative.
BN Grain Hauler Well I crunched all the numbers to see just how much PVC it would take to build the ENG LLC Elevator, and it looking like its going to take 210ft of 3" diam. PVC with the silo's being 18" tall and when its all done the complex will be 8 scale feet long and will be 5 scale feet across. The top of the head house will be right at 38" high As of right now I am still planning on modeling this and am planning to start buying and cutting PVC this week. I will post pictures of the progress.
Well I crunched all the numbers to see just how much PVC it would take to build the ENG LLC Elevator, and it looking like its going to take 210ft of 3" diam. PVC with the silo's being 18" tall and when its all done the complex will be 8 scale feet long and will be 5 scale feet across. The top of the head house will be right at 38" high
As of right now I am still planning on modeling this and am planning to start buying and cutting PVC this week.
I will post pictures of the progress.
I would look and see what the price difference is on thin walled PVC. Irrigation supply stores and places like Ace Hardware tend to carry it and it may save you a few dollars
Ricky
it's your call, however, having learned from experience, better add a few more feet to your PCV order because you will cut some that aren't perfectly cut and will have to be discarded.
Bob
This is an old picture of my grain silos.
They measure 9 inches high. Imagine this scene with them twice as high. I m o in modeling you need to create an illusion of what you are modeling not an actual replica.
How woudl a mountain an other scenery look in comparison with 18" tall silos.
Just my opinion but it's your railroad
Happy Railroading
Don't Ever Give Up
BN Grain Hauler Okay, i do understand why if I made it full size everything would seem tiny, So i was think 18" tall would still be a reasonable height, that would still be quite tall compared to HO trains but then I would still get the effect of having a extremely large and tall building on my layout. The question I have is if the silos are 5" round in HO scale would it look odd that it would be "short and Fat" The reason I ask this is because on the norther unit of silos on the ENG LLC they have three silos side by side not 2
Okay, i do understand why if I made it full size everything would seem tiny, So i was think 18" tall would still be a reasonable height, that would still be quite tall compared to HO trains but then I would still get the effect of having a extremely large and tall building on my layout.
The question I have is if the silos are 5" round in HO scale would it look odd that it would be "short and Fat" The reason I ask this is because on the norther unit of silos on the ENG LLC they have three silos side by side not 2
I could show you some older elevators in the Kansas City area you wouldn't believe. They have been added on to so many times it is hard to tell which was original, though I have learned that shorter silos were used several years ago, and then progressed to using the taller silos. Also sheds and head houses were added on at various times and the handling equipment varied by age also. One of the more interesting elevators in the KC area was the old Santa Fe terminal elevator in Argentine area. Man, what a conglomeration. Chuck Hitchcock modeled it for his Santa Fe several years ago.
My first hand exposure was one summer in Enid Oklahoma when summer jobs were tight, and I was in college working for tuition money. I hired out on a crew building a new Union Equity (now Farmland) terminal elevator with the hex silos. 12 hours a day pushing a mud buggy with concrete from the edge to the silo forms. I still wake up at nights thinking about it. And I have a fear of heights. Don't cha just know I would be assigned to the buggy.
BN Grain Hauler
This is a photo of my grain elevator. It is kitbashed from the Walthers ADM kit plus other kits and plastic pieces. On my layout, the grain elevator was a good choice for an industry against the backdrop of the layout. My model railroad is a fictional division of the CB&Q during the 1950's and 1960's when grain moved in boxcars.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Export grain elevator modeled with wooden dowel silos 35 years ago for kids' layout...
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/511/nortelev.jpg
Mockup of export grain elevator on layout under construction
to recreate this prototype (view as seen from train...)
I built a fairly large elevator for a free-mo module, it's about 15" tall (108 scale feet) and 26" long. The elevator housing is an additional 12" tall so the overall height is 27". I used cardboard mailing tubes, 14 of them and then cut some into arcs to form a "scallop" between the main silos. If I do it again, I'll make it out of thin walled PVC. Regular PVC would work but it ends up being very heavy for an elevator this size.
I used Google Sketch-Up to find the dimensions.
You can see it in this youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL_oJww4HR0
As I mentioned in my first post, grain elevators on HO layouts can tend to get too high. I know what you want to model, I was the same way when I started, "run those babies up to the sky" but when I built a test elevator using some PCV and trying to match the Farmland elevators in Enid OK, I quickly found the height dwarfed the layout, and my layout is not small. that is when I tried the Walthers with the shorter silos, and they fit in better. My longest Farmland elevator is 8ft long with three headhouses incorporated and let me tell you they tend to look pretty impressive in the railyard at Enid. Part of my layout has a pensisula (sp) yard for Enid and I have solid complexes on both sides with tracks running down the middle.
Here is some info on the grain elevator I am going top try and model,
Name: Eastern Nebraska Grain LLC
Capacity: 5,072,000 bu.
Track Capacity: 110 Cars
Railroad Service: R / OLB, UP, KCS, BNSF
Grain Handled: CR, SG, WH, SB
I am going to Email the Merch. and see if he will be able to give me any of the dimensions on the building, Mainly height.
The silos in the picture measure 9 inches hign by 2 5/8ths. in diamater,
Agreed but, your grain elevator is also a lot smaller in size then the elevator i would like to model, so 224 could be some what right.
Does anyone know of anyway of finding out the height of a grain elevator without climbing it? There is no info that I could find on the internet on how tall this grain elevator is.
B N Grain Hauler, in no way am I saying I am right. Plus I did not check the math.
Could they be that high, well if you look at the Picture I posted of the Elevator in Alton IL the buffs are around 150 foot +.
If the math was correct then in HO scale they be 2.5 feet tall, I as well think that would be way to tall.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
skagitrailbird 5.1" diameter silos converts to about 37 (not 32) HO scale feet. The silos in the Walthers ADMgrain elevator kit #933-3022 are about 2 5/16" in diameter or about 16 or 17 HO scale feet. Good luck.
5.1" diameter silos converts to about 37 (not 32) HO scale feet. The silos in the Walthers ADMgrain elevator kit #933-3022 are about 2 5/16" in diameter or about 16 or 17 HO scale feet.
Good luck.
Thanks for that skagitrailbird, I am definitely not going to be useing the wathers kits, my prototype is almost twice as large. I guess its time to go buy PVC
I use both Walthers kits for elevators, mostly the ADM. I have modified the head houses on some, the loading sheds on some, I have one on the workbench now which will be four silos wide and 16 bins long. The bin silos height is the height used in the kits by Walthers. I have experimented with higher silos but have found that too high looks out of place on the layout (in my opinion). the Hex shaped silos the Texas guy did for me are about 4 inches higher than the Walthers.
The biggest problems with higher silos is reaching over to uncouple cars without snagging sleeves.
I also use white body putty liberally in some places with the silos where they won't snug up.
Which wathers grain elevator kit are you guys using to kitbash? The ADM Concret Elevator kit or the Modern Grain elevator kit?
not trying to say your 224ft is wrong Cudaken but im just wondering if that sounds like a true height for a grain elevator?
Pastorbob, youve built a lot of grain elevators how tall are yours usually?
RiversideBNSF, I agree with you the 2nd larger complex is pretty sweet.
Also was my 32ft conversion to HO scale correct with 5.1"?
BN Grain Hauler My reason for grain elevator is im from Nebraska and grain is a huge industry in Nebraska, so watching switchers move cars at the elevator is something that interest me a lot, im currently trying to find a real life elevator to model but i cant find just the right one. Looking forward to hear from everyone.
My reason for grain elevator is im from Nebraska and grain is a huge industry in Nebraska, so watching switchers move cars at the elevator is something that interest me a lot, im currently trying to find a real life elevator to model but i cant find just the right one.
Looking forward to hear from everyone.
I live in Kansas City, but am modeling the Santa Fe lines around Enid OK back in 1989 where I grew up. Enid is a town surrounded by many grain elevators and so I have finished a total of 31 elevators on my layout, which is three decks and 29ft by 33ft. The elevators range from some pretty large ones, mostly ex Union Equity/Farmland, but with a mix also of General Mills, Pillsbury (ADM), and several lesser known names. Most were built using the Walthers grain elevator kits (and I confess to have cleaned most dealers out of them over the past few years), plus some done with CVS for contrast, and even have a group of octonal shaped silos done for me out of hard wood by a gentleman from Texas who visited several years ago and built the silos after visitng my layout and he then brought them by for another visit. My largest elevators include 3 different ones that measure 9ft to 10ft in length but most are 4ft to 6ft in length. I also have a few of the old country style elevators that were found along the Enid District back in the days I model. Don't know where in Nebraska you live, but if you ever slip south of the border to Kansas, you are welcome to visit. another modeler in KC, Tom Stolte, who owns Oddball decals has also modeled several large grain elevators as has Jim Duncan who lives about 5 miles from me. All would be happy to have you visit.
Also I roster a few hundred covered hoppers, mostly ExactRail and Intermountain, with some P2K thrown in to serve those elevators. Takes a lot of grain cars.