Walthers Valley Cement

[MonkeyBucket]

 

And a real one to finish

 

[J Campbell]

Oh, man...it's been so long I forgot what I was linking to. :lol:

[Trucklover]

Sorry, I thought I was quoting on my original reply but i never checked to make sure after I posted lol

I was referring to J Campbell's post on the first page of this thread:

J Campbell

I'm also looking to build a credible cement plant.  Just ordered the May of 98 issue.

Curious if you've seen this:

http://www.theinsidegateway.com/Default%20Cement%20Plants.htm

Granted, it appears to use two of the Valley Cement kits, but it may provide and idea as to other kits that could be kitbashed to work.

[maxman]

Trucklover

Do you happen to have an updated link for this? I tried to visit the page but it says its not found. Im searching around for ideas on large cement plants and would love to see this.

Are you refering to the links in MonkeyBucket's post?  I just looked and both of them were active.

[Trucklover]

Do you happen to have an updated link for this? I tried to visit the page but it says its not found. Im searching around for ideas on large cement plants and would love to see this.

Im not sure if any of you are familiar with the Robertson's Plant just outside of Palm Springs, CA off the I-10 Freeway, but this in combination with a cement plant is what i am looking to model. The Robertson's plant is mainly a aggregate facility with a decent sized open pit mine area where the aggregate is dug up and then hauled out by rail and truck to smaller batch plants around Southern California. The plant does also have its own batch plant where concrete is hauled to the local areas surrounding the plant.

I am looking to expand on what the plant physically is by not only modeling the aggregate side but also modeling the cement making side. I have a Valley Cement kit build already and will be using it in the plant. I have another on order just in case I might need some extra parts from the kit when kitbashing other parts of the plant. My idea is to combine various Walthers, Heljan, Con-Cor, Kibri and whatever else might work to create a large cement and aggregate facility.

Right now i am just in the planning stages and trying to acquire some of the kits I will need. If anyone has an updated link or any other links to some large cement or aggregate plants that you or anyone else that you may know of has modeled, I would love to see them

[Greasemonkey]

Doughless

If it is to load the hopper cars that are parked in the shed, how does it do that?  There is no chute.  If it is to receive hopper cars,of cement, then why would a plant that produces cement need to receive cement by rail?   The silos need to be modified to load cement into the hoppers, IMO.

 

Doughless,  Of the 4 cement plants I have been to, none of them loaded any product by a chute as you suggest.  All finished cement was handled via tubes, with compressed air as a propellant.  Those tubes would easily fit inside that shed above the cars, as they don't take much room.  I believe that's the way it has been modelled.

[MonkeyBucket]

Had a watch of this today. Valley cement kit bash and batching plant add on.

http://youtu.be/mNF1SOdSP8o

This is just general info on the processes of cement making.

http://youtu.be/jIom24zXsJk

[G Paine]

I just checked Walthers, their site lists the kit as "not currently in stock at Walthers, Expected: In Transit", so it should be here "soon" 

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3098

[rrinker]

Walthers site says "In Transit" so I guess that means buried in a container on a ship somewhere.

                    --Randy

 

[J Campbell]

It's June 29th.  Anybody pick up a kit yet?

[rrinker]

 The horse named Cement belonged to Tom's brother, Ready.

            --Randy

 

[R. T. POTEET]

Wholesale Trains (whomever they might be) said they are expecting this kit on/about 28 June and they are listing their price as $58.

I always thought that Cement was Tom Mix's horse's name. I seem to recall when I was a kid they were always referring to Tom Mix and Cement. (Tom Mixin' Cement)!

[retvpeng]

Massey:

I spent 27 years in the Portland Cement industry and, working in a corporate design/build/start up team, have personally designed and supervised the erection of both wet and dry process cement plants. Which of the two processes would best fit your layout? It would depend on the region and era you are modeling as well as the old "available space" bugaboo.

The Walthers model (pictured) appears to be a pared down version of an older dry process plant (no open topped slurry basins that would be found in a wet process plant) such as would have existed prior to creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. It also suggests a northern clime due to so much enclosure.

When Corporate Chief Engineer of my long time Dallas employer, my engineers and draftsmen actually scratch built three dimensional models of two new cement mills. Accurate right down to actual tree locations on the plant sites, they were used for pre-bid conferences and community relations at Artesia, Mississippi and New Braunfels, Texas respectively. Though constructed on a one foot contour interval at a scale of 0.100" per foot, we used HO flex track that looked fine. Both models were totally voluntarily built "after hours" and our CEO treated us right by individual recognition at the annual stockholder's meeting and special monetary favor disproportionate to pay grade. None of us were then active model railroaders, but most had some limited modeling experience. They were impressive, both men and models.

If it would help, I would be glad to assist you in putting together a plan that would be prototypically accurate, but with practical considerations of scratch building within available space. My suggestion would be to consider building the model at 1/8" per foot, rather than the true HO scale of 3.5 mm.

Not many modelers know the difference between a Cement Terminal and a Cement Plant, much less want to build the more involved plant. Let me know if I can help.

[G Paine]

rrinker

 You arrangment looks about the size of the space I have to work with - any idea what the overall dimensions there are?.

              --Randy

Randy, today was our work day at the museum, so I measured the cement plant. It is about 41-1/2" long by 19" wide. This is just the Walthers Valley Cement part of the project, and does not include the additional buildings.

Some additional & more recent photos are on the museum website:
http://www.railwayvillage.org/Cement_Plant.htm

[G Paine]

This is a Google link to the Dragon Products cement plant in Thomaston, Maine. The limestone quarry is across the road (US Rte 1) from the plant on the north side. This is a large plant that makes Portland cement and agricutural lime. They ship out by rail and truck. Rail usually goes to nearby Rockland where it is loaded into barges. They can also ship to a connection in Brunswick with Pan Am RR (ex-Guilford, ex-MEC). The local RR is Maine Eastern RR

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Thomaston,+ME&hl=en&ll=44.084102,-69.157605&spn=0.007229,0.013711&oq=thomaston&t=h&hnear=Thomaston,+Knox,+Maine&z=16

[MonkeyBucket]

Looks like the old days (1930s) of delivering the goodies to make our grey stuff was done with these bad boyz...

Thanks for the link to these online resources. 

A couple of these didn't go astray for the finer stuff...

 

["JaBear"]

MonkeyBucket

Thanks for all the extra literature. I may have to get into the club library for those mags as I was subscribed to Australian model railways mag back then. All my Aussie gear has been since traded for SP rolling stock and locos.

Cheers

Gidday, sorry, not thinking last night.

http://www.trainlife.com/

http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/pages/438/31958/february-1995-page-4

http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/pages/93/6671/may-1992-page-17

http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/pages/147/10620/may-1993-page-6

Thanks to all who posted their photos, good to see how you have modelled a cement plant.

Scale compression is what I'm currently wrestling with, I want a plant that looks that it is the "right" size to generate the required amount of traffic, the kiln building at North American Cement described in Ken Nelsons, July 1994 Model Railroader, article would have an HO foot print of 4' 8" x 14" on its own. Oh well things to exercise the mind.

Cheers,the Bear.

[MonkeyBucket]

Over here in the upside down land of Australia some uni students have developed a use for fly ash (the byproduct of burning coal). With our new cleaner coal burning power plants in Western Australia the technology now allows us to catch the ash with shakers and stockpile it. Guess what the student have been able to do with it.  They have designed a high grade of cement incorperating the ash that is not only as good but may even be stronger than your usual burnt chalk and lime mixes.

With this in mind I would be thinking that some of our South Western power stations such as Bluewater Power Station and its sister would diversify their industry and compliment the business with a cement technologies plant. Unfortunately, all the coal is delivered by conveyers up to 9 km long so modeling a railway on it would not be prototypical, but opportunity to model a coal mine that supplies a power station that supplies a cement technologies plant are now quite real.

Now changing the subject. I agree that the Valley Cement plant silos should be complimented with the elevator and roof details from Red X cement. The rest of the model seems to be flowing toward a dispatch (bagging plant and/or truck and railway hopper loading) areas for supply to batching plants elsewhere.  The Plant in the above pictures seems to be running in reverse. On my version of the model, the lower concrete walled building would be the load out. This is usually done with the use of front end loaders. One of the sheds I used to maintain in Kwinana bulk terminal had a lean to section down the side where the clinker (cement product) would be loaded onto semi trailers and into hoppers which alternatively supply a flood loader system further away from the shed. 

This model would incorporate another cement batching kit to create the flood loader having a run through for trucks and a load out for rail. There would have to be an operations office attached to this.

[Doughless]

G Paine

 

 

 

George,  thanks for the post and the pictures.  I remember reading about your efforts in another thread a while back.  I like the plant, and the bagging building is a great match.

 

[rrinker]

 The plant pictured in the photos of the protype isn't a cememnt mill that makes cement from raw materials, that's where the disconnect is comign in. Valley Cement is a model fo a full fledged plant that takes raw materials and makes cement. The pictures prototype is more like the OTHER Walter's kit, Medusa Cement - a cement distributor. The only thing they take in there is the output of a plant like Valley Cement and then distribute it in smaller batches such as via truck to batch plants that actually make concrete out of it. Witht hat dock in the river, it wouldn;t surprise me if the cement came in via barge, then was offloaded into the silos for final transportation via truck.

 AN actual cement plant needs a LOT of ground to model it all. Valley Cememnt is compressed, a LOT. One thing that sort of saves you is that many plants like that had a conveyor or trucked the limestone in from a quarry not immediately on the plant site. One near me had an aerial tramway - cable cars - to move the limestone fromt he quarry over land and across a highway to the actual plant. Works for models - you cna put the wuarry on the backdrop or say it's over the hills and out of sight and not be wrong. Now, the one I'm modeling, the quarry was right on site - well, it's getting left out because I'd need my entire room to model just the cement plant to anything approaching scale. Looking at photos, on the back side of the silos (of which there were SIXTEEN - larger in diameter AND taller than the ones in Valley Cement) were 4 tracks for covered hoppers. On the other side, betwee the silos and back plant, were at least 6 tracks for boxcars to load bagged product. In scale terms, the kiln in Valley Cement is less than half actual size, and definitely narrowr in diameter - one of my books shows a 30's automobile driving through the kiln as a publicity stunt, so if the kiln tube were scale, an HO scale auto would fit inside it.

 The good news is, a cement plant isn't a steel mill. Even if you fill a basement with JUST a steel mill - it's still too small to be full size.

                            --Randy

 

[don7]

[quote user="MonkeyBucket"]

This supplier seems to have something (lime maybe) fed via the river. There is a pile and fender setup inline with the jetty.

This would be easy to recreate as a hopper fed site with the kit you mentioned.  Looks to be a waste area next door. Lots of activity here.

[/quote

Good observation, as it stands without the lime the property is really a mixing site. sand, gravel and lime mixed together, stored as dry product. Mixed as needed appears that it is probably mixed in the cement trucks on the way to the construction. The silo's are for dry storage.

What surprised me with the Walthers kit shown is that it contained the caustic section where the limestone is put throught the giant kilm (roaster) and made into a caustic lime on site.

You would expect to find this process at the large cement plants as it uses the basic products only and the caustic lime is an expensive additive in making concrete.

[mcddhawk4]

Acording to walthers website it's expected in June go to search type in valley cement and check the out of stock box before hitting search botton

[rrinker]

 That looks really good. The plant I rememebr from my childhood had a door for trucks to load under the silos but railcars were loaded via a tube conveyor. It sat ont he side of a hill and tracks came in on two levels, the upper level led on to an open trestle to dump coal and other materials.

 You arrangment looks about the size of the space I have to work with - any idea what the overall dimensions there are? I may have to steal that arrangments of the parts, even though it's not exactly how the plant I a atempting to model was arranged. I don;t have the room to build it the exact same way, it was far too long, with the kiln and silos in a row witht eh baghouse to the left, and the office was in the far back about midway between the silos and baghouse. Almost a mirror image of what you have there. Mine will be on a penninsula, and the front of the office would face the end of the pennisula, with the tracks leading on to the layout at the root of the pennisula.

              --Randy

 

[G Paine]

You might take a look at the Walthers grain elevator chutes / elevators or just make something from Evergreen or Plastruct tube for the loading tubing

I made this kit for the layout at Boothbay RR Village a few years ago, and had a number of issues with the "operability" of the kit.

The most important was the lack of rail delivery to the Aggreagte Building; the heavily reinforced concrete building on the left in MonkeyBucket's post. I took the shed and lift conveyor (shortened) from the silos, and added it to the side of the aggregete building for rail delivery of aggregate that that does not come from the limestone quarry. I then made an opening in the bottom of the silos for track to go through the bottom of one side of the silo. This works to some extent, but clearances are tight, and only older style, small cement hoppers will fit through the opening. Plate C cars are a definite no go. If I was to do this again, I would keep the shed on the silo, make a delivery system from tubing, and scratch build a delivery shed on the aggregate building from Evergreen courrogated styrene sheet.

Another problem is there is no fuel supply or storage for the kiln; we got a Walthers fuel tank 933-3167 and assumed that the kiln uses #6 fuel oil. A more appropriate fuel would be coal, maybe something like Walthers Blue Coal (discontinued kit) would work for this.

The Valley Cement kit recommends adding a bagging plant using Golden Valley Canning, now retired and replaced by Imperial Foods 933-2852, a built-up kit. The platforms for Golden Valley Canning are molded as wood which seemed rather weak to me for a heavy product like cement. I scratch-built concrete loading docks for rail and truck shipping from styrene sheet.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3018
I also scratch built an enclosed conveyor from the silos to the bagging building

We did get the motorizing kit for the rotary kiln, but stopped using it. It is noisy and and slips out of alignment. The kiln turns so slowly, you can hardly see it move - like with a prototype kiln

Also, for a large plant like this, I built a front office building from DPM modular parts and an a maintenence shop from another DPM kit (don't remember which one)

BTW, Dragon Products is a real cement plant located in Thomaston, ME

Here are some photos from the museum layout; some were taken during the construction:

Overall view

Aggregate and Bagging Buildings

Silos, end of kiln Building and main gate

Office and Maint Buildings

Fuel tank and back of aggreagte building

Bagging plant

Silo and bagging plant - note the conveyor between the two

Sheepscott Scale Products makes a Bulk Cement Trailer that came out last year
http://www.sheepscotscale.com/site/2011/01/22/bulk-cement-trailer

[Doughless]

cuyama

Doughless:

If it is to load the hopper cars that are parked in the shed, how does it do that?  There is no chute.  

It's not a perfect representation since it is based on the existing kit, but the idea is that the loading chute is inside the shed the hoppers pass through. Building a larger/taller shed would help with the effect, as would some external piping.

 

Thanks Byron,

Good points.  At least a taller shed would help give that illusion.  Fairly simply done with corrugated sheet styrene and using the portal ends as templates.  Some spare sprues for piping perhaps.

My only reason for bringing up my somewhat anal observation was the prices that sellers are asking on the secondary market.  I was in a LHS about 2009 where there was a Valley Cement kit on the shelf at the original MSRP of $55.  I had no use for it at the time but was this close to buying it anyway.  At MSRP, I can overlook the small omissions compared to what some secondary market sellers are asking.

Perhaps Walthers will put some effort into making the loading shed area a bit more realistic if they re-release the kit. 

[DSchmitt]

MonkeyBucket

This supplier seems to have something (lime maybe) fed via the river. There is a pile and fender setup inline with the jetty.

This would be easy to recreate as a hopper fed site with the kit you mentioned.  Looks to be a waste area next door. Lots of activity here.

The facility in West Sacramento has been closed for several years.  When in operation there were dozens of hoppers delivering cement.  Dock was for barges.  Don't know the purpose.  Could have been to bring in raw materials as you suggest or to ship product to other sites along the river. I believe it had not been used for masny years even when the plant was in operatiom.

[cuyama]

Doughless

If it is to load the hopper cars that are parked in the shed, how does it do that?  There is no chute.  

It's not a perfect representation since it is based on the existing kit, but the idea is that the loading chute is inside the shed the hoppers pass through. Building a larger/taller shed would help with the effect, as would some external piping.

[wp8thsub]

I kitbashed a cement plant using various parts of several kits, including Walthers Medusa Cement, ADM elevator, New River mine and coal flood loader, plus components from a couple IHC and Heljan kits I had sitting around along wih some detail parts.

If you can get creative, the availability of a specific kit isn't necessarily a big deal.

[Eric97123]

I found one late last year at my LHS and I modified my some to fit in my space, leaving off the tumbler pipe thing and also mixed in the Black Gold asphalt plant  with it.   Since these photos were taken I have ballasted and added in heavy equipment and piles of gravel and sand.