Hello-I may be able to shed some light on the A.I.M. Ore Dock.
I am the previous owner of AIM. The dock which converted the steel under bracing to "concrete" was designed by a friend of mine and AIM manufactured and sold it. After a while my friend did the manufacturing part we merely marketed it. It sold fairly well and was very labor intensive to pour the molds for the cast plaster pieces. It was designed so the modeler could make it wider and/or lengthen it with more modules. We were banking on Walthers making their version of the ore dock available for some time but after a while they discontinued it and our sales dropped accordingly. By that time my friend became ill, disposed of the molds to I don't where, and passed away about 3 years ago. I remember one purchaser bought enough kits to make a 4 track wide and about 14 foot long model. So the ore dock did not get sold to Monroe Models and I have no idea where the molds might be or if they exist at all. You might find a few on hobby store shelves or some unbuilt ones on hobbyist shelves.
Mark Ballschmieder
Ya, PWRS adds will say "sold out at manufacturer" if they are no longer available from the manufacturer. It says PWRS has it and I have never known their computer system to be wrong, they run a tight ship as far as that goes.
I look through PWRS clearance page and find some real dinosaurs sometimes.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Yea, I checked the link, and it said sold out, and no longer manufactured, but, I guess PWRS has one,!
So, never mind!
Mike.
My You Tube
Mike, there is one at PWRS on clearance that caught my eye. See the link in my first post.
So, Brent, did I miss something? Do you have the kit? or a source to get one?
Don't need details, just wondering about asking about a kit, like you have one, that is long out of production and not available.
Thanks all, I will try and get into PWRS and look at it to see if the dimensions are on the box and go from there.
I don't think these kits have been manufactured for 15 years or more. As I recall, the kit was designed to be used to convert the Walthers steel ore dock to the more common concrete style. The concrete parts replace the structural steel bracing. I believe the grayish pink part of the ore dock in the picture is the AIM kit, the other parts of the ore dock are from the Walthers ore dock kit.
The last part of my layout to be built will probably be the ore dock; I had hoped when planning the layout to use AIM kits with the Walthers kits I have to build a concrete ore dock, but last I checked (maybe five-six years ago) the AIM kits were very rare, and if found, very expensive - like a couple hundred dollars each.
AIM was sold a while back to the folks at Monroe Models:
http://monroemodels.us/aim.ho.htm
But they are not listing this product?
We sold lots of AIM stuff back in the day when I worked in the hobby shop.
Sheldon
Unlike most structures, this one does have a tell: the spacing of the chutes. The centerpoints of the chutes should match the centerpoints of the ore jennies that would unload there, so you can work out a rough estimate based on the number of chutes. I count 18 chutes. Jennies were, as I recall, about 25 feet long coupled length, giving you the center of a car about every 25 feet. Chute #1 is about 13 feet in, chutes #2-18 every 25 feet, and then about 15 past chute #18 for the rest of the car and some cushion. That works out to 453 feet, or 62.48 inches of HO scale dock. That seems pretty reasonable an estimate to me.
Plus whatever ramp there is, if there is any. Even if I got the distance from car center to car center wrong. the thing is as long as 18 ore jennies, for what that's worth.
I found a couple of places which have them in-stock, but no info on dimensions. You may wish to contact them, as that item has supposedly been discontinued.
Wayne
This item caught my eye today and I have a spot for it on the layout. I can't seem to find any info on it, specifically how long it is. Does anyone have this kit and can you tell me how long it is? Also, pics would be great as Google is not offering any up other than what Walthers has.
A.I.M. Products - Ore Dock
https://www.pwrs.ca/view_product.php?ProductID=73593
As always, thanks.