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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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