Yes. The doors are what I am questioning. They are so high up on the building and open up into thin air. How do you get the ice sheets, blocks, crushed ice down. Also, I did paint the doors with a rust paint and the hinges black and luvers and ladders rust. That helped to tone down the bright white of the siding.
WOW! Dr. Wayne. You must be a master model maker. Those are excellent diaoramas. I see on the one ice house you did put a platform under the upper level doors. That makes more sense than having a door opening into thin air. How would the ice blocks be handled? Would a man use a ice pick tong to pick up a block, put it on his shoulder, and then climb down a ladder to the next level platform? Thats why I can't figure out why Cornerstone didn't include a lift conveyor or chainfall to get the ice out of the upper level doors.
Thank you. That helps me a little better to understand the operations.
They are big, and the model is very white. I toned it down a bit with a very light wash and some Dull Coat. I put a lot of greenery in the foreground, too, which distracts from the building a bit.
I added a small "office" building at the lower left corner. This lets a small commercial ice operation operate out of the larger facility.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Hi,
Not much I can add - especially after looking at Dr. Wayne's photos!
I built the structure and added an extra platform, which looks pretty good on a medium sized layout. However, the footprint of the house takes up a lot of room (as it should - for they were typically large buildings). On my new layout I may put it in the back near a wall, and cut off the back 1/3 or so. With a bit of camoflauge, it will not be noticeable, but will give me some extra space.
The building is really quite plain, and it could use some dressing up. I'm not sure what needs to be added, but I would think some access doors at ground level would be a good start. Lets see what others have to say................
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Many icehouses had moveable "stages" inside to allow access to the top of the piled ice. The doors could be used both for shipping and receiving ice.
I used the Walthers icehouse in one of my towns:
However, since it doesn't make its own ice, I scratchbuilt this one, as a storage facility, in another town. While there's a platform to ice a single car, and provision to provide ice to homes and commercial customers, it's main purpose is to supply other on-line icehouses:
Here's the other end, which serves the public:
Scattered around the other towns on the layout are smaller operations. These deal with homes and businesses only, with no provision for car icing. In the winter, the same yards sell coal:
To transport ice from the storage facility to the various ice houses, I converted several 36' wood reefers to ice service - the bunkers have been removed from the cars (and eventually I'll get around to re-working the roofs to eliminate the ice hatches):
Wayne
Ice is produced and or stored in the ice house buildings, and moved by conveyor INSIDE the building to an upper level. From there, ice is run out the upper doors to platforms to be dropped from platform into bunkers that open on the roofs of ice-cooled refrigerator cars.
Upper level doors not for ice going in, but coming out.
I just assembled it but don't understand the concept of putting doors on the building that appear to open to three levels of the building. How were these door openings used? I might understand it if there were lifting beams to get ice into the top areas or a conveyor to get ice up there, but nothing like that is included in the kit. Does anyone know how the ice house operated?