I love Jim’s elevator - I swear I have driven by dozens just like it while driving down to Galesburg IL for Railroad Days each year – including elevators where the railroad itself is long since gone, such as the Milwaukee Road line south of Rochelle IL to Mendota IL.
But Jim says his elevator is the product of four Walthers kits: Farmer’s Co-Operative, Sunrise Feed Mill, Valley Growers Ass’n [edit - I forgot the system does not like a common abbreviation for “association”], and Prarie Star Elevator. There are also some Rix kits added to the bash. Nowhere in the text or in the arrows to the photo of his wonderful elevator do I see any other reference to Prarie Star Elevator. What am I missing here?
Sounds like a good opportunity for a letter to the editor, Dave. Maybe that’s something that MR/Jim Six can address in the April issue. (Given that the March issue is just about due out.)
Thanks for posting that, Dave. I was also scratching my head over the same thing. I do not have the Prairie Star or Valley Growers kits, so I’m comparing Jim’s model to the Walther’s reference book. I wonder if the truck shed from the Prairie Star kit was shortened, as Jim’s model has a shed with two windows compared to the kit’s 3, and possibly a couple of gables were used on top of the sheds. This is certainly a kitbash that I want to try.
I would wonder whether Jim’s original unpublished article explained the kitbash completely, but the explanation was edited out to make the article more “readable,” shorter, fill the space, etc.
I think it’s a fantastic structure and like everything else I’ve seen done by Jim Six I have to say it’s very well done. He’s a very gifted modeler!
However, if this was a kitbashing article it was one of the worst I’ve seen in MR or any other magazine. No description of where the various parts came from or how to rearrange or modify anything. Many of us aren’t as creative as Jim or Art Curren and don’t see kits outside of the box.
Also, with the ever expanding cost of the Walthers plastic kit line, if he combined 4 of their kits I think the cost would be way out of line for most of us. Like many of the articles in MR I think it was just more of a way to showcase and promote Wm. K. Walthers! Seems like they push Walthers on us.
I am hugly confujsed by the article–and diasappointed. The author mentions the great amount of time he spent learning how an elevator works, then withholds that information from us. Why are there two unloading sheds? What are the little huts atop each unloading shed for? Why are there loading chutes/pipes leading to the unloading sheds? Why are there cyclone dust collectors half wayup the elevator above the unloadidng sheds and where do they discharge? Why halfway up? In my ethics, I won’t put a pipe on a steam locomotive unless I know where it originates, where it’s going, and what its purpose is. I wish MR authors would do the same. Maybe MR will run a seque and answer our questoins. Let’s hope. (another) Jim here.
I wouldn’t necessarily be so hasty in accusing Jim Six of the articles short-comings. I’ve heard from a few people who have had articles in MR (sorry if I offend our hosts here !) and the articles were severely cut in comparison to the submitted manuscript.
RMC on the other hand seems to be very willing to allot as many pages as necessary to feature an article in its entirety.
Nothing worse than an interesting article and some very pertinent information is glaringly missing. I’d be willing to bet that Jim’s submitted manuscript did contain much more information and even pictures that were deemed unnecessary in comparison to more ad space.
I had to go back and look at this feature again because I didn’t remember all of these contraversial attributes to it.
The Prarie Star Mill, which is long gone from production, does not appear to be a part of the final project as depicted, but may have been listed as a possible “part” of an elevator kitbash if already owned by the modeler.
I have already started a similar project with Sunrise and Valley and Jim’s article has several great ideas that will help me finish it. I get the feeling that the intent was to model a larger elevator complex like the prototype using multiple smaller kits combined, and hopefully for most of us we will be inspired to create a similar project with what we already have or can put together from what is available.
Had to look at the article again since this thread piqued my interest when it was posted.
I have to defend fellow Hoosier Mr. Six a little bit on this one. I think the narrative and the pictures show how to bash the project pretty well. It doesn’t look like he sliced too many of the kits to get to the final product, unlike many of the Art Curren bashes of yore, so I don’t think detailed step-by-step diagrams are really needed. He kind of places the structures together rather than bashes the parts from them. It looks like he sliced the shed off of the farmers Coop to make room for the Sunrise office part.
I think the shed from the Prairie Star elevator was shortened to a two-windowed structure, which I think is really the biggest omission from the text as others have noted. I don’t know from which kit(s) the dust collector’s come from either, but Walthers does (or did) sell them separately.
Maybe the article is incomplete in showing the kits before they were bashed, but if you google the various kits, their photos are easy to find and you can tell what Mr. Six did.
As the article explains, its not really a model of any specific elevator anyway, so a little leeway is appropriate IMO.
As far as expense, I probably wouldn’t go out and buy the Prairie Star elevator just for that little shed. Could use something else or leave it off entirely. Same with the dust collectors.
For all of you conspiracy theorists out there, I notice that Walthers has all three of the kits that make up the bulk of this project on sale right now. Coincidence?[swg]
Neil, would you please forward my questions above about the functions of the elevator components to author Jim Six? If he should care to reply, my e-mail address is jimsabol@msn.com. Thank you. (My last article in MR was August 1966 and I must say the MR editors handled it beautfiully.)