The entry door to my 1960-ish HO around the walls layout depicts the Mississippi river at St. Louis, with about 6" of “river” on each side of the door. I planned to put the ADM grain elevator on the E. St. Louis side, with transload conveyors into a barge. But now that the elevator is built I realize it’s too tall, to go in the foreground space that’s available (track level is 53+ at that point, and the elevator completely blocks the view of the rear of the layout). So now I’ve got to come up with a somewhat lower profile industry for the riverfront and move the elevator into rural Illinois.
A possibility is a coal transload facility, from rail to river barge. Unfortuanately, I don’t really know what such a facility would look like, or what kits might be appropriate. If anyone has suggestions (especially with pictures!) that would be appreciated.
I also want to find pictures of Peabody Coal’s E. St. L. facility in the 60’s or 70’s. I know they had some kind of transload operation, but I always saw it from across the river and can’t remember now what it really looked like. Any links would be appreaciated also.
Somebody (Jules Heliczer(?)) even made an operation scale model of one of these things in HO, for the Garden State MRR Club. Couldn’t find that particular thread though…
Trains did an article probably in the early 80’s about Rail to Water Transfer here in chicago. Now owned by Koch industries it is a maze of short tracks holding about 10-15 cars each that dump onto a conveyer that take it up into storage silos like a grain elevator. It is the gravity dumped into barges on the Calumet river for trasnport to power plants around Lake Michigan. Why it isn’t cheaper to just go rail all the way is beyond my thinking. In addition the operation shuts down for the winter when ice forms on Lake Michigan (If it ever does again).
