Can someone offer guidance as to how long a siding for a grain elevator might be in a small one or two elevator town. Also would there ever be a stubbed end siding? All the pictures I’ve seen are drive- throughs. I am talking the 1940’s era. Thanks.[C):-)]
Brent
Twice the length of the longest cut of cars they wanted to recieve or ship, which for a small elevator may be the number of cars the elevator has the capacity to store, So lets say a classic small rectangular elevator can hold about 250 tons, that would be 5-6 cars so they would need a 10-12 car long spur.
since most small elevators could only load or unload one car at a time the cars would be pulled or pushed down the track to spot the next one. this was often done with a tractor or front end loader. some elevators could load more than one at a time. and some had a capstan type of car puller.
question is, how many cars would your elevator need at one time? that would depend upon traffic volume and frequency of service by the railroad company. say the little elevator loaded out 5 cars per day during the busy season and the local switched them daily, then the track capacity would need to be 10 cars or double the number loaded out each day. actually you could get away with 9 car lengths of track since the last car spotted could just stay under the chute after loading.
most of the small town elevators around here had double ended sidings.
grizlump
Hi Brent,
I think Dave Husman covered the question of siding length perfectly. As you’ve already noted yourself, double-ended sidings were a lot more common than spur tracks. If you can manage the space, the double-ended siding will give your elevator town a much more “railroady” look.
So long,
Andy
One thing to remember Brent, back in the 40’s there was no such thing as 110 car long unit trains. Back then it would have been common even to see 1 car orders. Trains Magazine did a special issue with a picture of a GN 40’ box car being loaded in very early 1960, next to a concrete elevator, all happening on a dead end spur. The car is spotted at the loading chute and looks to have enough room for 3 - 4 more box cars behind the one being loaded. The same picture can also be seen in the article MR did a few months back about modern grain handling. It was used in a small side article about, you guessed it, hauling grain in box cars.
You picked a good time era though. Your elevator could also recieve shipments of dry fertalizers, animal feed, and crop seeds. Make it a Co-Op type setting and have a coal bunker ot commercial/residential heating. Then add a farm implement that can recieve shipments of tractor parts, whole tractors for that matter. Could make the unloading area for the tractors the towns team track. Ok, I’ve said too much.
In Monnett, Ohio near where I grew up, the grain elevator’s siding went through a couple big changes that I know of. Back in the late 80’s, the siding was much lower than the NS mainline between Bucyrus and Marion. It was a deadend siding with the switch for it to the north. In the early 90’s, the track was raised to the same level (about) as the mainline, and the switch was moved to the south end. Some time after that, the siding was changed again with a switch at both ends, a few extra sidings to the south of the elevator off the elevator siding, and a small stub track for storing the little hustler loco.
Kevin
I suppose the answers you have received from others regarding siding length are as good if not better than I could provide. I can however provide some info on stub-ended and through sidings.
The siding servicing the grain elevator in Roberts, Idaho was a through siding; it was long enough that I once observed a northbound freight spot a cut of cars under the elevator after pushing the cars which had been spotted there forward to just short of the south switch. Those cars were picked up by a southbound freight later that same day.
While stationed with the Air Force at Moses Lake, Wash in the early '60s when we were on our way to “A” site we used to pass a Milwaukee Road location called Shrag(?) which was east of Moses Lake and just south of Interstate 90. This location was at the very end of a long spur and appeared from the roadway to be a stub-ended siding although to be honest I never exited the freeway at that location to check on it. I must have passed this particular location fifty times in two years and I never once saw a locomotive on this spur although it was evident that this elevator at Shrag(?) was being switched because sometimes there were cars there and sometimes not.
In 1984 I went up U.S. 50 between Newton and Emporia, Kansas. At one of the towns there I pulled off the main road and went down to trackside to see if anything was going on. There were two elevators here, one considerably newer than the other. The newer of these two elevators was serviced by a double-ended siding; the older elevator was serviced by a stub siding that dropped off the double ended siding through a trailing point switch to the right.
I be
A couple of years ago I studied maps intensely showing track layouts in central California, and arrived at the same conclusion. It is particularly true for industries near the main track.
Mark
What exactly is a Co-Op?
Short for “Co-operative”. Particularly in agricultural communities some of the locals could band together to form a cooperative business operation to handle various commercial operations. This might include the grain elevator, a retail store selling groceries and hardware, fuel supplies both petroleum and coal, and of course things like animal feed and seeds. Each Co-op will decide for itself what it wants to manage. While a single person might not have the capital to start a store or build an elevator, a united and committed membership may be able to develop a large operation.
Since all the members of a cooperative have a financial stake in its success, loyalty is guaranteed… Any surplus from operations at the end of the year can be returned to the co-op members in the form of a dividend. There is also the emotional satisfaction of having profits stay at home, rather than flowing back to the head office of a distant (perceived to be) greedy company.
John
Co-ops started as a way to fight what many farmers perceived as unfair pricing by private elevator companies and farm suppliers. By banding together and starting their own businesses, the farmers could buy things at closer to wholesale cost, and were able to get a better price for their grain, corn etc. with a fair valuation and assessment. Some co-ops (like Cenex) became very large companies, operating stores, grain elevators, gas stations etc. over a broad area.
My own observation is that there are or were plenty of single ended sidings serving grain elevators here in the midwest, particularly it seems on lines which were served by turns rather then through trains (such as the Galesburg to Peoria branch of the CB&Q/BN). Also there is much evidence that some and maybe most of these sidings were double ended at some time but were later made single ended and shortened presumably to cut down on maintenance – although it is worth remembering that local property taxes actually count up things like switches and increase the property value accordingly, so there are economic reasons to remove a switch even if the crews would find it more convenient to have it kept in place. I remember my father disputing the removal of a switch that served an empty factory owned by a client of his – the potential for rail service being one of the hoped for “selling points” – and the railroad telling him that they did it due to the local property tax issue. The siding rail was left in place for a few years, but the switch itself was removed for local tax reasons.
In terms of siding length, this is purely personal opinion of course, but I think it would be a mistake to exactly model the siding length of even a fairly small elevator’s siding, even in N or Z, because I suspect it would be disproportionately huge compared to the yards, main line run, passenger depot platform lengths, and other features on the rest of the layout. I mean, you wouldn’t try to replicate the length of a prototype yard, and even a small town depot might have had a platform length that few of us could devote to a huge urban union depot.
Of course if it is a signature scene that might be a different matter, but it is important to remember how quiet a grain elevator siding can be for much of the year, even if they also offer fertilizer and farm implements, and how much space you’d
Various r/w drawings of small town CPR station yards typically show two or three grain elevators and a small stock yard (50’ x 50’ plus loading gate) located on a double ended single siding of about 1,200 feet. The distance between track centers is shown as 53’.
Here is one elevator that you could model. Track holds 4-5 cars. They can load two at a time. The view shows 2 cars loaded. Empties are spotted west of the chute, and they roll them east as they are loaded, downhill.
Westward view. 
Here’s a good example of an elevator siding in a small Midwestern town - Ipswich, SD along BNSF’s former MILW Mobridge Sub:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZws7_rX59SKZDgyYjd6dF83ZHZrcXo3dHM&hl=en
The north (House) track was originally a double-ended siding - standard practice for those types of tracks. However, when the Hwy 45 grade crossings were redone and with upgraded signalling, the house track was severed on either side of the highway. This made for two single-ended spurs from the orignal house track turnouts.
You could model one half of this track, or carry the concept forward to your preferred prototype. Just tell any naysayers that the county cut the crossing during a highway improvement project - so the elevator (house) track is now single-ended. With Class 1 railroads doing everything to remove unnecessary switches from their main tracks, in this situation the remaining stub and second turnout would be quickly removed anyway. Just ensure your local or turn can switch out the elevator as a trailing move, and you left enough track for the elevator company to work the MTYs and store the loads until the RR arrives for the switch.