I’m going to model at least one grain elevator, possibly too for my 50’s layout. I’m wondering what the extra shed is that comes in the kits, namely Walthers Farmers Co-Op grain elevator. Is it storage for grain? Or in my case keeping with the Wisconsin theme, most likely corn. And since I’m on the subject how did they fill the box cars?
The extra shed was, in some cases, used more to store feed/seed in bags and such.
In the case of loading boxcars they did use a series of boards/plywood? for the doors to hold the grain in-there was also another way which was to put a small door in the side doors that would allow them to load the grain directly into the cars much like the hoppers would be loaded. As for unloading that was through hand shovelling the grain out through the doors–or such. In order to clean the boxcars right out someone had to hand shovel the corners—
Grain Elevators in the 50’s - Usually were wood ‘crib’ construction. Inside were about 6-8 tall vertical bins for grain storage. In the center was the ‘grain leg’ - a vertical bucket conveyer. Grain was dumped from the farmers truck into a pit and ‘elevated’ to the top of the elevator and routed to one of the bins. The bins had a gate on the bottom so they could dump out their contents to the pit and the grain leg again moved the grain to the top of the elevator, this time routing it to a delivery tube that came out of the rail side of the elevator bldg and the grain is poured into the door of a box car. ‘Grain Doors’(planking about 4’ high’ prevented the grain from escaping out of the box car. The elevator ‘grain leg’ was powered by a small gas engine before electricity became common in the 30’s. As elevators got larger and ‘grew’, additional storage silos would be attached, and many times a 2nd ‘grain leg’ was added so that box cars could be loaded at the same time as incoming grain was being dumped.
That shed can hold grain, but would need cribbing and delivery tubes/grain leg to get the product to/from the main elevator bldg. I have the kit as well and use that bldg for bagged feed/seed to be sold locally.
Jim
To fill a boxcar they installed a “grain door” They were commercially available, and made just for that purpose. As previously they were a series of boards, a little bit wider than the door and did not go all the way to the top. It had a very heavy paper product covering one side of the “grain door” and had strap steel integral to the paper. It was nailed up on the inside of the boxcar using double headed nails, just as the nails used to build concrete forms. the double head facilitated removal of the nails without tearing up the “grain door”, which were reused as often as possible. As I said earlier they did not go all the way to the top. They would put the grain in the car using a large diameter flexible hose over the top of the “grain door” and fill the car most of the way up. The grain was probably about 8 or 9 feet deep if memory serves me correctly. To unload the grain they would spot the car over the grate in the track and break out the bottem of the “grain door” and gravity would unload most of the car. As previously stated, somebody would have to get the grain out of the corners of the car with a shovel. This was usually a crew of two with sacks that would finish after the car was spotted on the empty tracks. I lived about three blocks from the grain elevators in Toledo Ohio, right on the Maumee river. They transloaded grain from trucks and railroad cars into ocean going ships, so the grain elevators were fairly large.
As a side note the grain doors also had several other great purposes The really huge grain fed rats that were around there made great target practice. The boards made really great forts. The Cardboard parts would even make it sort of waterproof. The straping could be bent several times and a section about three inches long broken off. Fold that in half with the holes in it alligned and they make really great whistles for those of us who couldn’t whistle. The pieces of cardboard lying about harbored many garter snakes, which young boys j
Here’s a added twist…In 1953 Pullman introduce their 2893 ci PS2 covered hoppers.These cars was design to carry grain,sugar,wheat and feed and would start replacing the labor intensive boxcar grain shipments.
So,you could use some PS2s as well.
A good overview of real elevators is available from - oddly enough - the Minnesota Dept. of Revenue. It’s used for determining valuation of elevators for tax purposes etc. It includes good color pics of different types of elevators, explaining what each building is and what it does etc. Even has a listing of all the elevators in MN, which RR serves them, and a state railroad map.
This was brought up once before, maybe by myself I’m not sure any more, but I do know I asked about the PS2’s and grain because the first 2 cars I bought were PS2’s. I was told that they weren’t popular for grain untill either 60’s or 70’s. As I said I can’t remember too well because it was one of the first things I posted about and I’ve been on here since November, so I’ll never be able to find the post. This does give me some joy though, now I can model my grain elevators using hoppers and boxes [C):-)]. My layout keeps growing anyways because I planned on building a staging area that would hopefully hold all my cars. I thought it would be neat to have them on display, plus it can make operating sessions more interesting because I can spend time switching out and spotting the cars I will need for a session from a yard holding around 30-50 cars.
No my only problem will be reporting marks on cars. My hoppers have build dates of 1958, another car I have has a build date of 1957. I will really be the only operator, and I’m sure most people would never even notice that the cars have all that information on them, but I know there printed on there and I know they info will be wrong so it will end up bugging me to all heck. Ugh, sometimes this streak of perfectionism in me is just [banghead].
Uh, flaggerast, I knew I’d forget something. Did the elevators often have a scale for the rail cars and the trucks dropping off grain? I’m not to worried about the trucks as I’m sure the scale would have been located in the little shed they pulled into to drop the grain off, but what about the rail cars? I’d like to find now instead of by someone having a good laugh at me because I modeled something as prototypical as a grain elevator and then NOT modeling something that should be there. Is it a “can’t have one with the other” ordeal. Is it a “love and marriage” thing. Is it “like a horse and carriage”. Is it…ok ok I’ll stop.
Generally no. They would be shipping grain out with hoppers or boxcars–the smaller ones definitely did not have weighing being done.I’ve heard that some of the larger elevators had weigh scales but where exactly they’d be put----[%-)]
If the paint schemes are correct for the time you model, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I have a few steam engines where I felt it needed some extra lettering on the cab under the engine no. so I added some very small decal lettering of numbers and letters that came from a steam engine set. It’s just gibberish basically but it’s so small you have to really make an effort to read it, but having it there makes it look better.
Of course if it really bothers you, you could use decals to re-letter the shop dates and if necesary build dates. Real railroads had to update data every so often and just painted over the old numbers and put on new ones.
Some boxcars had lumber/grain doors in the A end (non-brakewheel). Many of the MILW ribside cars had this. Might make the loading process easier.
Many elevators would have a scale that weighs the truck before and after dumping the load. For the railcars, they might be taken to the nearest scale to be weighed. Otherwise the co-op would fill to a line in the car, and that would be the proper load. Covered hoppers are often loaded this way, fill to a certain point. I have a sheet from the CNW that has different cars, different commodities (wheat, corn, barley, etc.) and how far below the hatch to fill to.
Don’t have any rib sides yet, just a PS1, but I plan on getting some. I’m going to try not to worry about too much stuff, as most of the down town buildings I’m looking at for my big city are 30’s style while alot of the houses I see are 50’s style. Not to mention I like the look of the 30’s AAR rib sides so I will definetly be getting some of those. I’m just trying to get a good variety of cars. I might even get some heavy duty flat cars, like 8 axle depressed center cars (there’s a 4 axle depressed center flat at the local hobby store that I reaaaaaaaaaally like and will get Thursday/payday if it’s still. It has a water tank load) to run throught once in a while. I figure it could just be something passing through the area. I’ll have lots of room as I decided to make design the layout around the walls, so the shorter L leg will be like 9.8ft long and the longer leg will be 11.5ft. Now it was brought up as a box car having an “A” end. Was this prototypically the end that was ran forward, facing the direction of travel? Or was that sort of thing even worried about.
Those early PS-2 covered hoppers are usable. But, you really should build another grain delivery tube higher up in the elevator for loading grain into those round hatches. The early covered hoppers were not very popular as they many times were too heavy for the track on the loading spur. The big gripe was that even after adding a high delivery tube, you had to spot the car at each hatch, or have a long flexible tube. The ‘trough’ hatches that came on later production PS-2 resolved that later problem. As the cars increased in capacity(from 75 to 100 tons), these small elevators could not hold enough grain to fill the 25-50 car blocks that the railroads wanted elevators to load. The 40 ft ‘class 1’ or ‘clean’ boxcar was the preferred grain car of the era. With grain doors installed, one could load 40-50 tons of grain from a single spout. Of course labor was cheap, and you would have 2 guys shoveling grain from the center of the car to the ends as the loading was done. When unloading, the grain doors would be broken out and the grain spilled into a track side dump(and another pair of guys would shovel grain to the center of the car). Scales - Most elevators had a truck/wagon scale that weighed the grain as it was delivered from the field. This determined what the farmer got paid. The loaded cars were weighed at a track scale at a near yard. It was pretty tough to ‘overload’ a 40 ft box car with too much grain. Jim
Walthers grain tower has the truck scale on the entry ramp to the “lean-to” on the side of the tower which is the drop zone for trucks. On the advice of others, I will relocate the scale on an approach path to the elevator and build up a ramp where I removed it. As for weighing rail cars, that was usually done at a separate location often in a local yard. Having one would make for interesting operations as cars would have to be shuttled off to be weighed then to whereever they are set for pickup.
Cal