Double post error
I don’t think you’ll mind if I post your video Ed.
Stef, I seen John even had a light on up there during the day right in front of the stairs
I always liked this video
TF
Me Me Me!
-Kevin
Wow, thanks for this cool video. I am not just modelling but also learning about history, buildings … Now I understand how an elevator grain works.
Question: Are those kinds of elevators still in use today? I live in Québec, Canada and I don’t remember seeing one like those here. From what I have seen and the little I know is that here our grain elevators seems to be more circular and metallic in shape.
That’s the classic small local elevator. There are still hundreds of these dotted all over the prairies and anywhere else out West where grain was grown. They are no longer used as far as I know. Since heavy trucks are able to haul large volumes of grain long distances driven by just one person these elevators have fallen into disuse. Custom feedmills or local seed cleaning perhaps. There’s a working replica at our Heritage Park which is interesting to see. Grain is grown on the tiny farm which forms part of the mostly outdoor exhibit. There’s a full sized railroad loop, Wye and turntable.
Elevators like this were built every 7-10 miles apart with spurs to serve them. That was the maximum feasible distance a wagonload of grain could be hauled, emptied and returned to the farm in daylight. Even when grain was trucked initially the trucks were of the small variety pictured in the National Film Board short.
If you have room and inclination one of these belongs on any layout placed in grain country. You really date your model if you show it in use. Anything pre 1940 presents no obstacle. But by the late 70’s to maybe the late 80’s you would not see a boxcar or hopper spotted on those elevator sidings. Slightly amusingly, I note a stock car spotted near the elevator in the photo above. That’s the one type of box car never used for grain hauling…
Note the elevator siding was graded very gently. This permitted one man to roll and spot the empty box car and also move the loaded one on down the siding. The process is one way all the way. Except for the elevation procedure.
Note the “modern” boxcar juxtaposed beside the very old elevator. Note the high tech cardboard panel “reinforced” with sheet metal strapping the elevator guy nails to the inside doorframe. This would be in the 70’s still. There are models of later boxcars with grain doors let into tops of the steel doors which duplicate these cardboard shields. T
How’s this, better?[swg][(-D]
[quote user=“Lastspikemike”]
That’s the classic small local elevator. There are still hundreds of these dotted all over the prairies and anywhere else out West where grain was grown. They are no longer used as far as I know. Since heavy trucks are able to haul large volumes of grain long distances driven by just one person these elevators have fallen into disuse. Custom feedmills or local seed cleaning perhaps. There’s a working replica at our Heritage Park which is interesting to see. Grain is grown on the tiny farm which forms part of the mostly outdoor exhibit. There’s a full sized railroad loop, Wye and turntable.
Elevators like this were built every 7-10 miles apart with spurs to serve them. That was the maximum feasible distance a wagonload of grain could be hauled, emptied and returned to the farm in daylight. Even when grain was trucked initially the trucks were of the small variety pictured in the National Film Board short.
If you have room and inclination one of these belongs on any layout placed in grain country. You really date your model if you show it in use. Anything pre 1940 presents no obstacle. But by the late 70’s to maybe the late 80’s you would not see a boxcar or hopper spotted on those elevator sidings. Slightly amusingly, I note a stock car spotted near the elevator in the photo above. That’s the one type of box car never used for grain hauling…
Note the elevator siding was graded very gently. This permitted one man to roll and spot the empty box car and also move the loaded one on down the siding. The process is one way all the way. Except for the elevation procedure.
Note the “modern” boxcar juxtaposed beside the very old elevator. Note the high tech cardboard panel “reinforced” with sheet metal strapping the elevator guy nails to the inside doorframe. This would be in the 70’s still. There are models of later boxcars with grain doors let into tops of the steel d
Hi Stef
It looks like I overlooked your post and question this morning.
It seems I may have a newly acquired personal assistant answering my questions for me that were directed to me now, …How convenient[(-D]
I’m glad you liked the grain elevator video. Ed posted that on one of my threads and I really like that one too.
As far as the old Prairie grain elevators still around, unfortunately they had become a dying breed quite some time ago. I’ve heard there is only a scarce few that are quite a long distance from the new modern grain elevators that still operate. Whether that’s true or where they are I have no idea.
Here you go
As far as lights go in the old prairie grain elevators and the new modern ones, t
Besides the seal housings and special bulbs for lighting related to the old prairie grain elevators, new modern day precautions are much further advanced.
http://www.kcsupply.com/compliant-lighting-grain-handling-facility/
TF
[(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D]
Perfect! Actually I don’t think you’re too far off Brent. Makes perfect sense to me.
ETHANOL!!!
Apparently your grain elevator is stocked with corn[:-^][(-D]
[:P]TF
Elevators are loading structures, not for storage. Out West here you store your grain in “bins” on your property until you get a buyer. Only then can you move your grain to an elevator facility where it is lifted high enough to fill the railroad cars. When the elevators get full you start seeing shiny new galvanized grain bins popping up and even large piles of grain stored on the ground, which is really bad for quality and losses to vermin.
Ideally, grain passes through an elevator very quickly.
I’d like to see pictures of the light fixtures at the top of the elevator, above the bins, in an old wooden elevator…
There’s a good sketch in this document:
https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/hrb/internal_reports/pdfs/Grain_Elevators_study.pdf
I have visited a few elevators in the past when traveling across the Western Provinces and I am going from memory of what I learned from those visits most of which were decades ago. When electric light was introduced the lighting was specialized and actually called “grain elevator explosion-proof electric lighting”. In Manitoba, I saw the packaging in my Uncle’s basement in 1966.
A metal (lead?)pipe (steel conduit in later years) was run up the outside of the elevator and the colour of the light where the distributor was located up top was amber as just like fog lights, amber helps you see through the dust just as fog lights do on cars. The bulbs were specialized and placed inside a sealed glass covers. Sometimes there were also red and green lights at different locations around the elevator, I cannot remember what those colours were for.
Most of my photos are on slides in a box somewhere, but I did take this one about ten years ago that shows the covered bulbs and conduit. Up top, at a different elevator, the setup was the same but with an amber bulb or amber glass cover maybe and the wire ran through old steel pipe threaded at the joints.
I am no expert on the subject and yield to anyone that is.
Your model turned out excellent. You did a really great job on that Stef. Nice!
TF
Looks perfect.
Nicely done Stef!
Dave
I’ve lived on the Prairies for over 50 years. I’ve never seen a grain elevator lit at night.
Never.
Me neither.
I know nothing of grain elevators, but I have worked in hazardous and explosive environments that had electric lighting.
It was specialized hardware, but if you can have electric lighting in a concentration plant, sugar mill, or fertilizer plant, why not a grain elevator?
-Kevin
No doubt some may have had electric lighting…in the engine house which is a separate building. Not on the top floor.
Bear in mind that most of the rural Prairies had no electricity…at all…until quite late.
Even the telephone was party line up to the 1970’s.
The Province I live in occupies an area nearly three times the size of the UK. Population of the UK today is around 60 millions, 3 largest cities total about 12 million. My Province? About 4 millions total. We don’t even have three largest cities. Total of the two sizeable cities we do have is less than 2 millions. Before WWII the numbers were even less impressive, more like 40:1. Land area unchanged of course. No electric lights in the farmhouses, don’t you know. Why try to fit them into a grain elevator? You don’t notice one feature of those grain elevator pictures? No power poles. No power poles near any farmsteads neither.
The Walthers model is of a small, very small, local elevator probably of around 1930’s era. In era you could fit electric lights but you’d need a generator or more likely an acetylene gas system for lighting. No way anyone would connect electricity or use acetylene gas for lighting an all wooden structure used only in daylight. How are you supposed to grade
My earliest ancestors settled in the Swan River Valley in Manitoba in the 1790s. My cousin married a kid off the farm in 1976 from Saskatchewan. In 1969 they were still using horses and wagons to take their grain to the elevator and had no running water or electricity on the farm. They were probably the last farm in Canada to be operating like that.[(-D]
I live a very comfortable life in B.C. but have had plenty of exposure to ranch and farm life. There are no cookie-cutter examples of what things should be like as far as what we model, If the cattle bust a 2" x 8" board in the cattle pen and you grab a 2" x 10" to replace it, so what. Yet if you do that on the layout someone will point out sloppy modeling. “Not all your boards are the same” they will say.
The same goes for lighting the elevator. All-nighters loading railcars were commonplace at that time of year, just to provide space in the elevator and bins for more incoming grain the next day. City slickers telling how it was done and what was is a none starter.
I have a 4 x 4 F-350 p/u that rarely gets put in 4 wheel drive. I remember my Uncle saying he did not think his truck had ever been taken out of 4 wheel drive from the day he brought it home. Half the time I drove that thing around the ranch I was not even on a dirt path never mind a road. It is another world on the farm and/or ranch and unless you spend time there you are being presumptuous pretending to know what goes on.