I model the DM&IR in the 1990’s. I would like to incorporate a live action system of loading and unloading the cars, which could vary from taconite to raw ore to limestone. I have a method I am thinking of, but the problem is that while I can find materials resembling limetone and raw ore, nothing comes close to looking like taconite pellets. All the beads I have found are much to big. Does anyone have any ideas on what I could use to mimic the small size of taconite?
The only way to make something that small is to tumble sand in a rock polisher.
If you’re in HO, have you looked at N scale ballast?
Taconite pellets are swirly purple and gray and between 3/4" and 1" balls. In HO that would be 8.6 - 11thousandths of an inch. I doubt that could even be seen without magnification. I would use one of the drop in cast loads and repaint it.
Not a bad idea. I wonder how sand would react to being painted? If I could figure out a way to tumble it and add the paint at the same time so it dries like sand but colored as taconite… The drop loads would work but again those can’t be loaded and unloaded.
“Scale” size taconite in HO would be, as pointed out above, about the size of dust or not much bigger than dust. After all a taconite pellet is about as big as the tip of your middle finger (go ahead, make your own jokes) and consider how tiny that is on a typical HO figure. Or even O scale figure.
I have used sifted fireplace ash for a variety of weathering and modeling purposes, including gravel roads and cinder ballast. It might be usable. But it IS dusty (I suppose taconite is too when being loaded).
Another possibility is the packaged potting material sold that is intended for cactus plants, because it comes “dry.”
Neither ash nor that potting soil has the vague purple look of taconite pellets however. This might sound strange but I wonder about dry grape jello …
I remember an article, and I wish I could recall if it was in MR, RMC, or the NMRA Bulletin, years ago, where a guy had a “static” situation of a car being loaded at a tipple of some kind. The car was permanently mounted and was continuously being loaded because there was a hole in the bottom of the car, and the same material was being circulated over and over.
But what was interesting was that the guy had initially built the display actually loading the car that way and it just didn’t look right, but when he reversed the process and actually had the tipple sucking the material out of the car using a small vaccum cleaner hose, it looked more like it was being loaded. Go figure. AND it did not overload the car of course.
Dave Nelson
I’ve always felt texture is more important that actual size for certain things. Its like brickwork on a building. Mortar lines are not as broad or as deep as they are on a model, but without them being oversized…it doesn’t look right.
http://www.railpictures.net/photo/334783/
I look at that picture and think “if I buried an ore jenny in fine ballast, yeah that’s what it would look like” even if the ballast is too big.
Being from the west coast, when I want to make taconite smaller, I just don’t invite as many people! Sorry guys, I just had to.
I used to be from the west coast but maybe being away so long I’ve lost touch. Feed me with a spoon please.
Taconite = taco night. I think.
If you could keep it dry and the air de-humidified so it doesn’t stick, how about colored fine sugar, like what they use for decorating cakes.
There was a company some years back that sold modified MDC ore cars that actually had working hopper doors. As I recall, they didn’t sell many as they were pretty pricey - one or two for show was fine, but if you need a couple hundred for a layout it was way too much money.
Anyway, making working doors for a lot of cars, and a mechanism to open and close them, and finding something to fill the cars with that will actually dump out when the hopper doors are opened is going to be a huge problem in my estimation. Hay Brothers makes very nice ‘insert’ removeable loads for raw ore, taconite, and limestone for Walthers and MDC/Roundhouse cars. I’d stick with them. You can check out their online store on Ebay.
BTW…the “tac” in taconite is pronounced “tack” like “thumbtack”. Here in Minnesnowta we say “tack-a-nite”. In the UK tacos is actually pronounced “tack-ohs” so taco night joke would work better across the pond…
[;)]