Looking to do my set (4x8) based on California’s Altamont Pass. My town will losely be based on older Mountain House, or BlackHawk, with UP as the line. Has anyone ever seen any of this style windmill manufactured in HO scale? The only windmills I have seen are the “Oaklahoma Farm” style or the Dutch mills.
Thanks
Dayv
i looked at a couple of site where if they dont show it, it does not exsist kinda thing, and I did not see any
you might have to scratch build them.
good luck!
I presume you intend to use forced perspective, since those gadgets are about 150 feet from ground to the top of the sail-tip circle. Four of them would overwhelm a 4X8 in HO!
If built smaller, you might want to check the model aircraft aisle of your LHS for suitable propeller blade and hub assemblies. You might have to thin out the blades. The generator housings could be carved out of wood or even cast in plaster, and the masts might match something in the model ship aisle (or be made by tapering dowel material from your neighborhood home improvement center.)
The interesting part will be getting them to turn in that usual, ponderous, 30-or so RPM manner.
Chuck
Check the kibri web site. I’ve seen HO scale windmills on kibris web site. I couldn’t find one on kibri web page …but e-bay has one!!!
I don’t think kibri makes them anymore, so you’ll have to search e-bay from time to time.
Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DSRC}
Motion? I’m not too worried about that. If you have ever driven through the Altamont, hardly any of them are moving. Even on the days when they say there isn’t enough power in the grid, and they may be forced to start rolling blackouts, they aren’t all moving. If I’m going for true realism, nah, they wont have motion.
There have been load after load of them (in parts) running through here this summer. They are building lots of them a few miles north of here. Most of the parts are shipped on special trucks but the blades are shipped on rails. the blades are so long (I guess about 80’) they are secured to a flat car with another empty flat car directly behind. I am wanting to model a couple of the blades on my HO layout.
Here is a pic I got off the internet. Hope this helps. Mike
I assume you are modeling sometime after the late 1980s…and yeah, those things are GARGANTUAN. The generator unit in the center of those blades is the size of a 40’ truck trailer–the blades are around 100 feet long, I think. So such a fan would scale out to maybe 4-5 feet high, with the blades defining a circle of around 2-3 feet in diameter! Your best bet would be to either put photos of some distant ones in the background, or build a “forced perspective” model for the background that is actually a fraction of the size of an actual HO model, used to suggest longer than actual distances. It would be a fairly easy bash–get a three-bladed propeller from an R/C plane store, and you could probably get a suitable engine nacelle from the same place–the stand would require some sort of tapered pole, you could probably use a balsa dowel and taper it with sandpaper, or use a cut-down piece of chair leg or something.
One also sees the “oklahoma farm” style windmills in the Altamont Pass/coastal mountain farm regions, used for pumping water for livestock watering stations, even today.
Kibri still makes them, and Walthers has them in stock: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/405-8532
A little ‘pricy’, but I think this is what you are looking for…
Jim
You might get away with building some smaller ones.
Check out this… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass
Honestly if you get the scale close you aren’t going to care. They would be pretty easy to scratch build if you could get a hold of a bunch of propellers.
Try looking for Clipper Wind Power in your favorite search engine. I worked for them for a short time…and can tell you these things are truly HUGE. The tower alone is about 200 feet tall. I think the blade diameter was going to be something like 140 feet.
Their website had (I don’t go there anymore, so not sure what is ‘current’ with it) download-able brochures on the “Liberty” turbine, and one other one we were to be building. It had dimensions, line drawings; you probably could build something pretty close to accurate with it.
The “machine base,” or the part directly on top of the tower, looks like an oversized tank turret turned upside down. These came in on a flatbed as a wide load. They were around 14-16 tons apiece. Easily handled with our overhead cranes…but we still were very, very delicate with the movements.
My half-a-cent’s worth of opinion is go for “forced perspective” on these, unless you have a LOT of room…
Hope this helps,
Chris Umscheid
former Safety Supervisor, Clipper Wind Power