I am going to model the stockyard in Omaha around the 1950’s in N scale. With all of the meat packing plants around and auctions houses and other random buildings. If you want the whole story just pm me and i will tell you it.
My question is they had concrete stockyard that the animals would stand on, then with all of the pens on top of the concret floor. How can I make model concrete? I dont think that real concrete will work because it will be to heavy and I dont know if I can mold it to be 1/2" think. Any alternate routes that will work that will look like concret. All the advice will be helpful.
These photos where taken a few years after closeing down in 1999
I don’t see concrete floors for this kit. But if your specific stockyard had them, you might try some sheet styrene roughed up a bit and then painted with a “concrete” paint. I just purchased something called “Earth Colors” brand concrete colour. It looked rather pinkish and orangish until I noticed some concrete highway barriers the other day with a very similar shade. They were streaked with blackish grey, but seemed very close to the colour I had purchased at the hobby store.
I would think any stock yard concrete floor would be rather mottled in any case…don’tcha’ think. Unless they were using bovine diapers.
I only wish they had a stockyard like the walthers HO one for N scale. I am going to have to build all of my pen’s on my own. [:D] not realy looking forward to it but then I can say I had a large part in my layout.
That’s off the Walther’s site. There’s no page yet, and it;s in HO, alos not yet out, expected August, but concrete ay not be as noticable in N. And it igives you time to plan on how many fences you need and some time to make fences.
EDIT:
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Self-Adhesive 8-1/2 x 11" Textured Sheet - Concrete – Light
N
3.00
N
04-Apr-2008
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Self-Adhesive 8-1/2 x 11" Textured Sheet - Concrete – Medium
N
3.00
N
04-Apr-2008
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Self-Adhesive 8-1/2 x 11" Textured Sheet - Concrete – Dark
Just the mention of Omaha’s stockyards takes me back to where I grew up, a few blocks north of Dodge St. Those hot humid summer days with the breeze out of the south made you think you were living right next them. As I understand, those days are gone. I think I read a few years ago that the stockyards, the largest in the world when I grew up, are no longer operating. Even in N scale and using selective compression, that should be quite an undertaking. Good luck.
The stock yards are indeed gone and there is a shopping mall built on top of them. I can remeber in the 50’s riding along L Street and seeing the trucks backed up almost to 42nd Street.
I’m not that familiar with the beef industry and how it functions, but what was the driving factor that caused the closure of such a place? Is it handled by a larger number of small facilities or a new large one? The only cows I ever dealt with where the kind that milk comes out of, and I know those ones are completely different.
It’s now handled by much smaller regional packing houses. It’s cheaper for the farmers to haul cattle to a local slaughter house and it’s cheaper for the packing houses to ship out processed meat.
Depending on what will be under the stock yard (how flat is is and how well supported your stockyard will be), you can use 0.030", 0.040" or 0.060" thick styrene.
Use a straightedge and the backside of an xacto knife to score lines in the concrete.
Can be painted concrete colored e.g. with Floquil paints:
Good way to post your question, btw - descriptive title, good explanation of what you were looking for, you explained what you had tried yourself first and formulated your question clearly. Wish all posters did it that well.
From looking at the prototype photos, you’ll need at least a couple of 4’x8’ sheets of .060" styrene for the “concrete” floors, and then you better give Evergreen a call and warn them that you’re about to order some strip styrene - they may need to gear-up production. [swg]
I built a couple of HO scale stockpens, using strip styrene, and they do really eat-up the material. I drew out the post and gate locations to scale on paper, then marked the spacing for the horizontal members. I then pinned the drawing to a sheet of 1/4" balsa, and assembled the individual sides of the pens directly on the drawing, using straight pins to keep the posts aligned as the other parts were added.
I am not going to model the entire stockyard just a section and put a meatpacking plant in a few other buildings around the area. Question for you doctorwyne on the 4th picture what is the building with the orangish colored roof? Is it a auctions house? Im guessing you are useing the stryrene for the “floor” of the pen’s? Thanks for all of the info so far it has helped a lot.
Kyle, the brick structure is the auction house. The building with the rusting roof is simply more stock pens - usually used for hogs, as they are susceptible to sunburn. Of course, since only these pens have a ramp for loading doubledecked cars, they’re also used for sheep and smaller cattle.
The pens were built as described, with the corner posts (and some intermediate ones on the longer sides) left longer on the bottom. These were inserted into holes in the scenery, which is patching plaster over screen wire, keeping everything in place. Since the pen components were assemble on the layout, they can be removed as an entity by prying those longer posts out of the “dirt”. I added a bit of earth coloured ground foam to the ground inside the pens, although they still need a few scenic “elements” to make them complete. [swg] I’m modelling the late '30s, so no money for concrete, although things were generally well-maintained.
Exactly. If you follow the history of the industry, you can see how it evolved. It used to be that Chicago was slaughterhouse capital of the world but then it moved west to Omaha, and if memory serves, Scottsbluff in western Nebraska which was more centrally located for the large cattle ranches than even Omaha. Finally somebody figured out it made more sense to butcher the livestock closer to where the product would be sold so the industry decentralized. It’s also cheaper to ship meat in refrigerator cars over long distances than live cattle which has to be fed and watered in shipment. There were also rules about how far they could ship cattle before the had to be let out, and watered which was hassle. Once butchered, the meat can be sent non-stop to its destination.
One thing you might want to consider is using some of those photos of the pens, enlarging them and placing them on your backdrop. That way you can create the impression of a very large operation while only modeling a few actual pens in the foreground scenery. You could use some of the structures, such as the slaughterhouse and auction house to hide the edges of the photos. The key is to select pictures that were taken from the right height and angle so they will appear to be an extension of the foreground scene.
