Well I am at the beginning stages of a layout and I am looking to model a 30-40 silo concret grain elevator, im looking to model present day BNSF, I was looking for maybe some pictures of some grain elevators that people have modeled. Im looking at using the Suncoast Model Concret grain elevator kit, Just wondering if that is a good one to use? Its the only one I could find with an extention kit so I can have a 30-40 silo grain elevator.
My reason for grain elevator is im from Nebraska and grain is a huge industry in Nebraska, so watching switchers move cars at the elevator is something that interest me a lot, im currently trying to find a real life elevator to model but i cant find just the right one.
So ive decided on two grain elevators, Im between the greenwood elevator and the Union Equity Grain elevator,
hhere are some pictures of the greenwood elevators.
Here are some pictures of the Union Equity Grain elevator
I used the ruler tool in Google earth on the grain elevator to determine the diameter of one silo, because i am going to be building these out of PVC, I came up with 32ft across which came out to be 5.1" in HO scale for the greenwood east silos, is that correct? Another problem I am having is I cant measure how tall these elevators are due to the fact that I have no access to them and Google earth will not let you use the ruler to measure how tall buildings are, so does anyone know of any places I could find heights on grain elevators, They don’t need to be perfect im just trying to get as close as possible with this.
The help would be great and I would like to start buying PVC as soon as possible. some of you may ask if I will be able to fit such large elevators on my layout, yes im dealing with 16ft long layout but only 5ft wide so they should fit nicely.
I also have a thing for the grain elevator theme. I purchased 3 of the Walthers kits and kit bashed it together and it turned out perfect for what I wanted. I like the look of the second one you posted just because of the size of the complex. That would be a fun one to try and duplicate.
I am guessing they are right around 224 feet. I measured the top of one silo in the picture and on my screen it was 1/4 inch. Then I measured from the base to the top and it was 1 and 3/4 inches. Then took your 32 feet X 7 and I came up with the 224.
I live in Kansas City, but am modeling the Santa Fe lines around Enid OK back in 1989 where I grew up. Enid is a town surrounded by many grain elevators and so I have finished a total of 31 elevators on my layout, which is three decks and 29ft by 33ft. The elevators range from some pretty large ones, mostly ex Union Equity/Farmland, but with a mix also of General Mills, Pillsbury (ADM), and several lesser known names. Most were built using the Walthers grain elevator kits (and I confess to have cleaned most dealers out of them over the past few years), plus some done with CVS for contrast, and even have a group of octonal shaped silos done for me out of hard wood by a gentleman from Texas who visited several years ago and built the silos after visitng my layout and he then brought them by for another visit. My largest elevators include 3 different ones that measure 9ft to 10ft in length but most are 4ft to 6ft in length. I also have a few of the old country style elevators that were found along the Enid District back in the days I model. Don’t know where in Nebraska you live, but if you ever slip south of the border to Kansas, you are welcome to visit. another modeler in KC, Tom Stolte, who owns Oddball decals has also modeled several large grain elevators as has Jim Duncan who lives about 5 miles from me. All would be happy to have you visit.
Also I roster a few hundred covered hoppers, mostly ExactRail and Intermountain, with some P2K thrown in to serve those elevators. Takes a lot of grain cars.
I use both Walthers kits for elevators, mostly the ADM. I have modified the head houses on some, the loading sheds on some, I have one on the workbench now which will be four silos wide and 16 bins long. The bin silos height is the height used in the kits by Walthers. I have experimented with higher silos but have found that too high looks out of place on the layout (in my opinion). the Hex shaped silos the Texas guy did for me are about 4 inches higher than the Walthers.
The biggest problems with higher silos is reaching over to uncouple cars without snagging sleeves.
I also use white body putty liberally in some places with the silos where they won’t snug up.
5.1" diameter silos converts to about 37 (not 32) HO scale feet. The silos in the Walthers ADMgrain elevator kit #933-3022 are about 2 5/16" in diameter or about 16 or 17 HO scale feet.
Thanks for that skagitrailbird, I am definitely not going to be useing the wathers kits, my prototype is almost twice as large. I guess its time to go buy PVC
Thanks for that skagitrailbird, I am definitely not going to be useing the wathers kits, my prototype is almost twice as large. I guess its time to go buy PVC
Agreed but, your grain elevator is also a lot smaller in size then the elevator i would like to model, so 224 could be some what right.
Does anyone know of anyway of finding out the height of a grain elevator without climbing it? There is no info that I could find on the internet on how tall this grain elevator is.
As I mentioned in my first post, grain elevators on HO layouts can tend to get too high. I know what you want to model, I was the same way when I started, “run those babies up to the sky” but when I built a test elevator using some PCV and trying to match the Farmland elevators in Enid OK, I quickly found the height dwarfed the layout, and my layout is not small. that is when I tried the Walthers with the shorter silos, and they fit in better. My longest Farmland elevator is 8ft long with three headhouses incorporated and let me tell you they tend to look pretty impressive in the railyard at Enid. Part of my layout has a pensisula (sp) yard for Enid and I have solid complexes on both sides with tracks running down the middle.
I built a fairly large elevator for a free-mo module, it’s about 15" tall (108 scale feet) and 26" long. The elevator housing is an additional 12" tall so the overall height is 27". I used cardboard mailing tubes, 14 of them and then cut some into arcs to form a “scallop” between the main silos. If I do it again, I’ll make it out of thin walled PVC. Regular PVC would work but it ends up being very heavy for an elevator this size.
Okay, i do understand why if I made it full size everything would seem tiny, So i was think 18" tall would still be a reasonable height, that would still be quite tall compared to HO trains but then I would still get the effect of having a extremely large and tall building on my layout.
The question I have is if the silos are 5" round in HO scale would it look odd that it would be “short and Fat” The reason I ask this is because on the norther unit of silos on the ENG LLC they have three silos side by side not 2
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/511/nortelev.jpg