I’m in the planning stages of a 7’x17’ HO layout and I have a prototype question.
I’m planning on modeling the midwest and plan to include the ADM grain elevator made by Walthers. My question is whether to put it on a 27" spur of it’s own, or to put it along side a main track.
The reason I have this question is that the elevator has a loading “shed” that the railcar consists must enter to have grain loaded. It seems not-prototypical to have a consist enter the “shed” if not taking on a cargo of grain. That’s why I was thinking of a 27" spur - but you can only load 3-car consists at a time that way.
Well, the siding I was palnning to place it on is about 27" long and is located “front and center” in the layout, but It could be relocated to any one of a number of sidings that range from 24" to 56" (the 56" on is located against the back wall of the layout.
I’m assuming your thinking I should place it on a longer siding?
Certainly one would expect to find a siding longer than 3 car lengths at a grain elevator and having the mainline being used to load or unload cars on real railroads is at best rare. However, if you want to put the elevator up front with a short siding, go ahead it is your layout. Are you still planning your layout or is the track down? Perhaps you can move some stuff around to get a siding that is long enough in a more desirable location.
These sheds where also used to cover the unloading pits. I was in the grain buss.for ten years. we had two tracks under a shed both tracks had four unloading pits, and two spouts for loading. The Walthers grain elev. your looking at is a good sized elev. A 27 in. siding would be way to small.
The answer to your original question is no don’t put it along the main track. You wouldn’t load a grain train off the main track.
Now here’s a different idea.
Put the laoding track on “back” of the elevator and hide it behind buildings, etc. You might be able to get several more feet of track in there. You wouldn’t see the unloading side, but you could shove a long cut of hoppers into the track and since they were “hidden” behind the elevator you wouldn’t notice whether they were under the shed or not.
Move the elevator several inches away from the main and use the parts to make a truck dump on the visible side. You could then have a line of a half dozen trucks lined up for the dump. If you were really a tinkerer, you could make a truck dump that raised the truck up whan you pushed a button to automate it.
Since only the benchwork is down, the track plan isn’t completely set in stone. I know what I want industries I want to incorporate, so I’m just trying to find the right places for them.
Thanks everyone for all your help. I’ll put it on my longest (56 inch) siding so that is can accomodate 6 or so cars hopper cars.
Assuming your RR is rectangular in shape the best place for the grain elevator would be along the back wall on the far side of your mainline (even on once a week branch line an elevator would have its own siding). By locating it in that manner you can run the siding parra llel to the main line between the main line and the elevator and extend the siding all the way to the end of the benchwork. Ideally the elevator would be located in the middle of the siding w/ enough track length on either side to hold rhe number of cars you would be spotting in. For example if you’re going to spot 4 cars in for loading you want to shove them past the loading shed and, as they’re loaded move them out the other end. In the prototype the elevator crew does this either by gravity and hand brakes, cables and winches or by shoving w/ a loader. You can spot the cars in w/ an engine and then use the 0-5-0 to spot them for pick up