Potash Mine

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I am building a potash mine on my layout and am trying to figure out a building I could use to distribute the potash to the rail cars. I thought about a coal mine but was wondering if anyone has a better idea

2

Use Google Earth (or your fave mapping app) to navigate to Moab, Utah. Roughly west from town is where the Rio Grande/Now UP’s branch to a potash mine terminated. I’ll try to insert a view of it. The coordinates are roughly 38°31’20.03" N 109°39’22.61" W.

3

Gidday, [#welcome] to the forum.

Here’s a link to a video tour…http://minetour.potashcorp.com/ … unless you have a lot of room, I suspect that some serious scale compression will be required.[:)]

Cheers, the Bear.

4

Blankeman78,

[#welcome] To The Forums.

E. Suydam & Co. Made The American Chemical & Potash Co. kits at one time. Two separate buildings one being an annex. They were corrugated metal kits and great Models. Alpine Scale Models controls them now, but unfortunately they no longer make the kits. They say they can’t get the material anymore. Sometimes you can find them on E-bay. I tried to get pic’s, but so far have been unsuccessful getting a good shot. That is a shame though, that would have been perfect for what you want. Should I have any success finding it, I will surely post it:

Frank

Edit: These have been sold also. Click on pic.

5

Maybe a Walthers Glacier Gravel kit would serve as a processing and loading facility. It comes with conveyors.

6

Take another look at the structures at Potash, Utah noted in Mike Lehman’s post above. The structures there are readily modelable. Here’s a gallery with several photos http://www.pbase.com/listorama/rr_potash_train .

Here’s a photo of the loader itself from the above set.

Another large potash plant near Wendover, UT has a relatively simple loading structure that could be modeled as a flat http://binged.it/1niXHmI .

7

Western Utah has some very cool looking scenery.

8

As someone mentioned above, modeling an entire mine would take a lot on non-RR modeling space. Something to consider would be to model the loading and some of the processing plant, and have the rest be “imagined” off the edge of the layout.

I did something like this for the gravel pit on my layout. I assumed that there was a branch line serving the gravel pit and some other industries. The line was abandoned when other customers closed shop, but the gravel pit wanted to continue shipping by rail. They built an access road and conveyor system on the old RR right of way, and a loading plant close to tne main line. The road and conveyor disappear behind a hill and trees into the backdrop (when I get it installed). A bit of the old ROW may be seen at the bottom right of the picture.

9

Thanks for the assistance. I am going to just model the loading facilities as it is along the backdrop of my layout. I will let you know how it goes.

10

If anyone is interested, I found this purely by accident:

http://sld-nmra.ca/meets/jan_12/jan_12.htm

When you get to the site, click on the Metal buildings on the second line, built by Paul Anderson. That is one of the buildings from the American Chemical & Potash Co. originally produced by E. Suydam & Co. that I referred to earlier. It says California Models, they took over Suydam and Alpine was followed by California.

Frank