scratch building

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

i am scratch building a grain elavator. Any idea’s. Have you ever made one, if so, can you send me pictures

2

Haven’t built one but from KS where the concrete castles are thick. Get some photos of the one you would like to model. The old style ones I have little help on. THe concrete ones, use papertowel tubes, styrene and you will have to get some dust collectors make a scale and an office for the trucks delivering grain to the elevator.

3

Sounds like you WANT to scratchbuild a grain elevator. Also sounds like this is totally new to you. I’d suggest checking out MR’s magazine index for articles on grain elevators, there probably are some that could help you out, step by step. There are also commercially made kits out there.

For photos, check on your own - do a Google Image search on “grain elevators”, I’m sure you’ll find thousands of images that you can copy.

4

Depending on your scale, various diameters of PVC pipe make good silos.

Lee

5

I would practice on a length of PVC pipe. Depending on how elaborate you want to get, my guess is that the hard part will be getting the color and texture right. Unless you already have an airbrush, you might want to start by going to the hardware store and finding a cheap spray paint that’s close to the color you want. If possible, use a flat primer as your “color” selection. That will give you a closer match to concrete than a satin or gloss finish. You can also use Testors Dul-Coat spray to flatten the finish.

I’ve ordered big sheets of styrene from www.usplastic.com instead of buying those tiny sheets from the LHS, or using styrene “For Sale” signs from Wal-Mart, which is another low-budget option.

6

When I am scratch-building anything there are several steps that I like to go through.

  1. Either take in person, or gather from the web and other publications, good photos from several directions of the prototype that I want to model. If I am not modelling a specific prototype, which is not often, then gather good photographic examples of what I am after. In your case, you need to decide the era and look that you are going for. There is a big difference between a modern grain operation and the small community elevator of yesteryear.

  2. Using tell-tales on the photos, estimate the dimensions of the structure and convert to scale (HO in my case) For example, if there is a person in the photo or a door, you can use these “known measurements” to estimate other dimensions. If you can, simply go out and measure the prototype.

  3. Measure the space that you have to use on the layout.

  4. Decide if you can fit what you want. Make decisions on compromise such as shrinking/compressing the structure. Turning it into a background building with only part of the structure actually modelled. In your case, lets say you had decided that the PVC pipe solution worked, you could model a very large elevator by cutting the pipes in half lengthwise and modelling the elevator as a shallow relief background structure.

  5. I then draw a scale plan of my model and from this make some simple mock ups in cardboard to make sure it is all going to fit.

  6. Gather the materials needed which is now much easier as you can estimate needs from the plans for things like styrene sheet, windows, doors etc.

  7. Build it.

In the following image the main power station of the coal mine was scratch-built. I quickly realized that I could not fit the entire structure on my layout and leave any room for track. So I compromised and modelled only the front of it. Rather than simply model a flat bac