One of my industries will be the Walthers oil distribution and storage facility. How did the fuel oil or gasoline get transferred from the tank cars to the storage tanks? Is this modeled with some kind of in the tracks connection or with an above the ground pipe? If the latter how was it connected to the tank car?
Also, in the latest MRR there is a coal distribution facility in the article about building an urban area on the layout. I have the same question there. It looks like there might be an in the tracks receptacle of some kind.
Can anyone tell me about these or better yet, show photos of how you modeled it? Thanks.
Fuel Oil - Usually a pipe with a rubber hose was lowered through the tank car dome to pump out the oil. Walthers has these included with several of their bulk oil distributor structure kits. The unloading pipes would go to a small structure with the pumps and from their the storage tanks.
Coal - it depends. Some was done from an elevated trestle to bins under the structure. Others had grates between the rails and an elevator system to large above ground silos. Manual labor was cheap back then.
I spent the better part of the late 60s thru the 90s around both petroleum and edible oil tank cars, the the loading and unloading thereof.
For medium to large facilities, structures like the Cornerstone “rack” was pretty common, where flexible hoses were hooked to the top or bottom of the cars and pumped in/out. These hoses were connected to swinging solid pipes, and would either flow to the tankage above or under ground, depending.
For smaller facilities, the loading would typically be crude oil and that could be pumped thru whatever flexible hose they had, into the top of the tank. And, unloading could usually be done from the bottom.
Heavy crude oil (and edible oils) were typically moved in cars with steam (line) tracing, which meant the steam lines had to be hooked up first to get the product warm enough to flow freely. BTW, there are many of kinds of crude oil - some as thick as molassas, and others as thin as milk.
Thanks for both replies guys. I was talking about the mid 50s. I’m guessing that what is depicted in the current MRR is the coal grate and silos. This helps a lot. In my head I was making things a lot more complicated than they probably actually were.
My free-lanced '30s-era layout has a coal dealer like this in almost every town. Rather than model an open pit for the coal dump, I used sheet styrene to create removeable “steel” plates over the (unmodelled) pits. There are two plates between the rails, and single ones on either side. I can provide a close-up view if you’d like.
One of the larger towns has a more elaborate set-up, with the siding off an elevated right-of-way.
Various grades of coal can either be dumped directly into waiting trucks or wagons, or into storage bins directly below the tracks. From there, it can be loaded into delivery vehicles at a later date or transferred into burlap sacks for home delivery.
Also included is a scale house and some other sheds and storage bins. Coal, along with sand and gravel, can also be delivered on the ground-level siding in the foreground, and is moved to storage by mostly manual labour.
Mind if I use the small town coal dealer? Looks great. Reminds me of some pictures of a structure I once had of a very similar looking structure that someone made as a small town grain ‘bin’. It was nice, barn red siding, dark shingle roof, cobblestone foundation. Wonder what I did with them…
I like the large one too, but I like the outside on it so much I think I would have enclosed the entire structure. A bay at the end for trucks to be loaded (bins unload onto horizontal conveyor), and bay on top for cars to enter. A lot more elaborate than most coal bins would be built as I’m sure.
In the bottom picture, I modeled a fuel dump at a Naval Air Station for blimps. The fuel dump is the military/naval equivalent of a bulk oil dealer. I modeled 2 standpipes along the tracks using bits of wiring and hollow brass tubing, piping to a pump house and storage tanks, and a rack to load deklivery trucks that take fuel out to the blimps. (A WWII blimp pilot told me the blimp’s Rolls Royce engines used the same high-test aviation fuel as propeller heavier-than-air airplanes.)
Thanks for your kind words. By all means, feel free to use the design: I built it as a composite from several photos of different structures. Three of the bins have blank walls on the truck-loading side, which faces the backdrop, while the fourth has the truck side facing the viewer. That one is modelled on all four sides, as there’s sufficient room between it and the backdrop to allow placement of the camera facing the aisle. Here’s a couple of views:
Here’s a look at the truck-loading chutes:
Does it look anything like this, which was built to represent a former coal dealer’s bin which has been converted to a storage elevator for grain?
It almost looks like I could start with a LaserKit Silex grain elevator and just chop don the tall headhouse. Of course, I would have to choose a scale first (I keep getting stuck between N and HO).
Your grain bin does look very similar but I do remember it being bigger. If I remember it right it an a rail unloading bay built right into the structure and a lift elevator on the outside wall of the bay. Ooh I wish I would have kept those photos. It only looked big enough to hold one, maybe two 50T hoppers of coal, which to me would say even for a small town it would be a frequent rail customer.
At any rate anything I build will be a hoopla of things. As I said I do like your coal bin enough to model, and I also like Lance Mindheims (sorry for spelling) sheet warehouse he built for his Antillean Marine scene. There is also a multi-span bridge over a creek nearby, a small trestle way up Nort dare ey by where my wife grew up, along with a lumber dealer, small feed mill, and reminents of an oil dealer in the town my wife grew up, and just down the highway is a neat looking elevator/feed mill that I wouldn’t mind having.
One thing is for sure, it will all be varied because I like to see a variety in rail cars. I get to see covered hoppers from 3200 ‘s for cement to classic 4750’s (NOT for grain), and lately starting to see some super jumbo covered hoppers. 52’ mill gondolas are fairly regular, as are 25K gallon tankers, once in a while box cars in the 50 foot range and bulk head flats of lumber, and always center-beam flats of lumber. The lumber cars will calm down as winter comes, but there is ALOT of construction using cement/concrete in the area right now so the cement distributor probably just became CN’s #1 customer in the area. Its a see of slab sided 3200’s and cylindricals to add interest.
