After talking tough for a lot of years about building my next layout, I finally DID something today. I assembled the Walthers ADM elevator I had on hand and collecting a lot of dust.
No problems with the technical parts of putting it together, but an idea struck me as I was finishing. There are two sheds, one each for rail and truck operation. What struck me is the truck shed is too short to allow raising a bed to dump grain; for that matter, the whole thing appears to have two outs, and no way in.
Am I looking at the model wrong?
BTW, I have an odd but effective tool I used to glue the walls together squarely. Lacking the $$$$$ I’d need to buy everything I wanted from Micro-Mark, I had to have something to hold everything in alignment. My solution was several boxes of unspent ammunition. They were already reasonably square, and the lead inside provided enough heft to hold the walls in place while the glue set.
I could be wrong on it, but I’ve never heard of bulk grain being shipped in dump trucks. Enclosed trailers with bottom dumps, like a covered hopper, yes.
VunderBob is correct, many ‘Fancy Farmer’ trucks are indeed tippers, for example here is an Athearn Ford (ex-wrecker) with a GC Laser grain body, & it’s a tipper. Yeah, I lke the Lonstar Wilson semi trailers too, but out here on the smaller farms there are plenty of these smaller trucks.
I have the Valley Growers Elevator built, & without adding any internal roof bracing It may allow a little bit of a tipper clearance. It does not have the nice new concrete bins tho… I thought it would make a nice compliment to pair to the ADM Elevator, -someday!
What ammo & container did you use? Sounds interesting. (I have plenty stacked on the reloading bench)…
Yes the kits do have different truck-dump structure dimensions, the Valley kit is a slight bit taller & has more pitch in the roof, the ADM one is slightly longer… Both appear to be designed as a ‘drive through’ like the rail side is.
There was a farmer a few miles east of town that still has a couple gravel trailers he uses in the fields, I never saw them on the highway tho. That is why I modeled this (yeah the combine is up on shipping blocks, & not prototypical). I believe the trailer & dolly are Herpa, the combine & Fendt are Kibri & Wiking.
It is a “REEL Rides” model that was in some movie. I got a few of them on eBay, as my Dad built a '72 in blue & white with that posture. I modified this model & put different rims & Busch tires on it to make it a 4X4, so yeah, I really dig it too! I have not figured out how to paint it without losing the trim detail, decals I guess. This model’s cab shape is not quite right, a little tall in scale, but I rather have that, then none at all. They are a classic! Thanks again!
Yeah, out here at harvest time, anything that can haul, usually does, just like trains, everything goes into service, a neat time of year! One of the local weirdest, (that I should model) is an old Mack COE Garbage style daycab truck, with a 5th wheel that is lashed to a grain trailer! It’s odd, & I enjoy looking at the last 3/4 of the engine sticking out behind the cab!!! It’s pretty weird seeing that pulling a trailer…
When I was growing up in Toledo Ohio in the 50s and 60s, we had several large elevators that dumped 40’ trailers with a tractor. They also dumped shorter grain trucks and sometimes the sloped farmers bins, but that was only during the slow season. They drove through the short covered part onto a ramp that was probably 60’ long or so. The back doors were opened and the entire truck was pivoted up, the grain pouring out of the truck and into the grate the truck pulled over driving through the short shed you are talking about. They did mostly large semi’s and there would be scores of them lined up during the harvest season. Somtimes I would guess 50 or 60 of them. There was a seperate building several blocks away to sample the grain so they would then start the line up to dump their grain.
To model such an operation you would only need to model the flat platform the truck drives onto, and if you have the doors open on the shed would have a grate for a floor for the grain to pour through. The ramp was raised with a very large hydraulic rams at the centered on the ramp about 2/3rd of the down the ramp. Kind of like a scale platform with a pivot at one end. Some of the ramps had two hydraulic rams with one on each edge. The truck must have been raised to close to 45 degrees.
As a side off subject comment, my brother peddled a ice cream cart and sold to the drivers waiting in line. He also had my mother make sandwiches and he peddled hundreds of them to the drivers. The drivers are the ones to suggest to him that start doing that. Of course now you would probably run afoul of the government doing such a thing.
I’ve seen grain hauled two different ways: a weight cart (hopper wagon), or directly in trucks. Weight carts are more prevalent in the midwest where I grew up, and trucks are the rule in North Carolina,where I just moved from. A weight cart would dump directly to a grated floor without elevation. Time to check the catalog, I 'spose.
I don’t really intend for the elevator to be big enough to justify anything other than gravity dumps. The layout will be a glorified switching operation, and the spur will ship 6 hoppers at a time during the rush season, not unit trains.
The ammo I had was .357 reloads from Star Ammunition in Indianapolis. Those boxes had more dust than the elevator kit, too.
Other than my gravel trailer, I think you could place any of the straight trucks & wagons around & it would fly. The trucks do not have to go to ‘full extension’ inside, as long as they have a shovel boy or two… (Yeah did that…) Also, as another poster put it, I guess that was the predecessor to the ‘Mart’ gas stations, where I now see most of the town folk these days!
Farmers on the Canadian prairies all have (or had) 3 or 5 ton trucks to haul grain usually wheat, oats, canola etc. Some have dump beds, some not, and here there is a big difference between an “elevator” and a “terminal” a lot of the old prairie elevators are now replaced with larger terminals that are farther apart, this facilitates larger semi-trailer trucks with usually enclosed tops or they hire truckers with big rigs.
The Chevy is a classic design. Not as pretty but also very popular are, in particular, 80’s chevy commercial trucks. If I recall 8500 series. As for types of grain haul, I grew up in small town farm country are and now reside in big city life. So all I really see now are the 2-hopper, solid frame trailers. Now back to where I actually grew up I mostly saw tractors hauling single hopper trailers, once in a while catch a rig out in the middle of a field loading up. Few towns over about 15 miles up the road was a rather large cannery, so also regularly seen gondola trailers to haul in load of whole corn cobs, still in the ears fresh off the stalk. Some where rigid frame and had to be dumped on an elevating ramp, some had dump frames and could self unload. They were dumped into pits, conveyed into large piles, then pushed into more pits and conveyors to finally get it to processing. At one point the company used bulldozers I also remember them using wheeled front loaders. Was always kind of neat to see a dozer along the lines of an old, 70’s to 80’s, Cat D6 on top of a 30’ plateau of still smelly corn husks pushing them around to make the plateau even larger.
Now back to ideas, do you really need the covered bays? The grain elevator inside the old (former) wye at Green Bay & Westerns old yard as no covered loading for rail cars. As far as I know it still is used. Just down the highway is a small (okay SMALL) grain handling facility. The only building on site there is a wood shack about the size of a large ice fishing shanty. My guess is the shanty is to keep the controls for the grain elevator and grain dryer. The operation is all by truck, and the pit is in the ground. I haven’t gotten any close ups because there are no signs to tell if it’s a business, but with only one small shack I would guess it is a private ownership deal. Where I grew up, and where my parents live now, is also a grain elevator. Everytime I go there I go by it. It does not have a covered rail loading, but I think the trucks do un
