I have purchsed Walthers ADM Elevator and plan on adding an additional 16-20 silo’s to one side using PVC pipe. Has anyone else attempted this, have suggestions, other methods, etc.? How do I go about making the silo “cap” and head house if I do go the PVC route. I would love and pictures, ideas, or suggestions if you have tackled something like this. Thanks!
You might contact Walthers to see if they would sell you the additional parts you want. Or you might see if a full kit is available at a good price on ebay.
Somewhat along the lines that you are planning, I used the mill peices and head house from the same kit to make this. The silos with the kit didn’t fit what I wanted to do, so all these silos are made from pvc. I capped them off with styrene, and made the piping from sprue material, from the same kit.
I also made pellet silos for a plastic plant from pvc, but I can’t find the pitures.
Mike.
Depending on what you want your silo material to look like, there are options. You can paint the PVC pipe as-is for a poured concrete look (I did this for the Schlitz spent grains elevator on MR’s Beer Line project). You can add Archer rivet decals to make a riveted metal silo. You can wrap the PVC with thin textured styrene for different materials (I did this on my home layout for a concrete-block look, using cardboard tube and N Scale Architect block-textured styrene sheet). It’s doable.
I found the missing plastic plant silos, these are made from pvc pipe, styrene tops, railings made from wire, piping from sprues, and tank top details made from styrene, and walkways between tanks with Plano grating material.
Mike.
Mike,
Nice work! I especially like the grain terminal.
If you have the option of using ABS pipe instead, I’d suggest using it. There are some brands of solvent cement that will allow you to easily attach plain polystyrene to ABS. That could make construction a bit easier when adding caps and other things to the silos.
The silos at left here were inspired by an old MR article, from which I got the idea to use fender washers to cap the silos. As in the article, the washers were somewhat larger than the pipe diameter, requiring some grinding and filing make them fit. The headhouse was made from styrene sheet and strip.
The closer silos here are also ABS pipe, but these are capped with .060" styrene sheet. I traced the outline of the silos onto the sheet, allowing the thickness of the mechanical pencil to leave a space around each one, then cut to my line with a knife and snapped the scrap material off. I finished by filing and sanding the cut edges smooth, and trimming off any excess styrene that didn’t snap away with the rest. This process also took some time, but was less than messing with the metal washers. Plastruct solvent cement readily attached the styrene cap to the silos. The same styrene was used for the headhouse.
I used the Walthers ADM Elevator and the add-on siloes, along with their Red Wing Milling kit and a bunch of scratchbuilt parts to create GERN industries.
You can cap your PVC siloes by tracing out the shape on a sheet of .060" styrene, and use either the same material or Evergreen’s “Metal Siding” to create the headhouse. Most of the added portions of GERN were made from .060" sheet, while the storage tanks and roof-top water tank are cardboard tubes wrapped with .010" sheet styrene.
Wayne
One thing to keep in mind is that the cylinders in the Walthers kit overlap each other. If you add more silos with PVC, those cylinders won’t overlap unless you slice the sides off with a table or band saw.
In the pic below, you can see how they overlap.
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/2161/Walthers_Grain_Silo_assembly_005.jpg
Steve S
Lots of people have used PVC - in some ways it seems like a natural application to modeling buildings in HO - as long as you pick a size thats close to the scale used.
For what it’s worth, Walthers used to make an add-on kit for silo’s. They may still be available too if you want to mach what came with the kit. I have the ADM grain elevator I built and it did take some squadron green putty to get rid of the seams where the parts joined.
The addon for 933-3022 ADM elevator is 933-3023. However the addon is not in stock.
Is it possible use 933-2942 Modern Grain Head House with Silos as an extension for the ADM elevator?
Bill