I just bought the Walthers Cornerstone Sand House and Drying Facility. Does anyone know of a precast or formed sand load for the drying bin? If all else fails I can make one.
I made one for mine out of some sand left over from the garden.
Most masonry sands are a bit too coarse to actually scale. Silica sand is closer to the fine grain, but too light or even white. The bulk of the shape can be done with carved foam, plaster etc. This can be topped with WS fine sand or appropriate colored ballast/ sand.
Many facilities used buried piping, but not always the case. In one instance for our engine facility, we actually need a height restrictor at the ash conveyer track usually ocupied by a gon. The discharge chute is low enough that a box car will take it out. At this point I plan to cross the lead to the conveyer with an elevated pipe from the sand storage to the sanding track. Get to add some nice detail and save the Fairbanks/ Morse conveyer.
Ceramic tile grouts (sanded) also work excellent for some of these projects. Other variations of the wall grout(non sanded) is available in many colors and works good as a base product for clay, dirt and gravel roads. Mix w/ other scenery materials and experimentation of techniques gives you many options and uses.
Hi!
I made a form of fibreglass screen and bits of wood and covered with plaster (just like making mountains) and then painted a sand color. When dry, I covered with white glue and sprinkled on some fine textured sand colored dried foam. It actually came out pretty nice, and obviously it was custom made for the job at hand.
One comment on color… After 53 years of model making and model railroading, the question of "what is the proper color for dirt (or concrete, or grass, or bare wood, or sky or coal or sand) has cropped up many times. There are many answers to this question (IMHO), but I believe that whatever color looks right to you is as good a solution as you will find.
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
I cut a piece of pink foam and put in the bottom and then put some sand over top and glued it in place.
I did the samething Jeff did, I thought it turned out good.
I used a very fine-grained sand sifted from a local source. Another possibility is aquarium sand.
Thanks for the replies. I finally took a piece of styrene and glue it in. I made it appear that it was deeper at one end than the other, and used some really fine ballast. I’ll post pics when I get the holding bin done.
Those blocks of florist foam are good for making load bases. (not the styro-foam ones) They cut and sand to shape real easy and you can just spray paint them the right color and they look like coal or ore or sand.
I used extreme, super-fine, light-colored sand that I picked up at Michael’s. There’s some located in the florist section. But there’s also some in the craft section. (Same stuff - about 1/2 the price.) Anyway, I think I paid ~$1.50 for a 8 oz. or 16 oz bag.
I, too, made it heavier at the far end of the container bin; opposite the entry door. It’s very convincing, as it looks like someone has been shoveling on that end. I also have a gondola sitting in front of the bin (with the same material in it), waiting to be unloaded.
Tom
Tom, Did you make that gon load removable? that stuff from Michael’s sounds like it would make good sand loads for hoppers as well.
Bob,
Yea, it looks and works really well. It also gives the cars a good and balanced weight to them. Like the Drying house sand bin, I didn’t make the load removable. I just poured it right into the gondola and “shaped” (peaked) it with a very thin piece of stiff cardstock. (Mine’s a packaging label from a Details West product.)
Obviously, the downside to “non-removable” loads is the potential of spilling onto the layout - either by bumping it or from an accidental derailment. However, I think that they tend to look more realistic. I have my hopper coal loads the same way. And I use both the mine and (coarser) lump coal separately for loads, for variety. Makes for a nice visual difference - even in the same coal drag.
Tom