I’m planning on putting a sand & gravel dealer on my layout. Would I be plausible in converting the coal silos into a sand & gravel storage?
Absolutely!
Often times the coal dealer wore many hats. The coal business got pretty slow during the summer months.
I have an old thermometer in my kitchen from D. J. Zeiser, Fredonia, N.Y. listing Coal, Ice, Bottle Gas, Trucking and Appliances. It wouldn’t be a far stretch to see a (former) coal dealer handling stone, sand and gravel. Pretty much the same equipment to handle it.
On my layout, the former Golden Flame [edit: O. L. King] Coal yard is now a scrap dealer. As more homes used oil and natural gas as fuel after the War the coal dealers had to diversify or face going out of business.
Have fun, post some photos… Ed
I think it would work; however I think Walthers’ Medusa Cement would be a better choice…at least, it looks more like Model Stone Co, a railroad served gravel / sand business about a mile down the track from where I grew up.
The sand and gravel dealers around here don’t look anything much like golden flame. The overhead bins look more like hoppers than silos, there are lots of conveyers and material is stored on the ground.
Do a Google image search for sand and gravel dealers.
RT
I’ve never seen the silos turned into non-coal storage before. I don’t think the bucket crane system is very efficient compared to other methods. What I have seen, is the trestle-style coal dock turned into bays for stone and gravel.
I agree that coal dealers branched out into other products, oil, gas and other products, as coal use deminished. Doubt they would have used silos such as those to store anything not needing to be protected from the weather. They might still be there, if they still sold some coal, but if not, they would probably have been removed to reduce taxes.
Have fun,
Richard
What era is the OP’s layout set?
If the era is when the change-over to Natural Gas/Heating Oil/Electric (etc) was really starting to occur (around NY I would think post WWII - definitely 1950s), maybe he could justify a transition period of the business using the silos while preparing to build sand/aggregate/concrete hoppers like these (logo image). Then again, how much of a pain would it be to fully clean out the coal dust from those silos to prevent contamination of the sand, cement and gravel? (And…couldn’t the gravel/aggregate just be put in large piles on the group? Wouldn’t need to tarp it even.
If you abolutely must have former coal silos…perhaps you can get creative…
Those silos could be used but,what about the coal dust?
For several years/decades those silos was used for storing coal so,theres bound to be a thick layer of coal dust on the inside walls.
Would removing the coal dust be cost prohibited?
Sorry that I didn’t get back right away. It’s been extremely crazy the last few weeks.I meant that they would be built as sand and gravel silos. I’m modeling a late 1970’s short line in an urban setting. I’m figuring that space was at a premium in the city of Port Able, so silos would be an option. I’m sorry for the confusion. I meant converting the model to sand and gravel. I would be putting an IHC ready mix plant next to it.
Yes,those silos could be used for sand and gravel…My thoughts would be that the industry has been around for decades and still uses rail.
Excellect idea on using a kit for another type of industry then it was intended for.As long as I been doing that I should have seen that a country mile away…Shame on me.
Hello All,
Oh…you mean kitbashing to make a sand and gravel facility. I think that wold be a great project!
Thanks for the clarification.
In considering your original post, I remembered a photo on page 72 of The Model Railroader’s Guide To Locomotive Servicing Terminals; Marty McGuirk, 2002 Kalnbach Publishing Co. It shows a cement coaling tower with a diesel engine pulling through it with the caption, “Some steam-eara relics lasted well into the diesel era. Large concrete coaling towers were often converted to sanding towers or simply left in place towering over the diesels…”
So re-purposing a coaling tower to a sand facility has been done with the prototype.
I’ve also seen a cement-silo kit re-purposed to an ammonium-nitrate facility used in coal production.
Hope this helps.
Slight difference, JJ.
The old coaling stations (SP had one in Tucson clear into the '80s) already had sand tanks and plumbing to store and issue locomotive sand. The main bunkers weren’t sand-loaded.
OTOH, there’s the old business maxim, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I could easily imagine a local coal dealer with solidly-built coal silos re-purposing them to store aggregates when the anthracite business faded away. After all, filling a dump truck is pretty much the same whether the load is coal, sand or septic field rock. And that small-bucket lift will work just fine for rock products that aren’t mostly carbon.
If the business grew, later bunkers might be added to, but wouldn’t necessarily supplant, the old silos.
Many decades ago there was a construction article in MR for the Consolidated Rock Products Los Nietos (CA) bunker. It wasn’t a silo set, but it was remarkably similar to a local Blue Coal distributor in Da Bronx.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
It’s your layout, so you can do anything you want. But it won’t be realistic.
That kind of silo wouldn’t be built new for sand or gravel. I’ve seen lots of aggregate dealers around the US, none looked like goldenflame. For one thing, sand stored like that would need to be dried first, an expense that couldn’t be justified. It would also be set up differently to load out.
RT
I guess I could model the silos as gravel silos with the sand & cement silos off layout. I plan on putting a ready mix plant by the silos.
That was Oct and Nov 1954. A unique aggregate structure, but not concrete silos and nothing like golden flame. Here’s the prototype
But it appears that the OP already has the goldenflame kit and wants to use it no matter what
RT
[ user=“tomikawaTT”]Many decades ago there was a construction article in MR for the Consolidated Rock Products Los Nietos (CA) bunker. It wasn’t a silo set, but it was remarkably similar to a local Blue Coal distributor in Da Bronx.
[/quote]
Mike,Do as you wish but,I would still use them as sand and gravel…You see over the past 100 years such sand and gravel silos may have been the norm and I suspect there are still examples being used today in a small city or perhaps in country town…
That’s just not correct, Brakie. Posting the same inaccurate information over and over doesn’t make it true. I’ve noted this in your threads on another forum.
The OP can do whatever he wants, but that doesn’t mean it’s realistic.
I did a Google search for “sand & gravel storage” Hoffman Inc. makes reinforced concrete silos for sand and gravel - used by the mining and concrete industries.
For some reason, I’m unable to reply directly to Mike’s posts.
Walthers makes a kit marketed as a modern aggregate storage facility. Of course, it uses tooling from several other kits so its accuracy may not be exact, but I assume there is some prototypical basis for it.
You could modify the golden flame kit to be something similar.
The question for me is…what’s the point of storing aggregate in a silo rather than just piling it on the ground? Maybe its to automate the process as much as possible and to avoid paying somebody to drive a loader?
I have to admit that I didn’t know where all the discussion about silos came from then I realized that the kit I was mistakenly thinking of when I posted my reply was the O. L. King Coal yard.
https://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3015
This is what I had in mind and it is the one that I turned into a scrap dealer. Once I looked up Golden Flame then it jogged my feeble memory…
I would tend to agree that, at least in my experience, any of the sand & gravel yards I’ve been to are open bunks with no silos around. Not saying they don’t exist but I don’t recall ever seeing any.
Have Fun! Ed