Anyone have any leads on where I could pick up one (or two) of Walther’s Valley Cement Plants (933-3098)? Perhaps someone may have one lying around that they’d like to unload? I checked Ebay = no dice.
I’m stockpiling kits/structures/equipment and info for a cement plant, so if anyone has ever modeled a cement plant (Valley Cement or otherwise) and feels inclined to post a few pictures, or share some info on what they did, I’d appreciate the ideas and references.
I’ve already picked up Trackside Industries 3, and I have a pretty good grasp on what’s required in regards to the manufacturing process, I’m just curious as to what my peers have done before me. Inspiration…I guess.
I’m not sure about where to get that kit from. But I did a search for cement in the prototype forum, and found a lot of discussions about cement plants. here
In general, everything on Trainworld’s web site is in stock. They are not a re-shipper.
They are in New York, and I live in the burbs of Boston. My typical Trainworld experience is to order at dinnertime on Wednesday and have the trains at my house the next day. And, all I pay for is the lowest-price UPS shipping.
I built the Valley Cement for our club layout at Boothbay Railway Village. It’s a big kit and took some time to do all of the buildings. I added the Golden Valley Canning plant to be the cement bagging plant and a couple of DPM buildings to be the Administratin and Maintenance buildings. I did add the motorizing kit to run the rotary kiln, but we do not run it much because the rotation rate is very slow. I also added a 500,000 gallon fuel tank to provide fuel fo rthe kiln - typical fuels could be #6 fuel oil, coal or natural gas, depending on what is common in the area you are modeling.
The problem I had was with the design of the kit. It is a large rail served industry, but has no way to deliver raw materials to the Aggregete Building by rail. Perhaps the assumption is limestone comes from a quarry on a conveyor; however, there are other materials for the aggrate that still would come by rail. I took care of this by installing the loading shed from the silos and putting it on the aggrate building. Then I cut a hole in the bottom of one of the silos for a drive through loading area for covered hoppers. In retrospect, this was a lot of work and limited the size of the car that could go through the hole. If I was going to do it again, I would scratch build an unloading shed from styrene, install it on the aggrate building, and keep the loading shed on the side of the silos as designed.
The plans are not clear where the stack should be installed. The rotary kiln works on a counterflow principle. Aggregate enters at the high end of the kiln and rolls to the lower end into the next building where it is cooled and ground to a powder. This building also contains a furnace where the fuel is ignited, hot gasses enter the low end to the kiln, and exit the high end of the kiln. So the stack should be next to the building at the high end of the kiln. A nice touch are blinking red lights at the top of the stack for aircraft warning. I did
The buildings took most of the winter a couple of years ago and the concrete for the yard took some time also (our group meets every Thursday). I have gone on to some other projects, but there are still some details to finish like a peremiter fence, employee parking and more people around the plant.
The tank is a 500,000 gallon Walthers kit, perhaps oversize but a cement kiln uses a lot of fuel as well. It was either that or scratch building a coal handling facility which we did not want to do.
Yeah, I have three of Soeborg’s books. His plant is impressive, although, by his own admission, it’s not exactly prototypical. He said something along the lines of trying to capture the overall feel of a cement plant, but didn’t really go to any painstaking measures to verify all the details.
Still, it’s very nice…par for the course for Pelle. [(-D]