Hey guys I am wanting to build a module with a cement plant on it. I want the Walthers Valley Cement kit 933-3098 but as you may know it is retired. Do any of you know where I could find this kit for a reasonable price? I know E-bay is one source but that is hit and miss for the price. One guy has the kit listed for $700 plus shipping [:O]
I want to try to aquire this kit for around $100 for NIB, if any of you have an idea please let me know.
Also there are other cement kits from Walthers that I would not mind either that are also retired. I have Medusa Cement so please do not suggest that one, I want the whole plant not just the silos
Have you tried the Yahoo group HOYardSale. You might find one that someone is willing to sell. I would also like this kit. Maybe Walthers will release it again.
Have you thought about combining the Medusa Cement co.kit with say Ashland iron and steel kit and Glacier gravel company kit to create a massive kit bash cement works. I mean you may have to scratch build some gear but hay its all part of the fun.
I have the Medusa Cement and I have already assembled it. I was thinking about doing something similar to your suggestion if I am unable to acquire the kit. I have been trying to find pictures online of Cement plants but most of the time I only get a small section and that is it. I need to install google Earth and try that way.
MRR had an awesome plant article in its May1998 edition. It was a scratch build of Consolidated Concrete, almost 7 feet long in HO. Twas very impressive.
Gidday, the article in the May 1998 Model Railroader, while a very good one, is actually on a concrete batching plant (ready mix), not a cement plant.
For cement plants; Model Railroader July 1963, “Some times you need a shoehorn” by Robert F Cushman describes, amongst other things, scale compressing the Cayuga Lake Cement Plant.
In the April 1995 Model Railroader, Walt Niehoff wrote an article “Kitbashing a Cement Company in HO scale” based on Robert F Cushmans article.
In the July 1994 Model Railroader, Ken Nelson wrote an article “Add a cement plant to your layout”.
There is also a good section on cement in “the Model Rairoader’s Guide to Industries along the tracks 3” by Jeff Wilson.
Railmodel Journal, February 1995, “Cement Plant Operations for Modellers: The Northwestern Portland Cement Co” by Ron Ferrel.
Railmodel Journal, May 1992, “The Portland Cement Co at Glenn Falls New York, Part 1”, Part 2 in May 1993.&
Ah yes… The “Madusa kit” being the batching plant. [oops]
Thanks for all the extra literature. I may have to get into the club library for those mags as I was subscribed to Australian model railways mag back then. All my Aussie gear has been since traded for SP rolling stock and locos.
In the past, I have done business with Advanced Model Railroad. They seem to have an inventory of discontinued stock. I checked their website and they appear to have one in stock.
The Medusa kit is simply a cement distribution facility. No production takes place there. There are small concrete ready mix plants in many small towns that receive all of their cement via truck. The Medusa facility takes cement from the hopper shed and conveys them to the top of the silos where they are stored. Trucks use the doors in the silos (which is a part of the Medusa kit) to load the cement by gravity, then take them to the small ready mix plants in the area. No cement is produced with the Medusa kit.
Since this is the way I assume the kit would function in the real world, I’m not sure that the Medusa kit is appropriate for use in a cement production facility.
I found one late last year at my LHS and I modified my some to fit in my space, leaving off the tumbler pipe thing and also mixed in the Black Gold asphalt plant with it. Since these photos were taken I have ballasted and added in heavy equipment and piles of gravel and sand.
I kitbashed a cement plant using various parts of several kits, including Walthers Medusa Cement, ADM elevator, New River mine and coal flood loader, plus components from a couple IHC and Heljan kits I had sitting around along wih some detail parts.
If you can get creative, the availability of a specific kit isn’t necessarily a big deal.
It’s not a perfect representation since it is based on the existing kit, but the idea is that the loading chute is inside the shed the hoppers pass through. Building a larger/taller shed would help with the effect, as would some external piping.
The facility in West Sacramento has been closed for several years. When in operation there were dozens of hoppers delivering cement. Dock was for barges. Don’t know the purpose. Could have been to bring in raw materials as you suggest or to ship product to other sites along the river. I believe it had not been used for masny years even when the plant was in operatiom.
Good points. At least a taller shed would help give that illusion. Fairly simply done with corrugated sheet styrene and using the portal ends as templates. Some spare sprues for piping perhaps.
My only reason for bringing up my somewhat anal observation was the prices that sellers are asking on the secondary market. I was in a LHS about 2009 where there was a Valley Cement kit on the shelf at the original MSRP of $55. I had no use for it at the time but was this close to buying it anyway. At MSRP, I can overlook the small omissions compared to what some secondary market sellers are asking.
Perhaps Walthers will put some effort into making the loading shed area a bit more realistic if they re-release the kit.
You might take a look at the Walthers grain elevator chutes / elevators or just make something from Evergreen or Plastruct tube for the loading tubing
I made this kit for the layout at Boothbay RR Village a few years ago, and had a number of issues with the “operability” of the kit.
The most important was the lack of rail delivery to the Aggreagte Building; the heavily reinforced concrete building on the left in MonkeyBucket’s post. I took the shed and lift conveyor (shortened) from the silos, and added it to the side of the aggregete building for rail delivery of aggregate that that does not come from the limestone quarry. I then made an opening in the bottom of the silos for track to go through the bottom of one side of the silo. This works to some extent, but clearances are tight, and only older style, small cement hoppers will fit through the opening. Plate C cars are a definite no go. If I was to do this again, I would keep the shed on the silo, make a delivery system from tubing, and scratch build a delivery shed on the aggregate building from Evergreen courrogated styrene sheet.
Another problem is there is no fuel supply or storage for the kiln; we got a Walthers fuel tank 933-3167 and assumed that the kiln uses #6 fuel oil. A more appropriate fuel would be coal, maybe something like Walthers Blue Coal (discontinued kit) would work for this.
The Valley Cement kit recommends adding a bagging plant using Golden Valley Canning, now retired and replaced by Imperial Foods 933-2852, a built-up kit. The platforms for Golden Valley Canning are molded as wood which seemed rather weak to me for a heavy product like cement. I scratch-built concrete loading docks for rail and truck shipping from styrene sheet. http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3018
I also scratch built an enclosed conveyor from the silos to the bagging building
That looks really good. The plant I rememebr from my childhood had a door for trucks to load under the silos but railcars were loaded via a tube conveyor. It sat ont he side of a hill and tracks came in on two levels, the upper level led on to an open trestle to dump coal and other materials.
You arrangment looks about the size of the space I have to work with - any idea what the overall dimensions there are? I may have to steal that arrangments of the parts, even though it’s not exactly how the plant I a atempting to model was arranged. I don;t have the room to build it the exact same way, it was far too long, with the kiln and silos in a row witht eh baghouse to the left, and the office was in the far back about midway between the silos and baghouse. Almost a mirror image of what you have there. Mine will be on a penninsula, and the front of the office would face the end of the pennisula, with the tracks leading on to the layout at the root of the pennisula.
