I saw some Kits in the internet but i can 't understant the differences between them.
I was raised in Montana grain growing country. My take on the difference is this. An elevator is a single buyer located near the source of the grain,namely the farmers feilds. A grain depot would be a larger facility usually but not always with those big concrete silos in clusters and who collects grain from affiliated elevators. Example the elevators are located in small towns and when they can fill a unit of hoppers they then ship to a depot in the big city. There are of course variations on this.
“Elevator” is the more generic term, which could apply to elevators small and large. The local one that collects from nearby farmers by wagon (the old days) or truck (now) is often called a “country elevator”.
On the other end of the scale is the “grain terminal”, “export elevator,” or “terminal elevator.” Here is one that stood at the Port of Galveston from 1931 to 2003. 1991 photo taken from passing passenger train:
The export elevator may have a tall “head house”, the actual elevator where grain is lifted. Then conveyors carry the grain to a battery of silos. Some export elevators hold over 5 million bushels at one time, unloading 100- 130 railcars per day, and loading shiploads out.
I would not be surprised if the terms used by kit manufacturers are not too exacting…
I will own up that I don’t recall ever having encountered the term “grain depot” before. I think reklein gave the proper definition while leighant hit a more common terminology.
By the way, thanks for this topic; in these few short answers it has been quite informative.
Leighant is correct about the grain terminals. They are found in places like Galveston ,Seattle,and Churchill Canada. The terminals wood be a great subject to model if one has a lot of space. somethin like an ore loading facility,or a steel plant. For the operators there would be lots of loads in and empties out.
A lot of grain terminals were located at ports so they can be loaded on ships, there were inland terminals, in Canada I believe the government ran many of them and many are still in use, now on the prairies (above Montana) with so many smaller “elevators” being dismantled larger “depots” or inland terminals are being built, usually along a major rail line, this means longer distances to ship grain either by train or truck. in Saskatchewan grain (wheat,etc) is hauled in massive double semi’s and they smash the roads beyond belief, it’s so bad in some areas they simply grind up whats left of the asphalt and turn it into a gravel road.