Walthers Grain elevator kitbash finished

[cemr5396]

Avid SPF participants should remember this project I was working on a while back, here it is, finished and installed on the club layout with completed scenery as well. At the heart of it are two modified Walthers grain elevator kits (Valley Growers and Farmers Co-op) and your typical Walthers hopper bins. Pretty much everything else, including the top side (IN) and bottom side (OUT) drag conveyors for the bins, are all scratch built.













Here's a peek inside the driveway. Unlike many in the US, nearly all Canadian elevators had their scales inside the driveway, and often the dumping pit opening was right in the middle of it. No doubt this had something to do with our winters. The scale came from the Farmer's Co-op kit, I was using the raised driveway shed from the Valley Growers so I just cut a hole in it and installed the scale. Then, cut a hole in the middle for the dump pit. The grate on the pit is part of the walkway off a Walthers Mainline NSC 4550 hopper that I put a Plano walkway on. Leaning next on the wall is a sack and the trusty grain shovel, and on the other side of the alley is the ubiquitous 'empty barrel serving as a garbage can'.  The leg is hiding just around the corner, it is just barely visible from outside the door, at certain angles. Otherwise it can be seen from the back (along with the weigh hopper and the cleanout hatches for the bins inside) by looking through the door out to the tracks. (See my SPF posts for more)


Here is the chem shed, this is the one from the Farmers Co-op kit, reduced slightly in size because I needed a chunk out of the floor to make the alley inside the elevator. The platform on the front came from a collection of random 'bits' we found in a box under the layout, and I finished inside with a bunch of sacks on pallets (either seed or fertilizer) and assorted barrels of oil or whatnot.

[Mr. Trainiac]

pretty slick. Is this based on a prototype, or is it freelance for the layout?

The corrugated bins look pretty good cut down like that, it makes them look a bit stockier. I think the proportions are better that way, and it fits the space better without feeling too tall.

[sd40dash2]

This is epic, outstanding, very much 1980s-90s Pool before Agricore and metal siding. Back then painters used to go up with scaffolding to repaint the original wood siding. Not often you see a detailed driveway interior, just needs a sillouette pushing a broom.

Only things missing are a couple of lightning rods and their grounding wires, simple to add.

Exceptionally well done, take a bow!

[cemr5396]

Feb 2, 2024 20:20:29 GMT -8 Mr. Trainiac said:

pretty slick. Is this based on a prototype, or is it freelance for the layout?

uhhh.... both? I was originally just building it to have the right 'look' without basing it on any one elevator in particular, at the time I actually had the postitions of the bins and the elevator-turned-annex swapped. I wasn't even aware of an MPE elevator that featured both a converted annex and bins, I just figured it needed something else. I was even strongly considering using the balloon annex from the Valley Growers kit. But then I found this photo and plans changed:



So I swapped things around to match. Obviously the main difference is the tall head house on the real one, which I briefly considered building but then decided not to. At the end of the day the layout doesn't really have a specific setting, so a slightly generic version of a real structure was good enough for me. It's also part of the reason I didn't put a town name on it.

The corrugated bins look pretty good cut down like that, it makes them look a bit stockier. I think the proportions are better that way, and it fits the space better without feeling too tall.

I don't actually mind the bins as they are right out of the box, some elevators do have bins that are quite tall and narrow like that. I had one simple reason to shorten them - they were too tall for the elevator! Cutting them down and making sure they were still square at the top AND the exact same height as each other was a PITA though.... 

[cemr5396]

Feb 2, 2024 20:31:57 GMT -8 sd40dash2 said:

This is epic, outstanding, very much 1980s-90s Pool before Agricore and metal siding. Back then painters used to go up with scaffolding to repaint the original wood siding. Not often you see a detailed driveway interior, just needs a sillouette pushing a broom.

Only things missing are a couple of lightning rods and their grounding wires, simple to add.

Exceptionally well done, take a bow!

Thank you.

If I was building it for my layout, it would have likely gotten Agricore United signage, but, MPE is more era flexible for the club layout. There will be CP SD40-2s, green CN GMD-1s, and everything in between spotting cars at this elevator.

Lightning rods is an interesting idea, not sure how well it would scale or what to use to represent them. They are so small compared to the sheer size of an elevator in real life you almost never even notice them - they just disappear into the sky. 

I also left off the guardrail around the upper conveyor and catwalk for similar reasons, I had gone as far as installing and painting Plastruct railings and actually went back and removed them because it didn't look right. Those railings are pretty fine but still significantly larger than the real ones, they stood out too much. It looks better without them.

[lvrr325]

Looks really good. Would be recognizable as the prototype even though it has a few compromises.

Which sometimes you have to do. Years ago I scratchbuilt a model of a station based on the drawings, got the shell built and roof on it and then discovered there's no match for a couple of the windows. I should have looked for something close enough and cut the openings for them instead. Nobody but me would know the difference without a photo side by side with the model.

[marknycfan]

110%, very well done!

[wagnersteve]

2/3/2024, starting 10:07 a.m., EST

Brad, wonderful modeling!

It brings back memories of my family of origin's third visit to Canada, in the summer of 1964. We left the USA at International Falls, MN, went to Whiteshell Provincial Park, then Winnipeg -- the last big city we saw until Vancouver, BC -- then northwest to Riding Mountain National Park, then westwards from there until we got to the Rockies at Jasper National Park. To do that we went long distances on gravel roads. The national park where we camped in Saskatchewan was Prince Albert, far enough north that in July the sun didn't set until 10 p.m. or later. At that time the back of Canada's one or two dollar bill showed a grain elevator or two next to a railroad track and road streak stretching straght to another elevator at the horizon. We saw many scenes like that, with, as I recall, about five mile between the elevators. The ones we saw were, I think, entirely wooden. Many smaller railroad structures were sided with imitation brick. I think most of the grain cars then in use on the lines we parallel were still 40' boxcars, some of them possibly still wood-sided.

[cemr5396]

Feb 3, 2024 7:16:34 GMT -8 wagnersteve said:

2/3/2024, starting 10:07 a.m., EST

Brad, wonderful modeling!

It brings back memories of my family of origin's third visit to Canada, in the summer of 1964. We left the USA at International Falls, MN, went to Whiteshell Provincial Park, then Winnipeg -- the last big city we saw until Vancouver, BC -- then northwest to Riding Mountain National Park, then westwards from there until we got to the Rockies at Jasper National Park. To do that we went long distances on gravel roads. The national park where we camped in Saskatchewan was Prince Albert, far enough north that in July the sun didn't set until 10 p.m. or later. At that time the back of Canada's one or two dollar bill showed a grain elevator or two next to a railroad track and road streak stretching straght to another elevator at the horizon. We saw many scenes like that, with, as I recall, about five mile between the elevators. The ones we saw were, I think, entirely wooden. Many smaller railroad structures were sided with imitation brick. I think most of the grain cars then in use on the lines we parallel were still 40' boxcars, some of them possibly still wood-sided.

Thank you, great story!

Yes, back in 1964 all of the elevators you saw would have been wooden. I think at that point in time the galvanized steel bins were just starting to show up but they weren't very common yet. And back then they were often flat botttomed, which means when the bin was empty someone would have to go in with a shovel to clean out what remained. Towns (and their associated elevators) were usually between 5 and 10 miles apart (but occasionally even less!) on most of the Prairie branch lines. One branch line that passed through the area I grew up was originally 119 miles in length when it was built, and had 24 towns along it, all of which had at least one elevator. The line still exists, but now is only 50 miles long, and only one wooden elevator remains standing on that stretch. 

Your recollection about the grain cars being predominantly boxcars is also correct, and I would go as far as to say there were likely no covered hoppers being used at all. In 1964 in Canada the only covered hoppers CN or CP had were the 'slabside' hopper (made by True Line Trains and now Atlas) in its several iterations and the semi-cylindrical 'tank hoppers' that came after them. However there were not that many of them and at the time they were not used for grain, typically hauling cement, potash, lime, and other such things. None of the elevators at the time were set up to load hopper cars anyway, and many lightly used branchlines were abandoned in the 70s and later having never seen a covered hopper on their rails. Covered hoppers did not become common in grain service until the mid 1970s, when the famous 4550 cu.ft. cylindrical 'Government Cars' appeared in large numbers. However those cars could not travel on some branchlines due to their weight, the 100 ton cars being to heavy for the existing track and roadbed. Many branchlines were restricted to 40' boxcars and lightweight 4-axle locomotives for their entire existence. The last 'boxcars only' branches were not abandoned until the fall of 1996, when the government subsidies that were basically keeping them on life support were ended. Once the boxcars hauled out the last loads of grain after the harvest that fall, they went directly from the ports where they were unloaded to the scrapper. The elevators had all been closed as soon as grain shipments concluded, and the rails were lifted on those lines the next summer.

[wagnersteve]

2/3/24, starting 11:07 a.m., EST

Brad, I'm glad you liked my recollections and confirmed many of them. My chief modeling interest in HO is the Delaware & Hudson, followed by the Boston & Maine. But I also have a fair number of Canadian models. My two locos made by Rapido Trains are a GMD-1 in the old paint scheme I think of as "olive and mustard" -- I saw plenty of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, though I think mostly in the newer scheme with the CN "noodle"; and an FPA, also in its as built scheme. I have enough older Canadian freight cars to run a plausible freight train, plus many CN passenger cars, all but one in the older mostly green and black livery, and a few CP cars and passenger cars, mostly in pre-CP Rail paint schemes, plus lots of freight cars for CN, CP and some other Canadian railways, many of which I've seen in Mass. and upstate New York in recent decades. I've been in every Canadian province except Newfoundland & Labrador, but none of the Territories, let alone Nunavut. If and when my wife is able to travel again, I'm hoping to get back to Canada with her again.

[cp6027]

That's an awesome MPE elevator build!

The flared siding "skirt" around the foundation is a signature item for Canadian prairie elevators that often gets overlooked on models. Nicely done along with the driveway mods. The trackside fall protection wire is also a nice modern detail.

[kentuckysouthernrwy]

Feb 3, 2024 6:33:28 GMT -8 marknycfan said:

110%, very well done!

111% agreed

[riogrande]

Very nice!