Reversal at Gavilon

After getting one of the spherical tanks and the two loading platforms assembled then making the mockups of the hopper unloading facility, I could see that it might be better to reverse the purpose of the two sidings.

The hopper unloading buildings actually fits better at the end of the track.  With only the tank car unloading platforms on the other siding, this leaves me more room for the spherical tanks and a small pump house.  

While the big tanks probably would NOT have been built this close to the tracks, one has to deal with compression.

After getting things rearranged, I had to try it out.  I found out that with the hoppers at the end of track, and following FRA rules of not having the locos coupled directly to a tank car, I will have to have the cars blocked at El Dorado so that there will be hoppers (or a buffer car) on the head of the train that I can use to work the tank car siding if there are no hoppers called to be set out that day. Otherwise if there are hoppers to be picked up, they can be worked first.

Let's take a look at how the local handels this new job?  I used the max amount of cars (2 hoppers and 2 tanks) to see how things fit.

After the Haskell Turn pulls into the siding at Haskell it uncouples the new cars and pulls forward then reverses onto the new Shoofly.

First thing is to switch out the tanks cars.

Next comes the hoppers.  First they set out the tank cars on the old main and swap the hoppers, then recouple..........Glad they left the old main intact.

With this done, they head back to Haskell siding and place the cars on what will be the rear of the train when they leave for El Dorado.

This looks like it could a fun and simple operation! 

Gavilon Fertilizer LLC. takes shape.

After getting the basic trackwork laid out, I needed to figure out where to install the two sidings.  So this past weekend I started working on the two tank car loading platforms, then got started making some mockups of the hopper unloading shed and storage bins.

Here's an overall view of the area.

I made a few blocks of wood for the hopper unloading station and elevator along with four 1" PVC tubes for the storage bins.  The shorter block will also have a corrugated lean-to shed to keep the material dry while unloading it.  But I'm still debating what I'll do for the actual elevator?

I really like the Tomix kits even though most of the time their details are a little oversized.  But it's nothing a little Evergreen sheet stock can't take care of.  I made the new roof panels a bit larger and added a second section that overhung the tracks a bit further.

Their railing are also a bit oversized so I snipped off the top railing which helped the appearance.

On the back side of the platform they give you a support for piping which lined up over the top of the railing, so I cut a section out to make it line up under the platform.

I got them painted and temporarily set them in place along with one of the spherical tanks to get a feeling of space needed and location of the siding.

Where the yellow squares of paper are I plan to use the Pikestuff  Milton A. Corp kit.  I bought this originally to use for the Crushmoore Co. building in Malvern, but it turned out to be too small for what I wanted.  Hopefully it'll be a better fit here?

Gavilon Fertilizer LLC.

At least that's what I'm calling it for now.

The history of this plant is as follows.

The road that served the plant was a branch line or short line which shut down or abandoned the line leaving the plant without rail service.  Rock Island was asked to build a shoofly so rail service could continue.

The real reason it's being installed was to equalize the operating time of the Haskell Turn and Winnfield Turn.  The time it takes to work the Winnfield Turn (El Dorado to Winnfield to El Dorado) is much longer than the time needed to complete the work of the Haskell Turn (El Dorado to Haskell to El Dorado).

This weekend I found enough time to start ripping things up so I could start the work on the fertilizer plant.  Wasn't sure how much room I had to work with nor do I know how big the plant will be when finished.  

I managed to get the cork and track relaid on the sections that I could.  This being the second Haskell siding and the Shoofly  leading into the new plant.  

After that I got the cork tacked into position to get a feel of the room I had to play with, then tacked down a few sections of track.

You can see that I also reworked the south end of Haskell siding by removing the two #6 turnouts and replaced them with one #8.  I also decided to remove the short spur that was for Ghuntz Implements.

Next I need to determine the footprint of the plant as well as the size of the buildings.  Since I have nothing special in mind for the main plant building (where the hoppers will unload) I can't install that spur yet, but I do have what is needed for the tank loading spur.  I picked these up awhile back when I decided to include the fertilizer plant on the layout.

I have four of the spherical tanks and two of the loading platforms.  I was surprised tonight when I  opened the platform box and found there are actually two platforms in this box.  Since I can't read Japanese I wasn't sure if there was one platform with two options or two with one of each.  What you see on the box IS what you get: two platforms and one truck loading ramp.  Now I have four...

So the next thing on my list will be to get some of the kits roughed in so I can get a feel of the size and how many I can fit in the area.

South side complete!

As of this afternoon, I have completed everything in regards to the trackwork on the south side of the layout.  That would be from El Dorado to Winnfield.

As I mentioned in a coupler posts back, I wanted to reduce the ICG trackage to a single track.  My original plan was to have the ICG crew return to the siding and then have them run around the train so it was ready for the next session and to add to the ops of this crew.

Now after several sessions, we've decided to change the staging to where everything gets restaged, and this includes the ICG.  So we've just been returning it to the siding and tying it down.  I' also shortened the siding thereby allowing my to hide it a bit easier and it also gives me a bit more depth behind the yard lead.

So I went from this:

To this.

I also mentioned that I wanted to a new customer in Ruston.   After doing a little proto research a few weeks back I found out that the Rock would drop off open hoppers filled with agricultural limestone for the local fields.  It would then unloaded via portable augers into trucks.  So with one of the turnouts from the ICG siding, I installed a house track at Ruston.

A little later I caught the 4464 in charge of a very short Winnfield turn sitting out a hopper on the new track.  This should be a very rare sight during op sessions as from what I gathered in an article, this was not very common on the prototype.

With this done today, the realignment project on the south side of the layout is now complete. 

The next projects.  I'll return to the north side of the layout where I plan to redo the Riceland trackage, move a turnout in Fordyce and start laying out the new fertilizer plant in Haskell.