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.