Heartland Valley Santa Fe Railroad

This structure shows another aspect of the Heartland Valley Santa Fe as it services another tank car industry.

I am in the process of developing a Diesel Servicing Facility as previously mentioned in a prior post. The following pic is the design of the structure. The brick/concrete surfaces may not be produced but the structure itself will be of the design pictured.

The all-steel structure will be 72″ overall length by 24″ wide by 18″ high. The windows will be as shown. The roof is hinged to allow access to the inside. I will build “concept” sanding and fueling components that will reside inside in the area between the tracks.

The overall length allows for two MU’ed Dash 9’s or an AA E8/9 to be accommodated at one time.

The two-tracks are already in place as I previously wrote. After the final structure in completed I will post another picture for comparison to this design.

December 29, 2007
Below are the first pics of the servicing facility with all the steel work completed. My friend and fellow Ozark Garden Railway Society member, Dennis Rayon, did all the steel work. I can only say the experience was a highlight in my railroad journey!

I had submitted my design ideas to Dennis back on November 20th. Dennis then turned to his CAD software and put the design into a working drawing. It was almost beyond belief to watch Dennis take a scrap piece of steel, turn on his plasma cutting machine and under control of the CAD software “cut” out one end and one side piece of this structure, including all the windows and end openings, in a tad under 7 minutes!

After all the pieces were cut and slag-deburred, Dennis welded all the units together including two internal braces, one center arch support and the roof support chain channels.

Next he turned to the roof. Dennis had cut the roof and made the curve as shown in the drawing. He cut four arch supports, created under CAD, and cut those units out of 1/8″ steel. The final assembly of the roof was to locate the position for the arch supports and weld them into place. Pic #3 shows the completed roof.

First pic shows steel framing underway:

Second pic showing roof test fit:

Third pic showing completed structure:

February 7. 2008
We had a warm day and I managed to get the roof coated with “pick-up bed coating". The unit is primed and ready to apply the plastic brick work. That is the next part of the project. First the panels ( and windows) have to be primed and painted. I will show that in another pic. The following pic shows the unit now primed and roof coated.

April 8, 2008
Here is the finished Engine service Facility sans internal operating detail ready for placement in the dirt. There are three pics but I am only showing two. The first is a longitudinal view:

This is an end-on view:

April 10,2008
Here is the finished Service Facility (without internal operations) now installed on the layout.

Another view:

Looking through the “Facility":

Final Shot before the engines arrive!:

Pictures of the “Facility” after engine arrivals:

Here are two additional pics after sanding and diesel fueling details were added.

and;

This structure is composed of six various sizes of PVC joints glued together and connected.
Here I try to focus on the workers platform. The total length is 51″L x 19″H x 9-1/2″W.
The workers platform is built of aluminum and is tank car high. I leave the unit out all year long.
Here is a pic showing just the tanks and the loading platform.

Clark Freight Company

This is a small structure intended to depict a simple freight station. It accomodates one 53′ Evans box car with some truck loading docks on the opposite side.

The structure is built of PVC peg board covered with Precision Products plastic and painted. This structure measures 25″ L x 13″ W x 16″ H.
Clark Freight Company

MidWest Grain Elevator

This is my largest structure on the Heartland Valley Santa Fe Railroad. (And I want to acknowledge Marty Cozad for his initial input that led to this structure.)

This elevator is fully composed of PVC materials. The silo tubes are 4”wide x 44”high grouped in two rows of 6 silos. The two unattached silos are 6”x 24”. The machinery side is also of PVC and is 11”wide x 48” high.

The two chutes add another 21” to the overall width of the machinery structure. The smaller chute is for the unloading of grain trucks while the larger chute is for the loading of the covered hopper cars. The overall length of the elevator, not counting the stand-alone silos, is 46”.

The elevator roof is PVC with corrugated aluminum added. Two solar cells were added to supply lights inside the structure for night effects.
The total structure weighs in excess of 45 lbs and is very stable in the strong wind gusts known to occur here.

Here are two pics of the elevator. The first emphasizes the side showing the grain truck unloading chute:

This second pic shows the elevator from the hopper car loading chute: