As I start to work on scenery for the Slate Creek, I’m faced with having to have some kind of better idea about ore loading, in order to plan out where the tracks will be, and how much space between the hills I’m going to need.
Most of the car loaders/unloaders I’ve seen are either too small … meaning guys with shovels, mule wagons, or in the modern era, a specially adapted backhoe… or way too large, taking up a small zip code, and designed for 1000’s of cars at once.
What I need is a “just right” sized prototype to “adapt” to the Slate Creek’s mine siding that has a receiver for mine cars to dump into, and some kind of discharge to load all these nice Bachmann hoppers I’ve got … it’s probably going to look something like a coaling tower, I’d guess, but I need sometihng that’d make sense for loading 10-20 cars at a time (capacitywise… one at a time is fine for the actual discharge!) I’d also be open to a trestle dump for mine tippers dumping directly into a waiting train … but I’d almost rather have a bin and loader, as I have an 8x8 beam to conceal, and see some switching ops possibilities for switching empties through the loader and onto the “ready track”
Just some discussion on the idea would be great, but anyone with photos please show me too!
Matthew (OV)
gotcha!
