Over the past few days, I have been drawing to scale the Ottawa Silica plant to see how feasible it would be to model it. I must say, it's pretty darn big! The ground sand plant is 3 feet long in N scale. The filter/sizing plant is 2 1/2 feet long. If modeled, I would have four tracks with a capacity of 25 cars each. Empties would be spotted on the south end of the plant and "moved" by conveyor chains to the north end of the plant when loaded. I would then require 8 box car spots for the loading of bagged sand. Add in a few other spots for miscellaneous machinery, tools, mining equipment, etc. and this one industry will consume nearly 115 cars! That's a monster! Originally, I thought it would all fit within an 8ft sheet of plywood, but after laying it out on the table this morning, I don't think so. I think you would need 10ft if you included the yard ladders on both ends. It could fit in a room size of the current layout, but it would tight. It would probably have to be scaled down a little though.
Here are scale drawings of the four main buildings of the Ottawa Silica Plant.
As much as I would love to create the ROCK v2.0 to prototypically model the ROCK, I don't think it's feasible to tear down the existing layout. I'm greatly disappointed, but it would be a waste. Now, if we ever move, all bets are off! The ROCK v2.0 will be built!!
No comments:
Post a Comment