Bottineau Farmers Elevator complex


RCH

RCH

Been Nothin' Since Frisco
Here are some photos I took of the Bottineau Farmers Elevator complex in Bottineau, North Dakota. In addition to the modules I'm building depicting part of Fort Worth, Texas, I'm also building modules depicting this area. When I have time to make drawings of these structures, I can post them online, but it's a pretty tall order since there's so much information to distill. But in the meantime, anyone is free to use these images for reference purposes since they are typical of small town agricultural facilities.

http://www.pbase.com/mecrharris/botno_proto_2005&page=all
 
Ryan

I am impressed. You captured almost (All) of the details and even it seems you have shots of how a scene may look on the model. Nice work.
 
Thanks for the compliment, David.

I have the benefit of having many of the full-size architect, engineering and electrical plans for the larger structures, so some photos don't really need to cover certain aspects, details or the full scope of several of the structures. I also have an aerial photo of the town as well as the town plat put together by the county surveyor, so once all the information is put together, I can effectively model the town.

Incidentally, my Grandpa was mayor of Bottineau, North Dakota, so the little name dropping I've done has gone a long way outside of the elevator employees. I constructed a model of the fertilizer plant several years ago and displayed it for about two years at the main office, so those guys pretty much give me carte blanche when it comes to taking photos. If I had more time this past summer, I could have taken up an invitation from one of the employees to go to the top to take photos. Now that would be some fun photography!
 
They even have SW1s. What is not to like about that place. Any idea on the heritage of the switchers?
 
Thanks Ryan, your photos are an excellent source of information for some one modeling such a complex. Another thing that caughr my eye was the pulpwood cars, great shots for those interested in lumber and pulpwood industries. Surprising how many models you see with nice even and linear pulpwood loads :D

For those interested in forestry product industries, a saw mill operator told me they get one or two lumber logs and the rest is pulp so if you don't mind I'll copy those shots for my own personel use. I guess I'd better get the regear ordered for the Hustler the industry just got bigger :D

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Willis
 
I was doing some research on grain elevators about a month or so back for my grain facility and found a couple of good, or what I thought were good, sites on how these things work. I had an idea of what went on inside the facilities, and these sites gave me a better idea of what was happening and how.

The following link has a diagram showing the movement of grain through the elevator. See "The Inner Workings of a Country Elevator" page.
http://waltonfeed.com/elevator/craddock.html

And, this link has a description of the operations with some good pics.
http://waltonfeed.com/elevator/stirling.html

Bobby
 
I apologize for the double post. I lost my connection when submitting the first post and didn't realize the post was made.

Lesson learned: if your connection goes down during a post, check to make sure the post was received before resubmitting.

Bobby
 
Willis, those two pulpwood cars were bad ordered and had been pulled out of a long train (maybe 15 cars) the previous day. I photographed the FURX car because it looks like a dead-on match for the MDC bulkhead flat, and I have way too many of those! But, to be perfectly honest, I'm always excited to see something besides grain hoppers up there. In addition to the pulpwood being loaded to the north of Bottineau, there's a LPG and Anhydrous Ammonia facility just to the north of town and a little ramp at the south end that I've seen used for transporting new tractors to one of the dealerships in town. So, even for this little "one horse" town, there's quite a bit of activity.
 
Frisco, Texas, huh? We're almost neighbors, Bobby! I'm leaving right now for the Lockheed Martin show, so if you don't have anything to do, try to come on out.
 
Here's a web page I slapped together a few minutes ago to show the aerial photo I have of the Bottineau Farmers Elevator complex:

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/ryan.harris/botno/terra.html

The entire complex is a linear style arrangement, common in the prairies of the midwest US and Canada. Although there are three more elevators today than there were in 1980, the date of the photo, it still illustrates "division of labor" so to speak. The northernmost elevator is known as the "Barley House," the middle building is the Fertilizer Bulk Blend Plant, and the southernmost silo is the "Durum House." The team track and ramp are at the south end of the siding that serves the station house (west of the Durum House), and out of the photo to the north is an LPG and Anhydrous Ammonia facility.

I hope some of you find this useful.
 
Excellent view Ryan, somebody can make a track plan from that!

BTW - do you have any photos of MODEL grain elevators you could maybe post on here?
 
Not yet. I have yet to compile the various plan sets I have into usable drawings. Since I've made the switch to Windows XP, my AutoCAD software won't run on my new computer. So, I need to hook up my old computer at my modeling workstation to get started again.

Now, I have built a model of the fertilizer plant, but it was destroyed when we moved from Colorado to Texas. I have only a couple photos of it, which didn't really turn out all that well. I used it as a diorama to display models I sold on ebay. I haven't rebuilt it because I discovered that I had built it undersize (only slightly, but enough for me to notice). So, even though I have the mostly destroyed model that I could use to start from, I will build it again from scratch.

Anyway, here's a couple photos of the model prior to its demise:

BN%20SD40-2B%207500a.JPG


BN%20SD40-2Ball.JPG
 
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