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finally made a little progress in my sugar beet refinery.  still have the warehouse to build behind the main refinery but I got the refinery, boiler and kiln building and the washer together where it will go and thank goodness it lines up pretty well.  The interconnect between the refinery and boiler is just temporarily propped up there and missing a roof so it is a little crooked but not ready to finish that part yet...still have some details to finish on the refinery building outside but it is close to being done....cant wait until I get to the point to actually do the scenery and structures around it!

 

 

 

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hey guys thanks for the encouraging comments!  only the folks on this forum know how much effort goes into our projects!

 

CSX Al - the objects u saw thru the window of the refinery were Kelly filters.  They are filters used in removing the impurities from the beet juice.  here is a better pic of inside as I was working on it.  I believe the wheels were used to adjust or move the filter plates.  it is indeed corrugated cardboard used a filter element.  Most of the objects inside were modeled from pics or drawings of the device...my favorite is the round set of tanks on the first floor where the diffusor extracst the juice from the beets cut in the cutter above and send the pulp out the bottom and the juice to the carbonation tanks...this stuff is so cool I couldn't make it up!!

 

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Trainman2001 - it is all scratch built using lots of styrene, task board, leds, and rusty stumps windows, doors and brick sheets!!  The plans themselves came from lots of internet searching and are a combo of a refinery in Utah and plant Colorado with a little size scaling and fudge....ok lots of size scaling, these things are really huge and in their scale size would take up half my little layout.  here is a thread that I posted and then updated a couple lifetimes ago when I started this.  I really want to go back sometime and collect a cohesive thread on the build but I want to get it done first. 

 

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/t...ry--new-update-42312

 

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Wow, that is some top-drawer modeling, Stubby. My hat is off to you, sir. The sugar plants where I grew up in Mid-Michigan were giant, ugly, stinky, industrial plants surrounded by mountains of "soap-beets" and did not have the beauty of yours. I served as wagon boy during beet harvesting a couple times and that was absolutely no fun at all. You had to try and pick out any tops or dirt clumps that made it into the catch wagon and try to keep the wagon evenly loaded so it did not spill over. All while having bowling balls and clouds of dirt launched at you from a conveyor belt. Compared to being wagon boy for wheat or soybeans, which was actually kind of fun, it was like punishment. Looking forward to seeing your completed project, keep up the good work!

Owen that is a neat story i can imagine how it might be.  I think the guys who handled the lime in the kiln would probably trade jobs with ya!  I would have loved to see one of these things in action. Once i get to the outside scenery it will get a little nastier and stinky. I plan on a pick and sorter conveyor belt on the beet bins with a truck dump and lots of stinky dirty beets in the bins pulp silos and molasses tank,etc.etc.. I would like to have a wagon dump they looked really neat but my guess is that by 50s they were not too many. Like most of the factories back then the machinery and process was fascinating. Thanks for the comments.

I did these odd farm jobs when I was a kid in the 70's, and at that time only very small farms would use (old, smaller) harvester's that would load into a hopper type farm trailer. These would then be dumped onto a conveyor that loaded semi-trailer trucks. The big industrial farms all had giant harvesters that could dump directly into a semi-trailer. I think a lot of these farm labor jobs we did back then would get a farmer SWAT teamed and thrown in jail for child endangerment these days. The little town I grew up in had several coal mines, most of which were Robert Gage Coal Co. When the coal started to run out they got into sugar production. They became Monitor Sugar, which also had operations in Colorado and maybe some other places as well.  The big sugar plants in Bay City looked like chemical plants (like nearby Dow Chemical), but I recall an old one south of us in Owosso that was a cool old brick building like you made, although it was derelict by the 70's.

 
 
 
From this picture and card stocK to the pictures below W O W
A BIG CONGRATS FOR A JOB VERY WELL DONE!!!!!!!!
 

sug2

 

here is the overall concept on my layout:

 

 

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Originally Posted by stubbygda:

finally made a little progress in my sugar beet refinery.  still have the warehouse to build behind the main refinery but I got the refinery, boiler and kiln building and the washer together where it will go and thank goodness it lines up pretty well.  The interconnect between the refinery and boiler is just temporarily propped up there and missing a roof so it is a little crooked but not ready to finish that part yet...still have some details to finish on the refinery building outside but it is close to being done....cant wait until I get to the point to actually do the scenery and structures around it!

 

 

 

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I hope you can, have plans to,  enter that in some contest(s)...the March Meet O scale show, the Narrow Gauge Convention (Colorado sugar beets are up their alley), NMRA, somewhere...

I wondered where you went with this after I saw the opening postings....In my hurried

trips around several in NE Colorado, all shut down, and/or fenced off, I did not get

inside, but would not have attempted that interior detail. 

Your layout could just comprise the yard to service that, as Great Western beet

factories often had.

Hey guys thanks for the likes. i havent done too much more since last pics. During summer i spend most of my hobby time restoring my 40 ford coupe. I did finish up the beet bins along with the picker sorter so ill try and post some pics. I got started on the last building in the group the warehouse (you can see it in the paper model. Hopefully i can get it done then start integrating it into the layout. 

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A little work from my summer hobby.  23 pieces unfortunately some of the hard ones i had to fab. 

 

 

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Bryan b i am still here mostly a lurker not poster. feel free to contact my on the project

 

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When we talk about REALISTIC model railroading, we are usually talking about track planning and train operation.  Occasionally we extend that to realistic looking scenery for the trains to operate in.  The OP has taken this to the next level, creating an industry where you can easily imagine the industrial process that should be taking place.

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