Rail to Barge transfer: Grain Part 2

 To over simplify there are only a handful of bulk commodities that get loaded on River barges: Coal, grain, limestone, some ores, and petroleum.

I have discussed previously that I chose to move the western end of the MODELED PORTION of my layout to Charleston, WV., because it allows me to take advantage of the proximity of rivers to the railroad. I get to model my rail to river barge transfer operation.

For a long time I have been planning to model only a coal transfer. The idea of the coal transfer was simply to utilize a large fleet of foreign road hoppers. I understand that is not the best reason to do this, but it’s my reason, so there…

Several friends and I have been discussing this and they, as usual, want to do more. It is my experience that LESS is actually more, but I am interested in branching out and including grain. 

There are always problems associated with things like this, grain barges are, as a rule covered, while coal barges aren’t. Otherwise the transfer system seems relatively straight forward. I’m firmly planted in the era where boxcars carry the grain, so some type of covered dump house building that conceals the fact that I have not modeled the inner workings of the dump house, will accommodate a boxcar or two.

A series of conveyors to lift the grain up, over tracks and the short distance between the waters edge and the barge. I’m going to assume the down spout will be some sort of large hose type device.

The classification game dockside will be in the familiar form I use on other similar facilities. Some sort of sign will be posted at the start of the session announcing that we are loading “Hard Red Winter Wheat”, the switch job will be tasked with finding all the boxcars billed as hard red wheat, and spot them on the loading track. The switch job can organize the rest of the storage yard, so next trick they won’t have as much work to do. Inbound loads arriving during the day can be classified and spotted or stored as appropriate.

The switch job might split time with the coal loading facility and maybe the elevator, flour mill, and New World Pasta.

That should keep him busy for the session.

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