One of the industries I want to model is the movement of grain along the upper Mississippi. I want to build an ADM-style grain terminal along the river. Trains will bring grain to the terminal from "distant" small town grain elevators. The main terminal will load river barges for transport down river. While I'm waiting for track and other supplies, I'm scratch building a 200' river barge. It's my first scratchbuilt anything and so far, I'm pretty happy with the results. After painting, I want to fill part of the barge with grain. Does anyone have ideas for how to make a simulated pile of grain? One thought is to pour some dry cream of wheat in the barge in a typical conical pile, then soak it with a water/glue mixture.
Are you going for the processed grain look or the right off of the stalk grain? processed - I would think to use a whole wheat flower for some color so it's not just white. whole - Small grass seed? I've never seen it done but it's something that may work
Here is a picture of a combine and semi with grain. I use a ballast from Woodland Scenics called buff. Although not to scale I think it looks good enough.
I would make the shape of the pile with paper or card board (i.e. a cone), give it a coat of paint, then sprinkle whatever you decide is best looks like simulated n scale grain on top.
I would prefer not to use real food. The critters might try to eat it and I don't want them to find any food in the train room. Wouldn't a pile of sand work? It just has to be painted the correct color.
Will the really fine stuff from Highball or Arizona Rock work ya know the dust the stuff that is too small even for Z scale that should work. JMO:tb-biggrin:
Most river barges I have observed being loaded have had hatches over most of the load/hold. In the open hatch several of the ideas above sound good. You could form extruded styrofoam in a cone, then cover with fine ballast or sand. Also consider some very thin cotton to simulate dust rising from the grain. Sounds like a neat project. Good luck. Dave GCache Valley & Northern RR
If you use Cream of Wheat and shoot it with alcohol it is going to absorb that and swell up. One problem with pouring a fine substance into a pile is it won’t form a cone with the same vertical to horizontal ratios that the real stuff would. Our scaled down coal, gravel, grain etc tends to spread out wider with shallower slopes that full sized products. You might consider building a plastic sub-structure the size/shape you want and then coat it with an appropriate substance or even just roughing it up with coarse grit sandpaper and painting it the color of wheat.
When I built my grain barge I needed some exposed "wheat" in one of the openings. I used a coal load from a hopper and painted it yellow. Not a real good shot and probably more covered up than your application. I'm interested in any of your discoveries as I will be needing to model bulk storage in a large pile next to my grain port such as this: Brian
