Are Wiking Cement Trucks Suitable for Late 1970s Layout?

Kisatchie Jun 18, 2022

  1. Kisatchie

    Kisatchie TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks, Rich!
     
    Rich_S likes this.
  2. Pfunk

    Pfunk TrainBoard Member

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    and you thought mixing a bag of Portland in the wheelbarrow was a chore lol

    very cool info, never really thought about it but with all the stone quarries around here I can take a look at the structures and know what they do now - lernt me something today!
     
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  3. bman

    bman TrainBoard Member

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    Yeah that Medusa kit drives me crazy. It is better suited for a distribution center for cement power taking it in by rail and utilizing trucks for delivery to batch plants. I have seen older photos of batch plants with silos similar but there was a conveyor system I place for the aggregates.
    Fun fact: I received my cement powder from a companyu named Medusa back when I was a plant manager. And their facility on the east side of Columbus looked nothing like the Walthers kit.

    Now there are basically 2 types of batch plants for those wanting to model one, wet and dry. A wet batch plant combines the aggregates, cement, water and additives into a bowl(which can be the same bowl that can be found on a truck) mixes it, then discharges that mix into a delivery mixer truck. A dry batch plant will load the aggregate from a weigh hopper, cement powder from a other weigh hopper, and the water and additives into the delivery mixer truck for mixing. The whe thing can be enclosed or exposed. My plant had the aggregate bins and weigh hopper mostly enclosed save an opening side to side for the radial stacker but the cement silo and weigh hopper exposed.
    And to toss another way of doing things, we had a job that was an hour out of my plant location but near our home office and plant in North Central Ohio. So I loaded every truck from the plants near mine with aggregates, and cement but NO water and additives The trucks drove the hour or so to the jobsite where the water amd additives were added. It took a lot more mixing time in the truck but the concrete was fresh that way. The trucks then returned to that regions plants for reloading. The fun part was making sure the truck bowls were dry before loading.
     
    Last edited: Jun 24, 2022
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  4. Rich_S

    Rich_S TrainBoard Member

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    Hi Brian, At Riverside Concrete the company I drove for, all loads were dry dispatched. Sand, aggregate and cement were loaded into the drum. The water tank behind and above the cab held 300 gallons of water. As you know a 4" slump was the preferred mixture, which meant usually you had 250 to 260 gallons of water left for cleanup on a 10 yard load, unless the contractor wanted a higher slump number. We also did a lot of curb work where the contractor only wanted a 1" slump so the concrete would stand up after coming out of the paving machine. Since the concrete was dispatched dry, the drums were not spun on the way to the job site. For some state jobs, they wanted the concrete mixed at the plant and a slump buster added for pumper jobs. On those jobs the drum was slowly spun on the way to the job to keep everything moving to help prevent the concrete from setting up in side the drum. On state jobs every so many trucks also had to have samples taken at the plant. What a pain as you had to clean your chutes twice, once at the plant and the second time at the job site. If all the concrete was not discharged, we'd wash down the chutes fill up one of the contractor's wheel barrows with water, then add the rest of the water to the remaining load to make it as soupy as possible. We then would return to the batch plant with the drum slowly spinning again trying to keep the concrete from sitting inside the drum. I'm guessing your batch plant had a separator for cleaning out the truck drum. I've never seen the screens inside the separator, but always though it was pretty neat how it could separate the sand and gravel from the concrete load. What remained went into a sludge pond. I may have gotten a little off track with my reply, but it was a nice walk down memory lane.
     

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