Have Seen Old Sugar Beet Plant In Loveland

When did they close the plant.  I know their are no sugar beets grown in US anymore.  I have the video on the SP THE LAST SUGAR BEET TRAIN.  It is great goes form taking them out of the ground to the processing in the plant. Did BN use wooden cars as did SP? Is your RR part of Rock Ops?

The Plant is Closed

The Loveland factory was the last one running and was closed in 1984.  The Great Western used wooden beet gondolas for quite a long time then started buying used metal gons to replace them.  They also had a large number of hoppers that were used.

My old layout in Colorado (1985-2009) hosted a number of Rocky Op sessions but I am in Oregon now. 

Well Done

I love the scene.  I've driven that road many times.

Isn't there still a sugar beet factory out in Fort Morgan? I can't believe that NO sugar beets grown in the US.

Merry Christmas George

Merry Christmas!! You have done an Outstanding job with that entire scene!! I used  to live in the trailer park behind the elevator years ago. That elevator is quite unique. The bridge over I-25 Looks Great!

I love the wreathe on the lead switcher!

Ron

I am blown away by the

craftsmanship! Incredible topic, modeling and presentation. More photos, please.

Nice looking scene

I really like it.  I kinda wish I could justify sugar beets in my scheme. I have always found the SP sugar beet ops, I model the SP very interesting.

Steve

Thanks

for the nice comments.  There are lots of photos on my website showing the current state of the layout. 

Unfortunately there is not much scenery yet.  The scene in the photo just has some ground foam sprinkled around to give it some greenery.  I wanted to do a "Christmas" photo with the wreath and used the scene to try out Helicon Focus software (works great!).

More and better photos will be done as scenery progresses.

Beautiful work!

Is the elevator scratch built?  It looks great (and so does the highway, and the bridge, and the paint on the engines, and, and, and!)

What did you use for the beets?

Semi-scratch Built

The elevator uses manipulated photos of the real one for the metal siding.  It would awfully hard to duplicate the real siding in model form and get the coloring right.  The rest is scratch built using PVC tubes for the basic structure and styrene for the roofs and other details.

The bridge is scratch built from photos using styrene.  I'm not happy with the proportions and may consider this a practice model. Here's a photo of the real thing:

I made the bridge thicker vertically to enclose a piece 1/2" plywood subroadbed.  The bridge is amazingly strong so I removed the plywood.

The engines are old Athearn BB SW-9s (or whatever they were) that had the front hood cut back to create a fake SW-1.  GWR specific details were added and I custom painted them.  I have some of the new Walthers SW-1 models on order.

Sugar Beets

Their is a Sugar Beet factory in Scottsbluff, Neb.

http://www.westernsugar.com/Scottsbluff.html

Jerome

Sugar Beets

Oh, yeah, almost forgot.  The sugar beets are "cracked wheat" from the grocery store bulk bins.  Their shape is not a sugar beet shape but it looks good as a pile or load.  I paint them dark brown with a dry brushed dirt color. I am going to cast some plaster 3D beets to scatter around the loading and unloading areas.

I've tried various things for beets.  Steel cut oatmeal works pretty good. Fennegreek seeds also work. I think California sugar beets are smaller than Colorado sugar beets and anise seed may work well for them (I think the Walthers cast loads are based on anise seed).

Be sure to set mouse traps if you use any of these for model beets.  I had a whole trainload of oatmeal beet loads devoured in a week on my old layout.   Quartz aquarium gravel works best in a situation like that but weighs alot.

Great Looking Scene

PS

About the grain elevator

I really admired George's method of building it. Since someone had asked, I thought, since I recalled seeing the blog, I would offer here the link to George's blog on it:

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/unique-grain-elevator-on-the-great-western-railway-12191189

Wow

Hi George,

You captured that scene very well. I drove past there last summer. Dont remember if I took a picture but it looks just like that. I have video on Youtube of GW #51 crossing that bridge. Shot it in the early 1980s.

Rob Teed

Here is a video

Sorry, Title in Video says #25...I must have been really tired when I edited that!