pit photos

Foam base for ballast pit

Putting spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes and my wife's exercise equipment to good use

Donnacona board over top of the foam

Ballast painted pit floor.  It looks pretty good in person

Roughed in pit walls.  It will be a work in progress for a while until I find something I like.

Another view of the pit with 5 ballast hoppers.  A good "industry" to generate traffic in all directions.

Maybe you need a guard rail

Nice to see things coming together, Marc.  Maybe if you added a guard rail, 6-axle units could make the curve.  Maybe a guard rail would just look cool on the tight curve.

I like the idea of lowering the sides of the pit, and maybe it should extend into the backdrop so there is enough gravel to fill all those cars.  You're also going to need a crusher (fun model!).

Thanks for the shout out!

Rene'

Front wall

You may want to lower or almost completely eliminate that front wall of the pit, between the pit and the main line.  There's no way they would have left such a thin wall of rock, in my opinion.  If you want a scenic divider there, either some trees or a fence would do the job nicely.

"You may want to lower or

"You may want to lower or almost completely eliminate that front wall of the pit, between the pit and the main line.  There's no way they would have left such a thin wall of rock, in my opinion.  If you want a scenic divider there, either some trees or a fence would do the job nicely."

  or maybe an entrance road and a office/maintenance building? I'd check out the Mike Confalone article on modeling a quarry, can't get much better than his portrayal....DaveB

The good thing about foam is...

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.  The good thing about loose foam is that it is easy to change.  I have several bags of this foam from the speakers to play with so it will be a good way to rough in ideas and see how they work. 

I agree about the front wall, it was an idea that I thought might help the transition from the relatively low flat muskeg around Cranberry Portage to the more rugged topography around Flin Flon.  On the prototype this happened over 20 miles or so, on the layout it will be in about 5 feet.  Probably a screen of trees or perhaps an access road from Cranberry Portage is workable. 

The prototype pits in this area are often remote and only accessed via rail, however this one is close enough to town to have road access. 

I agree about needing a crusher, also a few trucks and a couple of front end loaders will also be required.  On the wall in the background you can see photos of a road accessible pit in the modeled area. 

Perhaps to keep life simple I'll extend the pit into the wall with the crusher as a photo behind a small ridge of waste rock or a ridge of unsuitable rock.  A lot of pits have islands of material that was not suitable for their needs so the crusher can hide behind that.  Big pit and infrastructure with a lot less work.  Kind of like what Mike Confalone did in his gravel pit.  I hope mine is even a little bit like his as far as execution is concerned, although I don't have to worry about modeling bare trees. 

I am modeling the summer (June/July) to take advantage of the Canadian Wheat Board end of crop year grain rush to Churchill, and as an added bonus the demand for ballast will be huge in order to shore up the roadbed sinking into the northern Manitoba swamps and muskeg when they thaw out.  Lots of extra traffic generation. 

Beside the pit

Correct me if you have photos to back it up, but the tracks never went into the pit. Your pit walls should be high piles of crushed and uncrushed ballast.  

Looks like I need Herr Schwartz to go pittin'

The only photos I have are the ones on the wall.  Perhaps my resident spy er.. photographer could go to the pit sometime and shoot the heck out of it... or did you do that already and I didn't print them out?

Mile 61

I am uncertain if I sent you the Payuk photos, but you probably need more panoramic ones than I took.

I can imagine that when in full swing you would see piles of ballast on both sides of the tracks.

Today one of the three tracks into the pit area is almost buried which could make for an interesting design element. The pit is to the right (west) in the photo and is full of water, home to some beavers.

 Of course each of the tracks ends with a ballast pile.

Maybe I will head out this weekend and grab a few more shots before the leaves turn yellow.

I might have to add another track

The other shots I downloaded off the internet showed there was activity in the pit into the post CN era so I'll have lots of ballast to load.  I haven't seen these particular shots before so add them to my order, and I would be very thankful if you could get more shots of the area.  Maybe I should have asked for photos before I started this little project.  I don't know if I have any way to add another track (or two) but it would definitely add more loading spots if I can. 

As always, thanks.