Ice House & Platform


Laidoffsick

3 Railer
The new Atlas kits used for a diorama under construction.

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Here's a few w/o the cars.....just the ice house and platform. I still have a lot of scenic work to do. Its not mounted to the bench work so I can spin it around to work on it making it much easier to reach the back. The track needs repainted after ballasting and ground foam but it's coming along. O scale is so much easier to detail and work on due to the size, but damn, it takes up a ton of space.

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Boy, that ice house really does show all the extra detail you can get in O scale. Nice use of figure and details too. I'm a little confused about the block ice going down the ramp to the open side doors of the PFE reefer though. Block ice would only be added to the ice bunkers through the top hatches. Crushed ice was sprayed by a pump and hose to on top of the load to ice down things like lettuce that needed to be kept moist as well as cool. The scene looks nice, it's just not prototypical, in my my experience.
 
The ice is not going "down" the ramp, it's going "up" the ramp. (I didn't shoot the pictures downward enough for you to see the chain and the cleats that grab the ice and hold it while it goes up hill) In smaller locations, the ice "house" was a storage facility and not an ice manufacturing plant. This particular ice house is modeled as such, a storage building. Older ice reefers were coverted to "ice service" cars (boxcars were also used) to deliver ice to such storage facilities waiting arrival of the hot shot reefer train.

The ice is delivered in an "ice service" reefer or boxcar, unloaded and put into the house for storage until needed or unloaded right onto the conveyor sending the blocks up the ramp and across the platform for servicing of the reefer cars. If you have ever seen an old woodside reefer that says "Ice Service" on the outside, thats what it was used for, delivering ice blocks to the ice house. This is a very prototypical facilty. ;)
 
I cut 1/4" acrylic (plexiglass) to different sizes and then sanded them to get the "frosted" look. The Atlas ones were clear and didn't really look right plus they only give you 10. I have about 50 or 60 of them little suckers now and my finger tips are still raw from all the sanding.
 
LOS, I get it now. Nice added detail. I probably would have picked up on what was happening if the ice was being unloaded from a car clearly labeled for "Ice Service Only".
 



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