Walthers new kit Rail-to-Road Aggregate Transfer


Motley

Motley

Active Member
I started working on the two inside mainline tracks finally. The tracks will have a crossing, then to each of the two bridges spanning the river.

On the right side wall I have some space for a small industry. Walthers just released the Rail-to-Road Aggregate Transfer facilty. So I just picked it up.
They use sand, fertalizer, fracturing sand, and other granular materials.

Here: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-4036

The covered hoppers dump the sand below the grated rails. And a conveyor transfers it up to the two storage silos.
Then the trucks pull under the silos, fill up the trailers, then the trucks deliver it to fertilizer and frac sanding company's.

Check this company out here, they build these facilities.

http://alpineindustrialsystems.com/project-gallery/

http://alpineindustrialsystems.com/project-gallery/page/2/

I also picked up some trucks for this. A large dump truck for small loads, and a semi trailer for larger loads. The open top trailers have the tarps on them, so I will have to create a tarp for this.

This is where it will located.

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Neat idea, Michael. Nice update.

I worked fracking in 2012 and the frac sand came in to the company or dedicated siding on the covered hoppers and into the storage bin. The bin wasn't much bigger than the Walthers one, I think the hopper cars were used for short term storage as well. It was held a short time and delivered out to the oil well in something called a sand can, which was a Freuhauf semi tractor-trailer. Sometimes we would go through 5 semi loads of sand on one well pad in a shift. It was offloaded with air pressure into our giant portable bin we called a mountain mover.


lasm
 
logandsawman said:
Neat idea, Michael. Nice update.

I worked fracking in 2012 and the frac sand came in to the company or dedicated siding on the covered hoppers and into the storage bin. The bin wasn't much bigger than the Walthers one, I think the hopper cars were used for short term storage as well. It was held a short time and delivered out to the oil well in something called a sand can, which was a Freuhauf semi tractor-trailer. Sometimes we would go through 5 semi loads of sand on one well pad in a shift. It was offloaded with air pressure into our giant portable bin we called a mountain mover.


lasm
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Oh really? Man that is cool, probably a tough job huh? I don't really agree with fracking though I think they are polluting the ground water.

So when you say it was off loaded from the semi trailers with air pressure? How exactly did that work? Can you describe more please? I was wondering how the semi trailers were unloaded.
 
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Looking forward to seeing how it turns out! I saw the kit and am trying to figure out an excuse to get one of them for somewhere, may just make a stand alone small module for some photography of some of my trucks and rail equipment or something. Either that or just get a couple of them and stock pile them with the rest of the kits ive got stacked up for the BIG one whenever that may be later on in life lol
 
Wow very awesome!! Trains are obviously a given but I L-O-V-E trucks! I'm an LTL driver and collect model kits, books etc--just got a kit and book on Diamond REO. With that, I love the idea of this and your trucks are great!
 
I scratchbuilt something similar to use as a cement transloading facility, 3 large siloes [instead of 8 small ones like Medusa Cement]. Of course they are nowhere near as well detailed as the Walthers kit. They're packed away until I get a scenic base on my current layout, sure wish I'd have gotten some pix while they were still standing on the previous one.
 
Thanks guys, looking forward to building this kit.

I needed a little bit more room there, so I don't have the silos too close the the mainline tracks. So I just added some foam pieces to the benchwork.

I will also create a road at the facility, and curve down to the edge of the benchwork at the bottom.

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Motley said:
polluting the ground water.

So when you say it was off loaded from the semi trailers with air pressure? How exactly did that work? Can you describe more please? I was wondering how the semi trailers were unloaded.
Click to expand...
\

Your second part first, the Freuhauf trailer can be sealed and we would put the RPM's on the truck up and open up an air valve and the pressure in the tank would blow the sand into our bin. The fittings on the Mountain Mover bins were on the bottom so we would fill from down there. There were opening hatchs on the top of the freuhauf and I think they were gravity loaded, however I never saw the loading. I think the holding bins at the company were actually elevated but not sure if I remember that right, either. Maybe do some research later or tomorrow on google earth.

As far as the groundwater pollution, the jury has not heard all the evidence yet. I do know we pumped water down the well at 35 barrels per minute for about 60 minutes for each frac zone, and there were 25 to 35 zones per well. That would be about 1400 gallons per minute times 60 minutes times 30 zones per well. That water had a small percentage of food grade additives ( less than .1 %) added and even a smaller percent of one nasty chemical which maybe was not worse than chlorine. After the fracking, all of that was pumped out of the well and into some trash well somewhere.

I loved the job but hated the hours. Really a power trip to get all the machines in sync.

lasm
 
logandsawman said:
\

Your second part first, the Freuhauf trailer can be sealed and we would put the RPM's on the truck up and open up an air valve and the pressure in the tank would blow the sand into our bin. The fittings on the Mountain Mover bins were on the bottom so we would fill from down there. There were opening hatchs on the top of the freuhauf and I think they were gravity loaded, however I never saw the loading. I think the holding bins at the company were actually elevated but not sure if I remember that right, either. Maybe do some research later or tomorrow on google earth.

As far as the groundwater pollution, the jury has not heard all the evidence yet. I do know we pumped water down the well at 35 barrels per minute for about 60 minutes for each frac zone, and there were 25 to 35 zones per well. That would be about 1400 gallons per minute times 60 minutes times 30 zones per well. That water had a small percentage of food grade additives ( less than .1 %) added and even a smaller percent of one nasty chemical which maybe was not worse than chlorine. After the fracking, all of that was pumped out of the well and into some trash well somewhere.

I loved the job but hated the hours. Really a power trip to get all the machines in sync.

lasm
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Hmmm very interesting. Thanks for the detailed description on the process. I had no idea really how they unloaded the sand.

One more question. What is the frac sand like? Can you describe it? Is it very fine, coarse, etc. I'm trying to figure out what to use for spillage areas of the sand around the facility. IE; around the rail grates, inside the silos.
 
Motley said:
What is the frac sand like? Can you describe it? Is it very fine, coarse, etc. I'm trying to figure out what to use for spillage areas of the sand around the facility. IE; around the rail grates, inside the silos.
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It just looks like ordinary sand like you would see here in Minnesota or Wisconsin where Jack pine trees grow or scrubby oak trees. The only difference is it is sifted so only a couple sizes of the actual sand particle are allowed in each grade. For modelling purposes, it would be the finest material you could get. Most of it was a light brown "sandy" color.

Here is a picture of the area where the hoppers are unloaded and the sand cans (freuhauf) trailers are loaded, from Google Earth:

Frac sand.jpg

It looks like 3 loading bays, the empty tractor trailers in the upper left waiting for an open slot. The hoppers must dump the load then via conveyor into the elevated hoppers for storage/offloading. There were several suppliers and so possibly kept them separate by source.

lasm
 
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Aha nice, thanks for the insights. So the layout of the Walthers kit is pretty close to this overhead photo.

I wish I had more room now for a longer string of hoppers. Right now that single track will hold about 4-5 hoppers, so I'll have to use a switcher and bring sets of hoppers between this facilty and the rail yard. But the yard is fairly close.
 
One noticeable extra to the kit is a weather cover over the rail hopper unloading area, I guess they'd want to keep the sand dry.
 
tootnkumin said:
weather cover over the rail hopper unloading area, I guess they'd want to keep the sand dry.
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You are right about this, I don't remember testing the moisture content of the sand, but I do know that when the sand was "damp" it created a lot of problems with some of our delivery and monitoring.

We pumped anywhere from 1/4 pound to 8 pounds of sand per gallon of water. Thats right, at the highest rate that meant we were pumping over 11,000 pounds of sand per minute. That only lasted about 4 minutes, though, but the machinery was really humming.
 
OK so I have this hopper shed, its from my un-built kit that I already have for the Ethanol Plant.

It fits perfectly in there next to the Silos. You can see the base for the Silos with the circles. I will cut out an opening in the shed wall for the conveyor that goes up to the Silos.

I think I will go with this. Thanks for the idea Toot!!! What you think guys?

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The drawback to a fully enclosed shed (although if the place the facility was set had a fair bit of rain, then ideal) would be to cover up the "workin's" of the pit and conveyor. I've been trying to find a kit of a carport or gas station canopy that would provide shelter but still allow that view. Found this kit by summitcustomcuts.com of an Exxon or Shell servo. http://summit-customcuts.com/exxonstationho.html. Has an ideal canopy and support structure. I wonder if they would sell just that part of the kit, otherwise it would be too pricy.
 
Ya but I'm liking the shed now. The shed has the additional door openings so I can still see inside it. And only a very small portion of the conveyor will be inside the shed.

And I'll make the roof of the shed removable, I won't glue it in place.
 
I've been working the two inside mainline tracks in this area. Got the crossing installed. The two inside curves are now connected to the bridges.

And I installed the switch for the spur track going to the Aggregate Facility.

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