M15 (3) Dry bulk skirted silos (2) - N GAUGE -
Picture includes illustration of model when complete.
Model comes in kit form and requires construction and painting.
From the mid 1980’s advanced manufacturing facilities have enabled smaller type Silos to be fabricated complete and ready-to-install. They are of welded construction produced in steel and aluminium and are often painted white or are polish-metal finished.
Silos are used for storing all types of dry bulk material; food stuffs, plastic polymers, chemicals and potentially explosive or hazardous industrial products in powder, flake and granular forms.
Factory-built Silos are available in capacities to suit all needs, from as little as 10m3 up to circa 2,500m3 sized from 2.5 to 5 metres in diameter and ready for rapid installation.
Factory-built Silos differ from Site-built silos, which are much larger in holding capacities (they can be up to 15 metres in diameter). The site-built versions are often constructed in sections for ease of transportation and assembled into the final storage vessel once on site (although earlier types were constructed entirely on site made from concrete blocks or cast in situ or steel fabricated).
The smaller factory built Silo is either skirted or open-leg supported and bolted down onto a raised concrete plinth. Skirts, approximately 15ft high, incorporate a 6’6” personnel door and air-vents. Sometimes included are the electricity switch-gear boxes, the power being needed to operate vacuum and air pumps, dryers, discharge rate & level indicators, lighting etc. The discharge blending cone at the bottom is only seen on the open legged type. Access cat-ladders run up the outside as do the fill pipes and sometimes a top access bridge is fitted between sets of silo towers. Crash barriers or protection bollards are normally installed around the base, painted yellow.
Our design is based on using off-the-shelf 21.5mm diameter tube. This has allowed us to simulate the smaller dry-bulk type Silos 3.3m dia. (11ft) x 15m high (49ft) approx. These silos complement our dry Bulk-Container transport range and are often seen in pairs or banks of four or more at local plastic-product producing factories around the country. They are ideal to tuck away in a spare corner of a railway layout showing the transfer activity as the transported bulk-container is tipped and its contents pumped into the Silos via a mobile pumping unit - these items being available separately. To maximize positioning possibilities the lower side discharge system pipe-work sometimes seen has not been included, it being assumed it runs down into the concrete plinth and continues underground onto the various factory supply points.