Buzby Brothers Concrete/Cement Plant

[mmagliaro]

Thanks!

The article appears to be reprinted in this book:  HO Lineside Industries You Can Build (Model Railroader)  by Dick Christiansen,
which I found on Amazon.

I found discussion of this in the old Atlas Forum archives.  It was in the October 1991 MR.

[Bruce Bird]

Altogether now....

Cement is the white powder, concrete is the wet stuff that comes out of the back of the truck.

The Raia Industries is a 70s and 80s heritage ready-mix plant.  There are some nice photos of plants both large and small from your era- just google them.  It helps a little with the right terminology.

This link is to a company in South Bend that has a couple of very nice photos of a CENTRAL ready mix plant. 

http://www.kuert.com/our-story.cfm

This type of facility actually has a mixing chamber that mixes the aggregates, cement, and water prior to dumping it into the truck.  Very large paving and construction sites had these back in the day and sometimes just a regular old dump truck was needed to deliver the concrete to the paver or job site.  Most modern plants today are central mix plants.

There is also a type of plant that just weighs and dumps the ingredients into the mixing truck and the truck mixes it on the way to the job site.  There are counters on the trucks that are supposed to be re-set by the drivers so that the minimum number of revolutions can be put into the mix before it gets placed.  These type of ready mix plants are quite simple, small and don't take up a lot of room.  Based on the photo you have it looks like this is that type of plant.  Remember, in your era the plant could have had the cement, sand, and gravel all delivered by rail.  If the facility was small enough all three could have been handled by the same spur. 

Bruce

[mmagliaro]

Heh, Bruce, I hope I didn't mislead anybody .

Yes, sand, cement, gravel come IN, and ready-mixed concrete goes out.     In the article, the sand and gravel come in by truck, and the cement comes in by covered hopper.  I made the sand and gravel also come in by hopper.   

Here's a page that has a ready-mix plant in Helena, Montana, in 1952.   http://www.lifelikecharm.com/west_of_helena.htm
(just go to the page and then search for "1952" in your web page and it will take you right to it.  I don't want to post the photo because it might be copyrighted.)

It's really not much different from my Raia one.  I will grant you that the Raia looks very modern in its bright blue coloring.  I could paint it more like
galvanized wavy sheeting and it would look more 1950s.
But the basic idea of the components coming in, and the tall tower, and the mix going out in concrete trucks underneath, looks
the same to me.    One nice thing I discovered by looking at the 1952 photo, and reading around the web about the beginnings of
Raia and other concrete shippers, was that they unloaded cars in every crude way imagineable... INCLUDING shoveling the
stuff out of the hoppers by hand onto conveyors.  OUCH!

That does make me feel better about having cobbled together my system of unloading with small conveyors into piles and then onto long conveyors up into the mixing house.    It looks from the 1952 photo that they actually did things like that!

[Dave Schneider]

Personally, I have never like the look of the Faller radial/triangular sand and aggregate holding pens with a crane at the apex. It seems like a very awkward loading arrangement. Maybe it would be justified in an extremely crowded area, but liner conveyors and easily manipulated piles of raw materials look better to me. The metal silos also give it a modern look. The photos posted by Bruce of the Kuert Concrete plant look great for the 1950s. Just my opinion.

Best wishes, Dave

[wcfn100]

The metal silos also give it a modern look.

I think it's a more than just the look.  Those silos are modern.  First of all, you would have to have some sort of pneumatic system which I think is fairly modern in itself.

A plant in a 50's/60's setting should probably have conveyors.


Jason

[rickb773]

What makes those silos modern compared to the silo in the initial photo of Buzby's?

[wcfn100]

What makes those silos modern compared to the silo in the initial photo of Buzby's?

There a few things that stick out like the banding and the safety railings, but for me, that doesn't really matter because I don't think they serve the same purpose.  The silos in the kits and article are for storage.  The silo in the Buzby photo, I think is the mixer.  I believe the steel silos for storage are pretty modern in general.

I could very well be way off, but these are the impressions I've gotten through my research.  Part of the problem is researching plants from the 40's/50's that never got upgraded vs. say a plant build in the 60's which may have some of these newer parts.

Jason

[mmagliaro]

What a fascinating exploration this has turned out to be.
Here's a good historical summary of the advances of technology in concrete batch mixing plants from about 1913 to 1963.
http://www.agg-net.com/article/the-dawn-of-the-ready-mixed-concrete-industry

It is written from a U.K. standpoint.  But it looks like the idea of using blowers to move the dry cement around was being used
in the 1950s and before.

I'm glad somebody else said that about pie-slice-shaped aggregate bins in the Faller model.  I always thought those were a little weird too.
Maybe loading the stuff from piles onto a long conveyor shaft was a stroke of luck for me.  I completely made it up.  It just seemed like
something you would do if you had to get gravel or sand out of a hopper and into a mixing plant on a steady basis.

[Dave Schneider]

Hopefully this is the correct place! I downloaded this from the USGS aerial photo archive and this is the best resolution I could get for free. The photo was taken 1 June 1951. The USGS will supply high resolution scans from the original negatives are available for something like $30 a frame. I can give you some tips on how to go this route if interested. The shadows give some hint at the relative heights of various structures but I agree that it isn't clear how it is laid out. The location along the river suggest that perhaps the sand and aggregate was delivered by barge? Maybe this is useful, or at least interesting to you Rick.



As for modeling the plant in the 1950s, maybe consider bashing the Kibri gravel plant for the mixing, add some conveyors to delver the aggregate and sand, and a silo with enclosed unloading for the cement delivery.

The Kibri plant: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kibri-37226-Gravel-Works-Loading-Silo-N-Scale-MIB-/300652546224
Maybe sheath part or all of this in corrugated metal siding?

Finally, here is a view of the Tews concrete plant along the Milwaukee Road Beer Line in the 1960s, showing the various aggregate and sand conveyors. In this case those materials were delivered by rail, and the cement by truck. Click on the image for a bigger view.



Best wishes, Dave

[rickb773]

Hopefully this is the correct place! I downloaded this from the USGS aerial photo archive and this is the best resolution I could get for free. The photo was taken 1 June 1951. The USGS will supply high resolution scans from the original negatives are available for something like $30 a frame. I can give you some tips on how to go this route if interested. The shadows give some hint at the relative heights of various structures but I agree that it isn't clear how it is laid out. The location along the river suggest that perhaps the sand and aggregate was delivered by barge? Maybe this is useful, or at least interesting to you Rick.

Dave, thanks, that is indeed the correct location. As a child I lived nearby and never saw any barge traffic up the Timber Creek. With a 7' tidal swing you would have needed some sort of floating dock which I do not see.

Southern New Jersey is very sandy which is why there used to be a significant glass industry (Owens-Corning: Glassboro, Clayton, Millville) in South Jersey. The Pennsy had quite a few sand gondolas marked return to Millville which is on the PRSL. So the sand would have come by rail or truck. Significant amounts of sand were excavated from Deptford (adjacent town) during the Interstate construction projects.

I only remember a lot of covered hoppers being switched at Buzby, so the sand probably came in via dump truck (quite a few of them also). I was probably one of the few in town who enjoyed the traffic stops while the PRSL switched the siding.

[Bruce Bird]

Dave- love the direct ramp onto the highway bridge over the facility in that 3/4 view!

I agree with the angled storage pile dividers.  Unless you have an end loader with a pointy bucket you are wasting material and chipping up your concrete dividing walls.

Good discussion!

Bruce

[rickb773]

Well I took my Father's Day gift money and opted for the Faller CEMENT Mixing plant since it had silos and a crane. The Buzby photo shows at least 1 silo and two other tall structures (of which one could be a smaller diameter silo?).

The lowest price I could find was Micro Macro Mundo, Inc. which listed 2 in stock. But I then got hit with a $12.69 shipping bill.

I was expecting a kit and figured I would lose the circular storage area and go with parallel concrete storage areas and some conveyor buckets (if I can find them). Instead I received a built up structure and the storage area forms 1 wall of one of the buildings. This is going to take some work. The model also had heat damage to the trestle structures supporting 2 of the 3 silos. This is going to take a lot of work!

[rickb773]

Just received a photo of an advertisement for cement mixing trucks which actually features the Buzby Bros. facility. I got it from the grandson of one of the owners of the plant.

(In the background is the old Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines power plant which was used to support the outside 3rd rail electrification of the passenger service.)