Ethanol is big business--especially for railroads. Long trains of identical tank cars and huge strings of covered hoppers moving grain and ethanol byproducts have become an important part of the railroad landscape. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, ethanol has more than DOUBLED the traffic hauled by some railroads!
Cornerstone North American Ethanol series kits, freight cars and PROTO 2000(R) locomotives make it easy to add this rail-dependent industry to your model railroad.
Ethanol traffic touches almost every corner of the North American rail network--from the vast cornfields and wheat fields of the midwest to busy petroleum terminals in large cities. It should touch your post-1980s model railroad too!
Corn is the main source of the starch that's converted into ethanol, and the Corn Unloading & Storage Sheds are its first and last stop in production at the North American Ethanol complex. The kit includes an unloading shed with two bays, one for trucks and one for covered hoppers, as well as a corrugated storage shed and operator's booth for inside the unloading bay. The storage building is used to store dried distillers grains (DDG), the protein-rich co-product of the process used in animal feed, until it's loaded into covered hoppers for movement to feed processors. The corrugated structures are also similar to those found at modern milling, waste paper recycling and other facilities, so they'll look right at home at other industries.
Measurements: Unloading Shed: 8-7/8 x 5-7/8 x 4-5/8" 22.5 x 14.9 x 11.7cm DDG Storage Shed: 14 x 9-1/8 x 5-1/4" 35.6 x 23.2 x 5.7cm