Using augers for operation

I know at least a few readers are saying, “what’s an auger?” I went into the prototype a few years ago, in a post showing both fixed and portable augers; that post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/11/unloading-covered-hoppers.html . My modeling goal at the time was to build a fixed auger to unload covered hoppers at my chemical repackaging industry, so I followed up that first post with one about modeling (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/08/unloading-covered-hoppers-part-2.html ). 

Today I want to turn to movable or portable augers. These are used at team tracks or industry tracks to unload hoppers and covered hoppers, and I’ll repeat a prototype photo (uncredited internet image) from the first of the posts cited above, to illustrate. This is a way to unload many kinds of granular or even powdery materials. 

At a modeling meeting not long after those posts in 2017 and 2018, I bought a 3D-printed portable auger model for HO scale. I’m embarrassed that I don’t remember the seller (if a reader knows, please comment at the end of this post). Here is what it looks like. It came in all gray, which is okay, except for the tires, but I remember seeing one that had an aluminum main tube, so I painted it that way. 

This of course can easily be posed at any team track or other industry to indicate unloading. One example that fits on my layout is the delivery of spent brewing malt, used for animal feed, and delivered to agricultural areas. It’s shown here at the team track in East Shumala on my layout. 

So this can be the physical implementation of actions following from the waybill below, which brought the car to this team track. 

These kinds of augers can also be used for loading; a truck would dump into the receiving bin, and the auger would transport the material into a hopper. If the area I model were suitable for growing hops, for example, the crop could be loaded in just that way. The auger will need to be elevated to reach the hatches in the covered hopper.

On model railroads, industries don’t always have a clear way to load their product into freight cars, or alternatively, to unload arriving cars. Including something like an auger can take care of that for certain cargoes, possibly to the satisfaction of the fastidious operator.

Tony Thompson