N Scale Hulett Unloader Now Shipping

[seusscaboose]

Dude. That'd be awesome.

QFT

[Lemosteam]

Pete, that is incredible.  does it articulate?  Can it be positioned?

[SAH]

That's really cool Pete!  Great job.  As a kid I would watch the Huletts from afar during visits to Cleveland.  I saw them close up when I worked near the C&O docks at Toledo in the early 80's.  They were on their last legs then.  At one time a Hulett, lake boat and the steel industry figured into my modeling plans as an EL modeler.  Eventually I figured out I would never have enough layout real estate to make it work to my satisfaction though.

[pnolan48]

John,

Yes it does articulate, and you can move the unloader towers along the base, and the transfer sled and ore larry can move.  And the whole contratption can move along tracks, if you care to lay them. In other words, it was designed to be animated. The walking beam is almost perfectly balanced! I would substitute real wheels for the dummies on the base and the walking beam. I would find a way to make the ore larry slide freely on its track. The transfer sled could have manually opening diaphrams for each half. Making the bucket work in this scale would be a mighty challenge. Making the beam move up and down seems quite easy to do, though still fiddly. Little tiny narrow-gauge engines were used on tracks to pull the whole structure so it would align with the holds.

All this can be done. And perhaps I'll tackle it in the future (don't hold your breath). I meant this kit as a base. I probably won't have time to build completed models for the next year. I did design this to help sales of my Lakers, but those sales have been disappointing. And I did this from historical drawings before I realized there was an entire thread on a forum about it, and that Walthers offered an HO kit. That's the dummy in me. It was an enormous design effort, and then another effort to write and photograph the directions, which are still not quite complete.

The last half of the move to Alabama occurred last week. Kay was in the hospital, now recovering, so I've been handling all that unpacking as well.

[pnolan48]

I forgot my point: I've brought the kit as far as I can for now. When I get some free time, I'll start experimenting with options. The kit is buildable, but will take quite a few hours to put together.

[btrain]

  Hubba, hubba! All of the modelers from the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic must be getting a terrible case of the "vapors" looking at it. 
I second the Huron comment, with Boulder Loco Works H10-44 and these, it will be a piece of cake to model the place!

[tehachapifan]

Cool video! So, the control cab is basically in the bucket on these things?? That's interesting!

[pnolan48]

I think the cab position is why shifts were two hours. I would imagine a full day of up and down, back and forth might be disorienting when the operator steps on solid ground.

[btrain]

I forgot to ask, what's the general size of it?

[seusscaboose]

Big 

[pnolan48]

With the moving platform all the way forward, about 13" long, 7" tall and 3" wide. It's complicated, but broken into subassemblies, not extraordinarily so. There are five major subassmblies.

[thomasjmdavis]

Great to have these available and I hope they are very successful, although it will be a few years before I get the layout to the point of building a harbor scene. 

Looking at the photos, I was thinking it might be useful to have a hopper or switch engine in the shot to give an idea of proportion to trains, although the dimensional info is quite useful.

[pnolan48]

When I took these shots, all my train stuff was packed away. Now I'm in Alabama, and actually have a space for trains, I'll endeavor to do just that. In fact, it's just about time to start designing for a U shaped attic room. Naturally it will have maximum waterfront.

[Caveman]

Incredible model! Unfortunately, it would probably be out of place with our lack of lakes in the desert. However, if the Colorado River ever changes course and floods the Salton Sea basin again, I'm getting one for sure!

If you're not familiar with the Salton Sea, it has an interesting history. And there's a Southern Pacific line at the bottom.
Wikipedia: Salton Sea » History during the 1900s

[pnolan48]

I thought the Salton Sea was now completely dry.

I offer Great Lakes bulkers in the larger sizes (614' and 735'), so I felt I should offer the unloader, as they were reputed to make the larger sizes feasible. Only 75 were built; the vast majority were located on Lake Erie, with only two or three located off the Great Lakes (one for garbage unloading, I think). The kit is bedevilling me getting the operating parts (actually the relocatable parts) to work reliably. Every time I think I have solved the problems, something else comes up to bite me. Today it was the hangers for the ore larry. They worked for one build; now they are too tight. I can fix these things on my own models, but would rather not have customers trying to deal with them. Documenting the steps I take, and sometimes the interior bracing I do without documenting it, has taken a long time. I've ordered in the Z-scale wheelsets to see how they will work, but they have not arrived as fast as usual. I'm waiting on them for the deluxe kit.