Making an Operating HO Scale Loader: Walthers Glacier Gravel Co. 

It says you did this ten years ago, But still absolutely relevant and still absolutely brilliant!

Instead of two strings, you could take an old ball point pen, disassemble it removing the small spring from inside. Run the spring along your round pivot pole and extend the ends of the spring into the door itself. Then when you do the string"pull" action, after releasing the string the spring would pull the door closed.

What a great loader and your ingenuity in getting it to function...so good to see youngsters so involved (using your mind for more than just sitting in front of a game screen!!! I'm sure you'ave probably already gotten the flows even, but one simple solution would have been to just make you slot a bit bigger in the slower side. It would be neat to make the conveyor operational as well. A very good video...thanks for sharing!

Nice kit. I may get one in the future to build. I mostly scratch build for my HO and O scale railroads. So you have built the kit and modified it to be operational. Nice going. I see that you're using your brain housing group for the mods. Cheers from eastern TN

Very engenious! Excellent 💡 idea

Looks great! I really like the simple design and construction. The loader adds something fun to operate on the layout! Keep up the great work! Ethan

Your design is very good and the mechanism too. Very thoughtful!

Great idea man, up until about 11 minutes I was like wtf is this dude thinking, this isn't gonna work. Then it all became clear to me. I understand it now and I am going to implement this on my coal mining layout if you don't mind me taking and using this design.

A lot of thought went into your gravel loader project. Thanks for all the effort and for the video.

Very nice a little note on how you can get them to flow even is to make that front hole smaller ,but if I make one which I might I would just make one hole to load cars then you can control the flow of ballast better and move the car forward as you fill

I see this is fairly old post, but I figure for anyone else that might come along.. The suggestions for your activation wires are good, however there is a simpler and more elegant way to about it without to much mod... A] Make a or find a round object to make a drum, probably about 1/2 to 3/4 inches in dia.. make sure the drum has a top/tbm.. make about 1/4 hole in top/btm.. find a spring with 'eyes' about 1 inch long [but any length larger that 1/8in will work good] at both ends and taught enough to return to its compressed state yet 'soft' enough that one turns it with minimal force. Prop Close your trap doors... wrap one side of your cable around the drum, depending on which way you want to turn to load, is direction to start the wrap. wrap at least twice.. then take the end coming off [or is in your fingers and attach to one end of spring. Now stretch the spring just a wee bit to have pressure applied and attach the "closing" string to the other side of spring.. You'll also need some of those tiney loop screw in doobobs to route the string to and from your holes... since most inline cable tension adjusters are too big for this application..in the future if the string stretches out or spring tension expands.. the tstring can be wrapped around something small under the layout.. Can't post a pic of the routine but hi me up and I can give the url on my site for the basic schematic

Wow, very impressive

Great rigging job and clever thinking.Thanks for sharing!

Dude this is gonna be so helpful, because I’m gonna make this for shredded cheese

Very well thought out!

Very good work! I figure between you and Josh (NSmodeler24), if anyone has a loader, they'll have to make it operational too to keep up with you two. :D Even though you didn't show everything (I don't blame you for not doing so, that would make for an extremely long video), I thought it was still pretty easy to follow along with what you were doing, you did a good job explaining things to fill in the gaps. I suppose the closest I'll ever get to this would be the sand towers on my diesel facility. But that would then require me to modify my locomotives with little sand bins inside the shells for the sand to go into. Not to mention dealing with the TINY sand hatch openings on the locos. No no, and no... Great video Cam!

Dude, that's awesome!! Well done. Thanks for sharing this! Deryk

Excellent model. I'll be building a loader for myself soon and got many great ideas from your project. Well done and thanks for sharing. I particularly like your open/shut mechanism. So simple, yet so effective. Your counterweight contraption can be replaced by torsion springs. Most household appliances that I strip when broken have torsion springs of varying dimensions and strength, but you can also have them made to specification for very cheap by a spring manufacturer. Your uneven loading can be easily fixed buy making that hole in your styrene divider bigger and then having a moveable styrene piece (held in place with a small bolt) that swivels over the hole to throttle or open the hole for a perfect balance.

Pretty slick. Wonder if painting the inside of the hopper with gloss might help even the flow across both bins and reduce any tendency to jam as the volume gets low and there's less force.

Awesome! you gave me ideas how to improvise my own. Very Smart!

Nice engineering

Brilliant

hey Cam.... that was a great video ... one suggestion you could use a small spring to close the door... just my 2 cents vinny

Very good job i love it

Very nice video. My question to you is, is how do you load the "tower"? Is that belt functional? I have kinda the same idea for my coal operation. Just trying to find a away to get the coal to the tower preferably not by hand. Great job!

I was looking at the string, and thinking, hey, I know something that may work better for you. Try some Muskie Master braided fishing line. You can get different test line, and get some pretty fine stuff. t's very strong, and doesn't have the frayed fibres sticking out from it, so it would run very smooth for you. You could also run the line inside a brass tube, painted to match the steel, instead of through the eye bolts. That way you'd never see the string or line at all. Just a thought, I really like the idea.

Nice finishing touch to your previous video. Have you thought of using an actual weight to keep the door closed and pulling one string to operate. When operating is done the weight should automatically close the door. Just a thought.

Great idea. If by chance you use DCC on your layout, then you can operate your dumper using a servo motor, controlled by a "Singlet" from TAM VALLEY DEPOT. The servo could pull down the string. The Singlet is usually used to operate turnouts via servo motors, but can be used to operate many things. Total cost would be about $20.

You are very clever ...wish I lived next door

you could put a false bottom in the trucks then you wouldn't use so much sand

Good job! I like it

Rather than buy 40 foot hopper, maybe buy some Herzog Car-Toppers, they are often seen full of gravel.

Nice work! Thanks for sharing…

Great video.

Nice work

excellent work :)

Put the counter weight on a small tension spring

thats great, i love it

very nice

Is this the on the layout you have now?

nice