Loading dock for my sawmill

Glen Haasdyk

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Feb 2, 2004
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I needed a loading dock/ramp for my sawmill so I scratchbuilt one over the weekend, using basswood from the local craft store.

2008_02040016.jpg



I think the plans came from an early eighties RMC.
I prestained all the lumber and assembled the frame on a jig.
 

Glen Haasdyk

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Feb 2, 2004
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Thanks. The next project is to start cutting some lumber to stack so the dock looks like it's actually being used.
The gravel road is Woodland scenics fine brown ballast. I like it's texure and color of gravel in contrast to their ground foam that I use as my basic ground cover.
 

Russ Bellinis

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Feb 13, 2003
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It looks good Glen. The one thing I noticed, however is that the clearance is tight on between the ramp and the rock face. I'm not sure what era you are modeling. In the 1950's semi trailers were 35 feet long, in the 1960's the length increased to 40 feet, by the 1970s the length was 42 feet then 45', 48' and now 53'. Lumber bob tails and trailers are probably about 30 feet long for the trucks and 20 feet for the trailers. The significants of the lengths of trailers is that trailers "cheat" when going around a curve, that is the rear of the trailer tends to short cut the truck pulling it. The longer the trailer, the more room it requires to make the turn. If you take a model truck which you will use on the layout with that loading dock and pull the trailer with the cab around a 90 degree turn to simulate puling away from the dock, you will see how much room you need for the trailer to clear the corner of the dock and the rock face accross from the dock. By the way, you don't need to leave a lot of extra room. My experience in the trucking industry shows that people building loading docks do not think of how much space a truck needs to have to get in to the dock. If the truck has 2-3 inches of clearance to a wall when making a turn, that is considered adequate. Having worked on equipment in warehouses where trucks had to back in and turn 90 degrees to get to the dock, the paint marks and gouges on concrete walls opposite loading docks are evidence of tight clearances.
 

Glen Haasdyk

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Feb 2, 2004
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Thanks,
Russ, I get what you're saying and it's probably a good thing that I didn't glue the dock down to the layout (yet). I made the dock for loading flatcars with lumber and the ramp is for forklifts and lumber carts. I shot a better overall picture of the sawmill grounds but Photobucket is down for maintenance at the moment. I'll post it later.