[MOC+BDP9] ABS Grain Elevator and Hopper Car

[zephyr1934]

 

I'd like to present my latest MOC: the ABS Grain Elevator and Hopper Car

 

This build is also my contribution to the BDP Series 9. To this end I wanted to make a grain elevator and covered hopper car that would be fun to play with and great to look at. Something that fits in the industrial district of a city just as easily as being part of a train layout. I brought in lots of details like the ladder and catwalks on the outside of the building. 

The tower has a removable wall to access the detailed interior. The first floor office includes a workstation for the manager, filing cabinets full of detailed records, and a testing station to determine which silo an incoming shipment should go to. The second floor breakroom includes opening lockers, a punch clock for employees, a small kitchen area, and a well-stocked vending machine. The third floor "headhouse" has lots of details like the distribution spout at the top to route grains to the appropriate silo for storage or to the departure spout to be loaded into a waiting freight car. Grain dust can be explosive, so a dust collector is employed to keep everything safe.

The grain elevator includes two brick built signs, "ABS GRAINS." Of course, that name has a double meaning because Lego bricks start out as ABS granules. There are a few other Lego themed easter eggs for builders to discover. The exterior includes a loading chute above the tracks and a receiving pit between the rails. There is a gangplank that can be lowered for easy access to the top of the car when its being loaded (if you have taller hopper cars the gangplank can easily be moved higher). The train track features a movable derail at the start of the siding and an industrial-style terminus at the end. 

For the train car I wanted to create a detailed model that can serve city builders who would appreciate a single parked car to accentuate the grain elevator as well as train builders who might use the design to build a whole train of their own.

You now have an opportunity to support this model in the Bricklink Designer Program Series 9 crowd support phase, Oct 6-17.

Click the link above to support or paste the following address into your browser:

https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-9/3224/ABS-Grain-Elevator-and-Hopper-Car

 

I hope you like it, comments and questions are always welcome.

 

[JWBDolphins]

Very nice, you have my vote! 

 

[Selander]

Good one 🤗👍🍾🤞

Very nice interior as well !!

Edited September 30 by Selander

[LL1982]

I like this, love all the interior stuff. Ever considered actually dropping 1x1 rounds (yellow or tan) into the wagon to make it a working grain elevator? 

[Feuer Zug]

Great grain elevator. I like all the details you put inside of the buidling. Is that a modified form of KarTrak on the side of the hopper?

[Murdoch17]

Very nice work! I love the signage, and if I can get my log in to work in time to vote, I'll vote for you!

[zephyr1934]

@JWBDolphins @Selander and everyone else, thank you kindly!

 

19 hours ago, LL1982 said:

I like this, love all the interior stuff. Ever considered actually dropping 1x1 rounds (yellow or tan) into the wagon to make it a working grain elevator? 

I don't normally do interiors in my builds, but I went for it with this MOC. I had a lot of fun coming up with all the detailing. I know it's kind of silly, but I'm really pleased with how the vending machine turned out. And getting the lockers to open smoothly while also having the doors make a tight turn was a lot harder than you would think it should be.

That is a great idea about using round plates for grain, but it would require a completely different build with larger pathways. In this build, the loading pipe is solid and 1x1 itself (technic connectors). Just about everything else has a complicated infrastructure under the surface to get the "simple" look on the exterior.

 

 

15 hours ago, Feuer Zug said:

Great grain elevator. I like all the details you put inside of the buidling. Is that a modified form of KarTrak on the side of the hopper?

You know, in the unlikely event that this MOC gets accepted I should add a KarTrak sticker. The hopper cars are a reworked version of the cars in this thread to be compatible with the BDP palette. The side of the hopper is a different kind of bar code from the same era (I bet @Toastie would recognize it). Here's a view showing the side of the car, though the details on the bottom get a little lost with the dark orange of the foundation mingling with the reddish brown of the car itself.

 

13 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

Very nice work! I love the signage, and if I can get my log in to work in time to vote, I'll vote for you!

Thanks, and indeed, those signs went through many iterations. It took a lot of experimenting to make it short enough to fit across the side.

I would have really liked to add another 2-3 rows of silos and make them all 50% taller, but I had to be mindful of the part count. Again, in the unlikely event that this MOC gets accepted I will try to come up with a design using two copies to make an alternate build of a bigger elevator.

[Brickstone_City]

Hi,

 

Lovely with the interior detail! :-)

[Toastie]

On 10/1/2025 at 6:30 AM, zephyr1934 said:

I bet @Toastie would recognize it

I absolutely do! Whoohoo!!! Actually, I own 5 1x8's in exactly these colors with my name engraved (Jeff made for me) - they are proudly placed on my desk and I admire them every day (not the name, but the fact that somebody well known on this forum made these for me).

But more importantly: Your "diorama" is simply perfect. It would be so nice if it comes through! I'd purchase it right away.

All the best and good luck!

Thorsten

[zephyr1934]

Thank you @Brickstone_City and @Toastie

 

Indeed, if you enter this code you're bound to have fun. You just have to know where to find it, for example, just go past the code here:

 

Okay, joking aside, that five bar color scheme was found on most Lego sets from the mid 1960's to mid 1970's. In this MOC the color of the hopper car was limited by the availability of the 2x2 double convex inverted slopes for the bottom. Reddish brown was the best option but the car looked too plain when it is all brown. To bring in a little splash I brought in this classic color scheme. The vertical stripes work well with the snotted building in this area. There are several subtle details in the hopper car, like the fact that there is no visible vertical transition with this snotwork.

While the BDP parts palette was sometimes a limiting factor, I discovered that building with known part availability was also relaxing. I never had to wonder, "does this part exist in that color?" or, "is that part crazy expensive?" I was also being mindful to keep the part count down, right now it is just under 2000 parts, but some are large like the quarter cylinders that make up the silos.

Here's a better shot of the hopper car that also shows a close up of some of the interiors. While I'm at it, here's more of the interiors.

 

 

 

 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

We need more buildings like this around the railway line! 

A stunning station that rises in height and has beautiful interior details (I like the third floor with the pumping machinery)... I have a similar building in my layout and I have to say that having a building that stands out in height in the skyline makes things more fascinating!

Well done! 

 

I'll mention some details I'd never seen before and which I consider truly original and noteworthy: 

1. The system for locking the wagon on the tracks
2. The punch clock
3. The archive with the open drawer revealing the filing cabinet 

[zephyr1934]

@LEGO Train 12 Volts your feedback says a lot, either I was successful in this build or you are thinking too much like me. Yeah, I was tickled by the simplicity and effectiveness of the open filing cabinet draw, after spending an evening working on the rest of the office that idea came to me the next morning. Meanwhile, that interlocking for the track is based on the real derails used to keep a parked car from rolling onto the mainline if the brakes are released. I'm not sure if this design would actually derail a Lego car, but it should keep it from rolling off the end of the track.

It was a fun challenge trying to build like a set designer. Really working to optimize the impact of every element in the build. There were a few things I knew when I began working on this MOD- I started with the concept of having a freight terminal combined with a freight car. I was inspired by the amazing chemical plant from 2018.

I went with my strong suit, I already had a good hopper car design and I knew the combination of the 4x4 quarter round cylinders and recent round plates were perfect for grain silos both in terms of looks and strength. And finally, I wanted catwalks, lots and lots of catwalks. Using the lattice window like this had been on my todo list ever since I discovered the part.

The rest of the MOC grew organically from there over many building sessions. Though I must say, at one point I was stalled because there were no pre-made ladder parts in the palette this time around. I eventually wound up with two different brick built solutions to work around that problem.

 

[Selander]

Interesting to hear more about the design and building process . Thanks for sharing!

[zephyr1934]

23 hours ago, Selander said:

Interesting to hear more about the design and building process . Thanks for sharing!

This design process is not like anything I've done before. The BDP requires the designer to also compile a complete set of instructions. They make it clear in the guidelines that this step is not for the public, rather, it is so that they can assess the design for buildability. So that means you don't have to optimize the page layout but you still have to sequence things like someone would find in normal Lego instructions.

The tools for creating instruction in studio are very impressive, but you still have to sort the bricks into individual steps and then adjust the view for each step. While sorting the parts into a logical sequence for building is something I enjoy, it is time consuming. Because the instructions for BDP need to be complete, for me at least it meant completely rebuilding the model digitally after originally building it in modules. The original build had the front panel in one submodel, the silos in another, the shell of the building in a third, and the interiors in a fourth. For the instructions the model had to grow from the bottom up, cutting across all four of those submodels (ugh!).

 

 

 

 

[Feuer Zug]

Awesome description of how a grain elevator works. I lived near one in Germany, but never understood the operation other than grain trucks came in and rail cars went out.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Thanks for showing the system for locking the carriages directly onto the track; it's nice to see it first inserted and then lifted. 

Ymari was a great inspiration for my industrial district too; it's amazing how similar our design paths were. 

The part where you said you wanted so many catwalks made me laugh , you used these pieces in a useful and ingenious way! 

 

[zephyr1934]

The voting is now live. From now until Oct 17th you can help turn this model into a Lego set by casting your vote of support here.

 

11 hours ago, Feuer Zug said:

Awesome description of how a grain elevator works. I lived near one in Germany, but never understood the operation other than grain trucks came in and rail cars went out.

 

Indeed, I had to do a bit of research myself while building this model to make sure I got the key elements correct (correct in a Lego sort of way, grin). Don't tell anybody this but I had the, "oh, so that's why it's called an 'elevator'" moment. If you go down that rabbit hole there are some really crazy things, e.g., before the 1960's they used boxcars instead of covered hoppers to ship grains and the really big grain elevators had these car lifters that would literally pick up a box car and tilt it every which way to dump the grain out. More info here, and if you want to get technical, see this report.

 

5 hours ago, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

The part where you said you wanted so many catwalks made me laugh , you used these pieces in a useful and ingenious way! 

Thank you, and it's all true, I literally said that to myself (grin some more). 

[Phil B]

+1 vote

[FGMatt]

I love this! NPU on the extinguisher in particular.

 

[zephyr1934]

@Phil B and @FGMatt thank you kindly!

[zephyr1934]

 

Just a final reminder, if you would like to support this design on the Bricklink Designer Program, the window to do so closes in just over 48 hours. Click here to support this design or or paste the following address into your browser:

https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-9/3224/ABS-Grain-Elevator-and-Hopper-Car

Thank you all. There are some really amazing designs in this round.