MOC of a Lionel Icing Station

[bogieman]

When I saw OCDP's post on an automated unloading box car, it immediately brought back memories of a Lionel accessory from my childhood in the 1950's that I begged my parents for (and got) for Christmas.

I found these pictures of the original Lionel on a listing on ebay:

The worker was operated by a solenoid acting on a long arm underneath the ice house and he pushed the ice blocks one at a time, very quickly, into the roof hatch of the refer, which had a side door that flipped down to remove the ice. So now that I've gotten into Lego trains, I decided to see if I could build one myself.

For the refer, I bought Jeffery Fonda's Pacific Fruit Express car plans from BrickTrainDepot ( I don't see it listed currently) and modified it with a mechanism to open one of the roof hatches. The hatch is opened when a plunger rises from between the rails and pushes a plunger on the bottom of the car upward which is linked internal to a lever that opens the hatch. The plunger also centers the car under the loading chute.

The loading station consists of two conveyors, the outside one is actuated to move toward the track after the hatch is opened. Another conveyor inside the ice house moves the ice blocks onto the outside conveyor. Here's the finished loading station:

This video shows it in action:

The roof removes to load the ice blocks into the chimney-like structure over the conveyor:

A Control+ Hub in the structure controls the four motors that make it function. There are doors for changing the batteries and pressing the hub power button.

zz

 

The ice blocks pass thru the car and land in between the rails in a slide-out tray, the actuator can be seen here too, unfortunately, to keep the track a reasonable height of 1 2/3 bricks over the table, I had to drill a hole in the table for the motor to be under the table. Someone smarter than me with Technic could probably make it work without cutting a hole while limiting the height. The plunger extends 3 brick widths using a linear actuator.

This simple Lego program times the actuation of the motors, my first programming experience with the app.

Dave

Edited May 2, 2020 by bogieman

[Jeffinslaw]

Nicely done! Very clever on getting the roof hatch to open up! Glad you like the PFE model. I decided to pull it from the site as I am in the process of updating and refining it some more. Sometime in summer I will release the updated version.

-Jeffinslaw

[bogieman]

Thanks. I didn't mention it but some plates required modifying a bit to get the hatch to open and close smoothly, a little filing here, a little glue there. I'm not a purist so it didn't bother me.

[ColletArrow]

A very tidy model; it both looks good and works smoothly, something not always easy to achieve in LEGO!

The under-the-track actuator is certainly a thorny problem. I wonder if you cut away some more sleepers (or used the 1x16 rail sections instead), a lever parallel with the rails could be pivoted up from an axle passing under the rails. The motor could then be surface-mounted under the tower. The end of the lever would move up in an arc rather than vertically, which might not work; it depends how your wagon is set up.

Speaking of which, could we have some photos of the underside and internals of the wagon please? I'd love to see how you modified it!

[Feuer Zug]

Excellent work on the building and the motorization. This is a rarely seen part of railroad history that many don't think or know of. Thanks for building and sharing.

[zephyr1934]

That's looking really nice and an iconic Lionel accessory reborn. You might want to back-date the minifigs though, since hard hats and safety vets came along a few decades after the mechanical refrigerator put the ice houses out of commission. The choice of subject is great, we need more automation around the trains, and the implementation matches it, you've packed a LOT into a relatively small MOC. Great work!

[bogieman]

Thanks for all your comments.

I admit I'm not much in historical accuracy, mostly interested in the motion, fascinated by what's possible with all the technic pieces.

5 hours ago, ColletArrow said:

The under-the-track actuator is certainly a thorny problem. I wonder if you cut away some more sleepers (or used the 1x16 rail sections instead), a lever parallel with the rails could be pivoted up from an axle passing under the rails. The motor could then be surface-mounted under the tower. The end of the lever would move up in an arc rather than vertically, which might not work; it depends how your wagon is set up.

Speaking of which, could we have some photos of the underside and internals of the wagon please? I'd love to see how you modified it!

I did try a number of alternatives but wanted to maintain purely vertical action on the actuator; everything I tried required about 4 bricks in height and with this located on a spur track only 4 straights from the switch, the grade was too steep. Now that I put a 1.5" hole in the table, there's no going back.

I'll have to partly disassemble the car, being careful not to mess up the decals. I should have grabbed some pictures as I was building it but I will get some.

Dave

[ivanlan9]

Terrific idea.  What fun!  I never had Lionel trains, but I had American Flyer (which my dad built a drop-down train table for in his den), and I always wanted, but never got, all the action accessories.  In fact, I never got any. 

Metta,

Ivan

[Roadmonkeytj]

This is brilliant ... Now add a conveyor to return the brick to top and an engine with a photo sensor to position cars

[bogieman]

20 hours ago, Roadmonkeytj said:

This is brilliant ... Now add a conveyor to return the brick to top and an engine with a photo sensor to position cars

Thanks. That was my original plan but I decided it just wasn't practical, would have required the track to be raised to fit a conveyor under it, and then another conveyor to take it up to the loader. But seeing some of the ball machine contraptions, I'm sure it could be done. Feuer Zug's Coal Tower might be inspiration to do something...

On 5/3/2020 at 6:38 AM, ColletArrow said:

Speaking of which, could we have some photos of the underside and internals of the wagon please? I'd love to see how you modified it!

Here's some pictures of the car, I didn't want to tear it down too far but I think you get the idea how it's constructed.

The bottom side showing the actuator and the bottom of the chute to direct the ice blocks into the tray under the track. The two slopes match a pair on the undertrack actuator to center the car below the chute.

The crank connected via a lift arm to the plunger turns the axle connected thru two U-joints to the axle/lift arm that opens the hatch. The rubber band on the right insures the hatch closes.

Dave

Edited May 4, 2020 by bogieman
fixed typo

[ColletArrow]

Thanks! I love seeing the internals of things, especially when they're built into such an accurate-looking model. The trick with the matching cheese-slopes is very neat. Awesome work all over!

[Coal Fired Bricks]

Wow, great model!  I was wondering how you get the ice cubes out?   

I would love to see a milk car like this one.

[bogieman]

22 minutes ago, Coal Fired Bricks said:

Wow, great model!  I was wondering how you get the ice cubes out?   

I would love to see a milk car like this one.

The ice bricks just pass thru the car and end up in a slide-out tray under the track, you can see where one tie is cut out in the track (non-Lego brand track).

The link to the OCDP's thread on the PF unloading box car in the first post here does just that.

[Patgeo]

Really nice creation! You also did a very good job regarding the whole mechanism, despite the fact that you had to open a hole to the table.

[TrainDragon]

This is very nice, thanks for sharing.

[dr_spock]

Nice work and function. 

Looks like there might be enough of a gap between the bottom of the car and top of the rails to have a motorized tray (like a 5x6 panel?) come out to capture the ice blocks and take them back inside the ice house.  Then the fun part will be hacking an auto-reloader mechanism.  GBC balls are easier since they can roll down a slope into a loader. 

[baard]

I love this!

Perfect execution of the loading, especially that the conveyor belt is moving position before loading the ice.

Nice to see the mechanism inside the wagon. Thanks for sharing!

[bogieman]

On 5/6/2020 at 2:40 PM, dr_spock said:

Nice work and function. 

Looks like there might be enough of a gap between the bottom of the car and top of the rails to have a motorized tray (like a 5x6 panel?) come out to capture the ice blocks and take them back inside the ice house.  Then the fun part will be hacking an auto-reloader mechanism.  GBC balls are easier since they can roll down a slope into a loader. 

Thanks! I recognized early on that the blocks would be much tougher than using balls but I wanted to maintain a better resemblance to the Lionel. That chimney affair that the blocks are loaded into was the only solution I came up that would keep the blocks from jamming so I gave up any idea to auto-reload.

Thanks to all for the comments.

Dave

[mark6399]

Very cool and clever work with the automation! It's neat being able to recreate and re-imagine old toys from childhood.

[zephyr1934]

On 5/9/2020 at 3:55 PM, mark6399 said:

Very cool and clever work with the automation! It's neat being able to recreate and re-imagine old toys from childhood.

... using other old toys from childhood (grin)

[mark6399]

7 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

... using other old toys from childhood (grin)

Haha! Old toy-ception!