Clay disintegrator model

The clay is transported by an 18"gauge clay dump car from the clay storage bin described earlier, and is dumped at a small conveyor.  The clay is manually shoveled onto the conveyer which moves the clay up and into the disintegrator machine.  This machine has large metal rollers that finely crush the clay.  The disintegrator is steam powered.  The conveyor is powered by a small gasoline engine.  The finely ground clay is ejected out the bottom side opposite the steam engine into a low metal container.  The clay is then shoveled from the container and fed to the brick making machines (not yet constructed).  As you can see this is a manually intensive operation that has continued from many years ago and struggles on in the current 1939 layout period.

The figure above is removing the pulverized clay from the bin.  The small red object by the conveyor wheel is the gasoline engine.

Above is the steam engine that drives the disintegrator.  The steam boiler and engine are small Woodland Scenics kits I had laying around.  The disintegrator, conveyor and gasoline engine are scratch built.

Above is the brick car that moves the wet clay bricks from the brick machine area to the brick ovens.  The car is about 1 & 1/4 inches long with the wheels and bottom frame from a cast metal SS Ltd mine car kit and the superstructure made from styrene strip and styrene angle.  It is modeled after a photo in a vintage brick works book.  The car is designed to hold pallets of wet bricks for transport to the brick ovens.  The car "runs" on an 18" gauge track.

The brick works project is moving slowly but is fun.