Cave Cooperative

[ianp]

Does anyone know of a model (HO scale) of a French wine Co-Op building (a Cave Cooperative)? I can't find one available, though I think Atelier Belle Epoch (ABE) used to make one: http://www.easy-miniatures.com/cave-cooperative-avec-wagon-ree-33115.html

Alternatively, can anyone think of a barn style building that could be made to look like a Co-Op building?

Thanks in advance.

[Pacific231G]

Hi Ian

In Loco Revue  655 (Feb2002) there were three articles on bulk wine transport with several images of wine warehouses with private sidings. These were negociants rather than co-ops but Yann Baude came up with a design for a wine warehouse that was described in "how to" article though without drawings. A negociant would probably have storage rather than production facilites though the building adjoining the railway sidings would be tankage rather than production. 

If you're a member of the French  Railway Society I can make that article available but it was a fairly straightforward building to scratchbulld and I still have the drawings I produced for my own version of it which you're welcome to have.

 

This is the bare building but it needed more detailing some of which I've done.

 

I've done a little more in terms of lettering but it could do with a bit more detailing.

Making the large wine storage tanks inside involved the sacrifice of  an old and rather beaten up Playcraft single barrel wine wagon.

There was no one style for wine co-ops and some of them even had internal n.g. railways (with hand pushed wagons) for moving racks of wine and barrels.

This cave was built in the Beajoulais region in 1927 and you can see what look like a 60cm railway emerging,

 

Curious because AFAIK the nearest railway to Fleurie ever was 4km away so this would have simply been to bring products out of the cave for loading onto carts or lorries (and possibly to take the empty bottles in). The same was true of the extensive system of caves owned by Ackerman near Saumur. This had several kilometres of tunnels cut out of the soft rock on the south bank of the Loire and these were equipped with a system of 50cm railways inset into the floor. These still exist but are not longer used  having been replaced by rubber tyred battery elecric trollies (for obvious reason you wouldn't used i.c. engines in a wine cave) 

I think the caves with private sidings would have been the larger ones dealing with wine by the tanker load. I remember visiting one in the Lot Valley in the Cahors wine region which had an old wooden wine wagon on a short siding. The actual line through there had closed some years earlier but had not yet been lifted though I think the wagon was just a decorative featutre. 

If you want to find good examples of relevant buildings try looking up Paris Bercy. This used to be the main wine market for Paris with railway sidings on every other street and the wine merchants seem to have used the styles of their regions in their caves. I managed to visit it before it was all demolished in the 1990s.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Andy Hayter]

You might be able to do something with this (8752 under "Depot") - designed as a loco shed but similar concrete sectional construction

 

http://82.240.92.237/dev2000/WebPagesGB/acceuil_fer.html&&2wxBSk6c662aNxMopLGoxlCoh24c_kXaqT6akTTaua

Edited May 10, 2019 by Andy Hayter

[Fat Controller]

10 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Hi Ian

In Loco Revue  655 (Feb2002) there were three articles on bulk wine transport with several images of wine warehouses with private sidings. These were negociants rather than co-ops but Yann Baude came up with a design for a wine warehouse that was described in "how to" article though without drawings. A negociant would probably have storage rather than production facilites though the building adjoining the railway sidings would be tankage rather than production. 

If you're a member of the French  Railway Society I can make that article available but it was a fairly straightforward building to scratchbulld and I still have the drawings I produced for my own version of it which you're welcome to have.

 

This is the bare building but it needed more detailing some of which I've done.

 

I've done a little more in terms of lettering but it could do with a bit more detailing.

Making the large wine storage tanks inside involved the sacrifice of  an old and rather beaten up Playcraft single barrel wine wagon.

There was no one style for wine co-ops and at least two of them had 50 or 60 n.g. lines for internal movements (hand pushed

 

 

 

 

 

 

That really looks the part; it would be even better with stylised Art Deco lettering, which many of my aquaintance still have. Narrow-gauge railways were quite common; they would have been at the opposite end of the Cave, however, to take the grapes from the 'quai de déchargement' to the cuves (red wine) or presses (rose or white). 

The architect's drawing in the meeting room at our original cave (Letra) shows the original arrangement, though opinions differ as to whether it was installed (and there's no one left who'd remember). The 'quai de déchargement' at the Cave at Lieurgues, another part of the group of which our original cave is now a member, still has some embedded track: it adjoins the old CfD de Beaujolaise station. http://www.oedoria.com/

In the very early 1980s, we had the honour of meeting an elderly gentlemen who had escaping from forced labour in Germany by concealing himself in an empty tank from his village, which was stabled near his work. Even thinking about this gives me a cold sweat.

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, Fat Controller said:

That really looks the part; it would be even better with stylised Art Deco lettering, which many of my aquaintance still have. Narrow-gauge railways were quite common; they would have been at the opposite end of the Cave, however, to take the grapes from the 'quai de déchargement' to the cuves (red wine) or presses (rose or white). 

The architect's drawing in the meeting room at our original cave (Letra) shows the original arrangement, though opinions differ as to whether it was installed (and there's no one left who'd remember). The 'quai de déchargement' at the Cave at Lieurgues, another part of the group of which our original cave is now a member, still has some embedded track: it adjoins the old CfD de Beaujolaise station. http://www.oedoria.com/

In the very early 1980s, we had the honour of meeting an elderly gentlemen who had escaping from forced labour in Germany by concealing himself in an empty tank from his village, which was stabled near his work. Even thinking about this gives me a cold sweat.

Thanks Brian. I think it was my first entirely scratchbuilt building though, as I do now, I did get my computer and printer to do a lot of the actual draughting.

 

Could you get an image of the Letra architect's drawing; that sort of primary source material is always well worth having?

 

The original lettering on the Fleurie cave, also in your Beaujoulais wine region, that I've added to my earlier post,  definitely looks Art Deco though I can't identify the font. Before building mine I did though look at a lot of images of both viticole and other agricutural  cooperatives, mostly dating from the interwar period, and the same when it came to lettering it. A lot of the simple rather geometrical sans-serif raised lettered names on their buildings seemed not a million miles different from the Slaters lettering I actually used (Typography is a minor interest of mine since making some TV programmes about printing and publishing thirty years ago though I claim no other qualification in it) 

 

Paul Decauville's catalogues show wine caves as one of the miile et un ways of using his railway system, particularly in its hand pushed 40 and 50 cm version, though his vision of vast cathedral like caverns within the Ackerman installation near Saumur is a bit different from the actual fairly small tunnels. Apart from getting racks of bottles out of the large network of tunnels for shipment, the méthode traditionnelle (I mustn't call it méthode champenoise in case it gets mistaken for the inferior, overpriced mouthwash coming out or Reims and Epernay) used to make my favourite sparkling wines involves so many processes; primary and secondary fermentation, aging on lees, riddling, disgorging, dosage  and final aging that involve shunting the bottles around that a ralway, even a manually powered one, would have come in very handy.

 

I've just seen a couple of old B&W postcard views of the  Lieurgues cave and you can see the row of V skip wagons used to move the grapes around.

http://www.cavescooperatives.fr/2016/05/liergues-rhone.html

 

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Pacific231G

[Fat Controller]

44 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Thanks Brian. I think it was my first entirely scratchbuilt building though, as I do now, I did get my computer and printer to do a lot of the actual draughting.

 

Could you get an image of the Letra architect's drawing; that sort of primary source material is always well worth having?

 

The original lettering on the Fleurie cave, also in your Beaujoulais wine region, that I've added to my earlier post,  definitely looks Art Deco though I can't identify the font. Before building mine I did though look at a lot of images of both viticole and other agricutural  cooperatives, mostly dating from the interwar period, and the same when it came to lettering it. A lot of the simple rather geometrical sans-serif raised lettered names on their buildings seemed not a million miles different from the Slaters lettering I actually used (Typography is a minor interest of mine since making some TV programmes about printing and publishing thirty years ago though I claim no other qualification in it) 

 

Paul Decauville's catalogues show wine caves as one of the miile et un ways of using his railway system, particularly in its hand pushed 40 and 50 cm version, though his vision of vast cathedral like caverns within the Ackerman installation near Saumur is a bit different from the actual fairly small tunnels. Apart from getting racks of bottles out of the large network of tunnels for shipment, the méthode traditionnelle (I mustn't call it méthode champenoise in case it gets mistaken for the inferior, overpriced mouthwash coming out or Reims and Epernay) used to make my favourite sparkling wines involves so many processes; primary and secondary fermentation, aging on lees, riddling, disgorging, dosage  and final aging that involve shunting the bottles around that a ralway, even a manually powered one, would have come in very handy.

 

 

 

I shall have a word with my people on the ground...

Lynne did take some photos of the installation at Lieurgues; I shall ask her if she can put them up here.

We're on a jaunt south and eastwards in June; there may be a lot of photos taken.

[Joseph_Pestell]

That building at Fleurie is quite small by co-operative standards. But then Fleurie would always have had a large number of private producers. In other wine regions, nearly all vine growers would be members of the cooperative and the buildings quite enormous except in the smallest of villages. Friends of mine own a former co-op winery in Maisons (Aude) which they have converted spectacularly to holiday accommodation. It's of a size (and simple architecture) that would fit many layouts.

 

One last  point, the wine cooperative movement did not happen until after WW1. The co-op in our village, Paziols, is listed because it was one of the first, founded in 1918. So careful to not use an earlier architectural style for a co-op.

 

Numerous rail connected small wineries on the CF de l'Herault and on various SNCF branches in the Midi.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Joseph_Pestell
Add info

[ianp]

To partly answer my own question, I have discovered two possible options.

This facade from Regions et Compagnies: https://www.regionsetcompagnies.fr/produit/889-magasins-generaux-facade-entrepots-raccordes/

And this façade from Minifer: https://www.minifer.fr/boutique/echelle-ho/batiments-industriels-a-l-echelle-ho/l-entrepot-toulousain.html

[Joseph_Pestell]

I think the Minifer product is slightly more likely, but both plausible.

 

The Minifer one is so simple that one would surely make one's own rather than pay €57! And shouldn't anything "Toulousaine" have brick walls?

[Joseph_Pestell]

http://www.cavescooperatives.fr/article-22212395.html

[Fat Controller]

34 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

That building at Fleurie is quite small by co-operative standards. But then Fleurie would always have had a large number of private producers. In other wine regions, nearly all vine growers would be members of the cooperative and the buildings quite enormous except in the smallest of villages. Friends of mine own a former co-op winery in Maisons (Aude) which they have converted spectacularly to holiday accommodation. It's of a size (and simple architecture) that would fit many layouts.

 

One last  point, the wine cooperative movement did not happen until after WW1. The co-op in our village, Paziols, is listed because it was one of the first, founded in 1918. So careful to not use an earlier architectural style for a co-op.

The Beaujolais Co-ops are small in comparison with those in the south; holdings are small, and into the mid-1970s, mixed farming (a split between cattle, cereals and wine) was the norm. Letra was one of the first to be planned in the late 1920s, but not opened until 1956. I don't know why the gestation was so prolonged. There were subsequent enlargements in the mid 1970s and the late 1990s; at its peak, about half the viticulteurs in the village and the surrounding communes were members.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Fat Controller
To correct details of opening.

[rue_d_etropal]

My favourite is the first one here http://www.easy-miniatures.com/cave-cooperative-avec-wagon-ree-33115.html certainly for south of France. Also I do like Art Deco architecture. Woud like to find more info, maybe a drawing, or at least decent photos to do a drawing.