Steel Mill modeling Kiss of Death?

[mrp]

Other than the blast furnaces, many of the structures are just generic industrial buildings. Just on the large side. It gets harder to model if you opt to show some of the interior detail, something I decided not to do.

A good starting point is the plans from Mike Rabbitt. You may have to go direct with the demise of Peach Creek.   http://www.peachcreekshops.com/docs/mikerabbittdrwgs.pdf. With these plans, you will find it manageable to build your own stuff. Just take it one subassembly at a time.

You generally need to make a decision whether you want to model the interior plant process moving materials around the plant or just raw materials in and finished product out. It is hard to do both well and keep things manageable. You can do both if you devote the whole layout to the mill. Lots of choices to be made here.

Though they are the signature element, you don’t have to have blast furnaces to model a steel mill. The rolling mills, electric furnaces and so forth can be enough.

Photos and documentation are a lot easier to find now than is years past.

Good luck with it.

Michael Pennie

[Rossford Yard]

There are a few photo backdrops with steel mills on them. I have used (and am using on my new layout) those, with a half a rolling mill up against the wall as a place to load cars.  Cheaper and space saving as well. Not to mention, scribed styrene is available easily to build the same type of structure.

May not be perfectly prototypical, but I am trying to represent a specialty steel company not far from my home, down in Midlothian TX, but common in the US now, which doesn't have the blast furnace, etc.  In truth, more of those these days than the old line steel mills.

[jdcolombo]

Other than the Blast Funace, which would be difficult, the rest of the buildings in a steel mill could pretty easily be scratch built.  They are really nothing more than just HUGE boxes with roofs; large sheets of Plastruct corrugated siding and some H-beams to hold everything up will pretty much do it.

The Blast Furnace is a different story, but the HO kit CAN be used in N - you just have to cut down the piers.   Here's a photo of the HO Walthers Blast Furnace being used on my old bedroom N scale layout; I bought this long before Walthers made the N scale version, and a fellow club member assembled it for me:

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And here are some shots of other buildings from my current layout, all either scratch-built or kit bashed from HO Rolling Mill buildings, which I still see on the market from time to time..  If you don't care about interior details, these really aren't that hard to put together.

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As long as the unique rolling stock (torpedo cars; slag cars; ingot cars; etc.) are still available from somewhere, which it appears they are (I got mine from Park Lane), you should still be able to do a steel mill scene IF you can get your hands on a blast furnace (which is the scenic marker of an integrated mill; even if you can't get one, you can do steel mill operations by modeling a mini-mill or finishing mill, which wouldn't have a blast furnace).

John C.

[JMaurer1]

...as soon as you either spend the big bucks to buy one or go to the effort of scratch building one, Walthers will rerun the kits. Just a hard fact of N scale 

[conrail98]

This conversation brings up a related question.  Did Dean Freytag (or another author) ever publish an article on scratchbuilding a blast furnace?  I remember several articles about his layout and steel mill, long before Walthers made a kit in any scale.  But I don't recall (and haven't found in internet searching) anything specific on scratchbuilding a blast furnace. 

He did a series on a Coke Works in Model Railroader in the early 90s (want to say 1991, but not 100% sure) that did form the basis of the Walthers Coke model. The plans in MR were scaled to N scale. I've seen others who have done furnace scratch builds online (and even Jim Musser's layout where he's got at least 1 on). As others have said, the other buildings really aren't difficult per se to scratchbuild but if you want to do the furnace, it's going to be some work,

Phil

[aikorob]

some saved sites----good for inspiration:
http://www.zahkunst.net/mainpage.htm
http://users.livejournal.com/-nonamenoslogan/?skip=40
this one's in German
http://frankshuette.de/index.html

the steel industry forum seems to be dead

[crrcoal]

There's a excellent group on Face Book called Steel Mill Modeling https://www.facebook.com/groups/708840849171343/

[Kentuckian]

Thanks for the encouragement, and the links!

[jpec]

John closed the brick and mortar Peach Creek over two years ago. He's been basically selling left over stock ever since. I am not surprised he's finally done. Sad, but not surprised.

I also heard someplace that his wife passed on. He used to send out a monthly newsletter but I haven't received one in a while.

Jeff

[brokemoto]

I bought all of this P&LE equipment or had it custom painted:  green lightning stripe GP-7s and RS-3s, Pacemaker Green S-2s and SW-9s. grey GP-7s with SGs and PAs.  I had the Kato USRA heavy 2-8-2s (H-9).  I got hold of some RR "long distance" tenders and some live six wheel trucks to do the post WWI modifications.  I bought Jack Polaritz' books on the P&LE 2-8-2s and the A2a s.  I even managed to find a copy of the McLean book.

I bought some WKW USRA 0-8-0s to try to make bulldogs out of them, but the first run of those things were JUNQUE.

  I even lettered some RR coaches and baggage cars, even though NYCS used single window coaches.  I even used the foobie Howard Fogg painting of a smoothside P&LE baggage car.  It turns out that the number in the Fogg painting did go on a P&LE baggage car, but it was a HW.  Jack Polaritz sent me a copy of the prototype car card.

I lettered some seventy ton hoppers for the P&LE.  I had to cobble together those.  I cut down some loads and painted them rust,  Then, Hay Brothers came out with ore loads for seventy ton hoppers.  P&LE did not use ore jennies, they used seventy ton hoppers.  As iron ore has a high mass, it looks like the hopper is half full.

Then, the WKW blast furnace and rolling mill appeared.  I bought them and started on the blast furnace, as that is something that screams "STEEL MILL".  I had to move, because I bought a house.  I tried to operate my pike once I put it into the train room, but it had moved around too much.  It was too bashed up, the electrical connexions went bad, the track got messy.  It was time to build another one.  I did (I also built a nineteenth century pike on a 2-by-four piece of board).

The result?  Steel mill modelling doesn't fit, any more,  I still have the two kits.  I stated on the blast furnace; assembled and painted a few parts.  The rolling mill is still in the box, although I think that I did open it to look at it.  I think that the blast furnace kit is mostly complete.  I might have lost a few small parts here and there when I moved or it sat in its box.  I am almost sure that the rolling mill kit is complete

 I bought a few Peach Creek ingot buggies, too.

This makes me opposite of Original Poster.

The Blast furnace kit is not too bad.  I am no fan of the WKW kits, as a rule, as they contain more than a few malformed parts, but the parts that I did put together on this one went well.  Of course, I did some puttying and sanding stick work on some of the places where the parts went together, but that is to cover seams.  I seem to recall only a minimum amount of correction to malformed parts and there were not many.  I have built other WKW kits that required re-doing parts or serious corrective surgery.  I even had to remake parts or alter walls to accommodate things from my parts boxes to replace broken or malformed parts.  This was not the usual with the blast furnace kit.

If you can find one, it is not a bad kit.  Anyone wants mine, let me know what you have to trade. 

For the right trade, I might even let go of some of the P&LE power.  It is painted as delivered.  The H-9s are as Kato sold them, with USRA standard tenders, Central Gothic lettering on the tenders and Railroad Roman numbers.  I never saw a photograph of an H-9 that had two different fonts.  One curious thing about the H-9s is that in the Central Gothic era, they lacked the P&LE or P-Mickey sublettering on the coal boards.  Most P&LE power had that.

I know where the A2a book is, but I can not find my book on the 2-8-2s.

[Kentuckian]

PM sent.

[Showme]

I met the KenRay folks at the San Antonio show several months ago. In fact, they purchased an Arnold Union Pacific S-2 from me that is now on show duty pulling cars around the oval he sets up. I bought several of the military pieces from them and they look great on flatcars. The steel mill stuff they have looks good, too. Have a real nice crane kit. They are open to suggestions of items that are needed.

Bob

[brokemoto]

KenRay The steel mill stuff they have looks good, too. Have a real nice crane kit. They are open to suggestions of items that are needed. Bob

Ya' know, now that you mention it, it might be KenRay ingot buggies that I bought.  I was going to cut down some B-mann gondolas or nineteenth century flat cars for that, but then I saw the ingot buggies.  I will have to look for them, and see if they are KenRay or Peach Creek.

 I did find the blast furnace and rolling mill kits.  Someone has asked for the rolling mill kit.  The table where I bought them at Timonium, Maryland had a bunch of steel industry stuff and a nice display, too.......or was it Springfield, Massachusetts? ........I forget, now.

[Showme]

  Lo and behold, I went to a train show at Taylor TX yesterday and the Kenray folks were there. I took a couple of pics of what they have available in the way of steel mill cars. The travelling crane is in one of the pics, too. Ken didn't have it completely set up, but the cab and hook are on the ground in front of it.
  They have some really nice military pieces that I couldn't resist. I asked them if they would be interested in making construction equipment and they will be looking into that. Fingers crossed.

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[thomasjmdavis]

There are a few photo backdrops with steel mills on them. I have used (and am using on my new layout) those, with a half a rolling mill up against the wall as a place to load cars.  Cheaper and space saving as well. Not to mention, scribed styrene is available easily to build the same type of structure.

May not be perfectly prototypical, but I am trying to represent a specialty steel company not far from my home, down in Midlothian TX, but common in the US now, which doesn't have the blast furnace, etc.  In truth, more of those these days than the old line steel mills.

Thanks Rossford Yard.  Since I haven't built the layout yet, I could change things around to allow for use of a backdrop, and that might be the best solution.  I remember there being a steel mill backdrop with a prominent blast furnace on the market, but haven't been able to find anything specific recently.  Who made yours? 

Also having some general backdrop difficulties- I'm setting the layout in the mid 50s- so no Sears/Willis Tower, no John Hancock Building, or 90s era autos and railcars- which have eliminated all the "Chicago" backdrops I've found so far.