Refinery petcoke unit

[carlso]

Almost one year ago I posted a build thread for a scratch built coker unit. Had many nice comments and suggestions that were / are very much appreciated. I thought I would bring us up to date.

Yesterday, we had a run day on the Southern New Mexico N Scalers layout in Las Cuces. Here is a picture showing the coker unit. Obviously the railroad has missed making a switch and pulling loads and spotting empties. Ugh, must be the SP ! ! !




Thanks for looking,
Carl

[peteski]

That looks awesome (the entire refinery)!

[carlso]

Thanks Pete ! !

[Jbub]

I agree with Pete, the whole scene looks awesome! Where did you get info about what to put in a refinery scene and what kits were used?

[carlso]

jbub,

Thanks for the nice comment, I truly appreciate comments and / or suggestions to help improve on future efforts. I will attempt to answer you questions as quickly as possible.

I live in El Paso, Texas and was employed at Chevron USA Inc., the last 10 years of my 33 I was a field Transportation Rep. for San Francisco's Supply & Distribution Dpt. assigned to the El Paso Refinery. As such I was in the refinery daily sometimes hourly monitoring haz-mat loading / unloading procedures, I even taught haz-mat regs. to our loaders/unloaders as well. I also managed the refinery's assigned tank car fleets ( LPG, Sulfuric Acid, Molten Sulfur ) as well as the Chevron Asphalt Co's. car fleet of 100+ cars. I basically was responsible for all modes of transportation in my assigned area of West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona for all corp. clients. What a hoot! I also, scheduled and hosted  Chevron's safety Train Haz-Mat training car for Chevron facilities and any fire departments, especially small volunteer departments, first responders, police that requested 49CFR training.

So, I was inside the El Paso, Salt Lake, Richmond,Ca., El Segundo, Ca., and Pascagoula, Miss. Chevron facilities and saw many modelling opportunities. All are basically the same yet very different. The El Paso refinery was built in 1928 and enlarged many times. The refinery scene, smaller version, was on my NTRAK  modules and I used to be asked many times "how do you know where to connect the pipes". I did not know exactly, just attempted to make them believable.

The kits used were parts from 3 Walthers North Island Refinery kit including storage tanks, the complete Plastruct Chemical refinery kit. Also a large amount of styrene tubing and Plastructs white coated wire.

I totally scratch built the old style cat cracker with Tylenol and medicine bottles, cigar tubes and such. It is a very good rendition of the once used, now demolished, cracker in El Pao. The crude floating roof tanks are from PVC caps and Plastruct parts, the recently added coker unit was totally scratched as well, along with the T/C loading racks. I used whatever shapes I could find to resemble a rfy. item. The cooling tower, shown in the one image, was totally scratched. The fan housings were from a restaurants cream servers. Believe it or not they are very realistic. Ever hear of a fire in a cooling tower? Well it can happen because the top decking is dry and in this case is wood. There are motors and gear boxes on top to turn the blades. Guess what happens when not serviced in a timely manner. Yep, cooling tower fire. Saw that happen.

BTW, Chevron has a refinery in SLC and Holly Corp. used to have one in Bountiful. Possibly they still offer tours?

Thanks for the interest and I hope I answered your question,
Carl



Later revised car............


How about this very early version of a training car................

[peteski]

Somebody please model those cool "special" tank cars!  I love the one with a door in the end cap!  But they all look very interesting (and unique of course).

[Steveruger45]

Almost one year ago I posted a build thread for a scratch built coker unit. Had many nice comments and suggestions that were / are very much appreciated. I thought I would bring us up to date.

Yesterday, we had a run day on the Southern New Mexico N Scalers layout in Las Cuces. Here is a picture showing the coker unit. Obviously the railroad has missed making a switch and pulling loads and spotting empties. Ugh, must be the SP ! ! !
Thanks for looking,
Carl

Tremendous Carl.  An absolute gem and inspiration.

[carlso]

Thanks all for the nice comments.

The 1st image of the Chevron car was CHVX 911 R and it had a class room inside the tank. You entered the tank through the 1st domeway just to the left of the side ladder. Climb down the internal ladder and view many cutaway valves and other items mounted on shelving. The large air conditioner is on the far left. BTW, this car when 1st placed into revenue service was a 2 compartment car.

The 2nd image is the same car with a few upgrades. The A/C unit was removed and the doorway placed in the B end of car. ID was changed to CPDX 911 R and it was no longer entered from the top side. The domeways on the right side represented different styles of pressure cars and on the left side were examples of non pressure types. Also on the bottom were different unloading valves, steam coil inlets/outlets and such. I am not sure if they placed a door on the other end but I sure hope so for circulation. The trainers for the car, at least in the beginning, were from the DOT test center in Pueblo, Colorado. Very knowledgeable and talented folks.

[Jbub]

jbub,

Thanks for the nice comment, I truly appreciate comments and / or suggestions to help improve on future efforts. I will attempt to answer you questions as quickly as possible.

I live in El Paso, Texas and was employed at Chevron USA Inc., the last 10 years of my 33 I was a field Transportation Rep. for San Francisco's Supply & Distribution Dpt. assigned to the El Paso Refinery. As such I was in the refinery daily sometimes hourly monitoring haz-mat loading / unloading procedures, I even taught haz-mat regs. to our loaders/unloaders as well. I also managed the refinery's assigned tank car fleets ( LPG, Sulfuric Acid, Molten Sulfur ) as well as the Chevron Asphalt Co's. car fleet of 100+ cars. I basically was responsible for all modes of transportation in my assigned area of West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona for all corp. clients. What a hoot! I also, scheduled and hosted  Chevron's safety Train Haz-Mat training car for Chevron facilities and any fire departments, especially small volunteer departments, first responders, police that requested 49CFR training.

So, I was inside the El Paso, Salt Lake, Richmond,Ca., El Segundo, Ca., and Pascagoula, Miss. Chevron facilities and saw many modelling opportunities. All are basically the same yet very different. The El Paso refinery was built in 1928 and enlarged many times. The refinery scene, smaller version, was on my NTRAK  modules and I used to be asked many times "how do you know where to connect the pipes". I did not know exactly, just attempted to make them believable.

The kits used were parts from 3 Walthers North Island Refinery kit including storage tanks, the complete Plastruct Chemical refinery kit. Also a large amount of styrene tubing and Plastructs white coated wire.

I totally scratch built the old style cat cracker with Tylenol and medicine bottles, cigar tubes and such. It is a very good rendition of the once used, now demolished, cracker in El Pao. The crude floating roof tanks are from PVC caps and Plastruct parts, the recently added coker unit was totally scratched as well, along with the T/C loading racks. I used whatever shapes I could find to resemble a rfy. item. The cooling tower, shown in the one image, was totally scratched. The fan housings were from a restaurants cream servers. Believe it or not they are very realistic. Ever hear of a fire in a cooling tower? Well it can happen because the top decking is dry and in this case is wood. There are motors and gear boxes on top to turn the blades. Guess what happens when not serviced in a timely manner. Yep, cooling tower fire. Saw that happen.

BTW, Chevron has a refinery in SLC and Holly Corp. used to have one in Bountiful. Possibly they still offer tours?

Thanks for the interest and I hope I answered your question,
Carl

Thanks for the info! There are 5 refineries north of Salt Lake all withing a 7 mile stretch. Tesoro(Marathon), Chevron, Big West Oil, Silver Eagle and Holly. I'm really interested in doing a scene that involves either Silver Eagle or Holly due to the unique track arrangements at both of them. Both refineries take and send cars from the UP main on the east side of the plant and from the former DRGW mainline between SLC and Ogden on the west side. The DRGW track north of Holly has been removed after severe flooding of the Great Salt Lake in 1983 but still serves two other businesses (lumber and steel pipe) and feeds the small yard that Big West Oil has for their refinery as well as Advanced Drainage System pipe manufacturing. There's a lot of real estate here and a lot of modern switching so coming up with a realistic compressed track plan may prove daunting. Hey DKS, you gotta minute? 
What really caught my eye was your cooling tower. It looks just like the one at Big West Oil. I guess having operational knowledge of refineries helps in building models of the them. I might have to bend your ear in the future when it comes time to building the layout.