A steel mill would take up a huge space to even look plausible so if you want one in that small of a space the way I would do it is to give the mill its own private railroad and model the interchange yard. Then extend a track under some pipes or behind a building and into a staging yard inside a larger structure like a rolling mill or blowerhouse. If you had enough space you could model a few of the buildings as well and use background flats and photo backdrops to suggest a larger mill.
Here’s Ken Larson’s rendition. I hope he doesn’t mind. It is HO scale and the slides are from his NMRA presentation. Keep in mind it’s only a small portion of a steel complex. One near my house is about 3 miles long had has about 20 tracks side by side. So an N-scale layout modeling that steel mill would be 99 feet long.
A steel mill in your available space is do-able, tight but, do-able. You might want to think mini-mill. You could get a way with an arc furnace w/ associated scrap yard, rolling mill w/ ingot storage yard and a loading/unloading area. I wouldn’t think integrated mill as there are a lot more buildings that go int one of those.
My layout is an integrated mill and is 5’ x 24’ and still not big enough to fit all that I wanted. There is enough info on the net to keep you at your computer for years just pouring over all of it. Google “mini mill, steel” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. I could read this stuff all day.
I would use the building dimensions for the structures you would like to use to create a mockup. Place the mockups around the available space. Pin some track down too.
Live with it for a while, then move it around until you get an arrangement that you think will work.
A couple of years ago Jim Hediger, MR’s senior editor, did an article about how he modeled the steel industry on his Ohio southern layout. Check it out in the magazine database. If I remember correctly he modeled it as flats against one of the short wall of his basement.
I think you do not need both an arc furnace and a blast furnace.
Also, the rolling mills are particularly long. Instead of modeling the lenght of the building, why not model the width? Saves on space.
Bernard Kempinski modeled a steel mill against the backdrop on his previous layout. There were pictures published about it but I have to look it up in which Kalmbach publication it was published, probably Model Railroad Planning or Great Modelrailroads.
