I don’t have a steel mill on the layout-there’s just no more room. How are the ladle cars (bottle cars) transported to the steel mills? Are they already built and placed on the rails via special load trains or are they delivered as kits and built on the site? It would be interesting to model a special train with a ladle car or two going somewhere far away.
Very unlikely for a loaded Bottle Car to be on a main line railroad. They could be moved empty from factory to mill, moved mill to factory for heavy repairs or just moving between mills. Due ot the lateral forces on the bottle rotation bearing I beleive the car would be moved on the end of the train.
It seems to depend a lot on where your line is.
I asked a question about torpedo cars a few months ago. (I tried to find it…[*-)])
It seems from that, that there are some RR that are heavily steel based that regularly run torpedos on their main track. Also in places like the Chicago area torpedos get run by people like Conrail between places that melt the steel and places that roll it (or whatever)… usually when there is an inbalance of production and demand at different sites.
So, if you’re in the right place, you can run trains with torpedoes loaded with hot metal.
If you’re not in the right place it would seem likely that the only movement would be of empty cars between works when they were sold or re-located.
The opinion expressed was that maintenance of these cars was done within the works. No-one confirmed or denied this.
The only maintenance I can think of that might cause the whole car to go off site would be wheel turning… BUT (a) the cars wouldn’t be doing that great a mileage to make this happen often and (b) it could be that the wheelsets are swapped on site when a turning is needed. Over here I regularly see wheelsets of all different sizes loaded on flatbed trucks. Occasionally I see a complete truck. I haven’t seen even pics of either as a rail load in decades… maybe US practice is different.
Delivery of a new car would be once in a blue moon or two. Dead cars for scrapping I would expect to be cut up in the works with all the metal fed into a furnace… what would be the point of selling it to a scrap merchant? There would also probably be some environmental issues in getting rid of these cars these days.
This all depends on the cars you’re talking about being the torpedo/bottle cars that Walthers do the 6 axle model of. If you’re talking about sla
actually, the bottle or topedo cars usually carry molten iron from blast furnaces to other steel making operations like basic oxygen furnaces or in older times, to open hearth furnaces and /or bessemer converters. usually but not always in the same plant complex. the smaller ladel cars usually haul the slag to a nearby dumping site adjacent to the steel mill. there are some neat videos of this slag being dumped on youtube.
can’t remember where i saw it but there were some photos on the web of slag ladels being hauled on heavy duty flat cars. they were turned on their sides and blocked and tied down in that postition. i guess the rest of the car moved in a similar fashion and the mill assembled the thing when they got all the parts. i have a set of the walters slag cars and i might just use the ladels for h/d flat car loads since i will never get around to modeling a steel mill.
grizlump
What do you do with steel-mill-specific cars when you don 't have room for a steel mill?
I have done some limited study of steel mill traffic- I was interested in modeling mainline traffic near Texas Gulf Coast related to a steel mill. Texas Gulf Coast and steel mill are atypical as connected topics, but there was the Sheffield Steel works at Houston from World War II to about 1980s. Even my dream scheme layout which would have filled a 30 by 40 foot room in N scale did not have room for a steel mill and the entire Port of Houston refinery district. But I did think I could model the mainline traffic with interchange to a port terminal switching yard, which transferred cars from trunkline to portside industries…
South Texas Urban Belt was to have been the visible interchange yard to unmodeled port industries. Since it did not really go anywhere, its initials were appropriate- S.T.U.B.
My current layout under construction will model MANY but not all of the important traffic-producing industries “loosely based on” those in 1950s Galveston, Texas: export grain, export cotton, export sulphur, import bananas. import raw sugar, import raw coffee, oystershell dredging. I chose those industries, but that leaves out large-scale shipbuilding, industrial gases and Corps of Engineers navigation maintenance depot. I have a hidden staging with three double-ended through staging tracks, and I squeezed in a fourth single-ended spur to represent “another part of the harbor.” (Based on Shakespeare’s use of “Another part of the forest” as a stage direction!) Occasional port-switching-raiulroad transfers will access this track to pick-up and deliver traffic releated to unmodeled ind
Steel Ops are HUGE. There will almost always only be one car, and the above about them in “captive service” is also true.
There was an article in Trains Mag a few months back by a guy who was a Trainmaster for a steel mill, might be of interest to you. And I know with all the track in Chicaog and Gary, Bottle Cars can go a lot of places, but that probably won;t help you much.
as fo Ladle cars, You could do as I’m doing.
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You could always find use for a bottle car for hauling lead to your newly built bullet factory, just a suggestion.
I think ladle cars and bottle cars are two different animals, but I could be wrong. Anyway, if you would be happy with only a part of a ladle car being transported, there is a photo of a ladle by itself being transported on a flat car in the Conrail Color Guide. The ladle is shown being shipped in the 90 degree from normal upright position on cribbing on a flatcar.
You are right, the Ladle, or Kettle car is like the one I posted earlier. A Bottle or Torpedo car is the long tube.
A steel mill that does not have it’s own blast furnace would be called a “Merchant Steel Mill” I think this is the correct term. They would have molten steel delivered from a nearby mill with a blast furnace. The extreme heat and potential safety hazard from leaks, etc, would require a special move. This would be done by the class one railroad itself with a trained crew, not the mill switcher for example. I am certain, with the experience on this forum, that someone will tell us if these moves were made by steel mill switchers and their crews.They would be delivered to an open hearth mill in the old days where they would blend scrap steel with molten steel and melt it together.
The cars would be torpedo type separated by gondolas and no where near the locomotive or caboose. No other cars would be in the movement.
The several books on steel mills by Kalmbach show these movements and discuss them. You do not need a mill to have a movement like this as both could be offline.
I worked for US Steel Fairless Works during my high school and college summers. We had seven blast furnaces and used all of this steel on the premises. The open hearth mills were the biggest customer of the blast furnace. Sadly this mill is only a memory.
Hope this helps, Chris
I have both a torpedo and a slag car which will get run on my layout from time to time as a special movement. One engine, one car… to gum up everything else on the schedule. : )
dlm