I want to model a scrap yard and wondered what it entails. I have just ordered a bunch of “junk” from www.johnnysjunkheap.com. I’ve used John’s product to make removeable scrap loads for my gondolas, which gave me the idea to model a scrap yard. If you go to his home page and click on “Removeable Loads” at the bottom of the page, you will see my instructions for modeling the removeable scrap loads.
I’ve added a spur and have an area about 8" wide and around 20" long to model the scrap yard. I have an overhead traveling crane to which I’ve added a “magnet” to pick up metal scrap. I think a piece of construction equipment might fit in which would be used to push scrap into piles under the magnet. Also, some metals wouldn’t be attracted to the magnet and would need to be shoveled up by a bucket loader or something and placed into the gondolas. Obviously, local trucks could come into the scrap yard to dump metal scrap.
Should I add one of those tall cranes which turn 360 degrees, again with a magnet for picking up scrap? Or, should the crane have one of those shovels that grasp stuff and pick it up?
There was a long thread in the old forum about junk yard fencing if I recall correctly.
With the yard as you describe it (H0?) I would look to make it just a transfer yard… run trucks/semis in with assorted scarp and just transfer it to gons. You would want a scale house, an office, maybe a mess room, maybe an outhouse, staff car park (protected from falling scrap) - probably with a Rolls in it. Maybe a workshop… maybe a hotrod in it. You’d want a yard dog or two. You might have demount bodies or skips stacked at one end, maybe a truck being serviced. There’s loads of things you can do without bothering with piles of junk.
You could have several different buckets/grabs for that overhead crane as well as the magnet… all set neatly at one end of its run where it can swap them around.
You don’t want too many machines in what is a relatively small space once you’ve got the track down one side of it. A front loader would be one real possibility or just an ordinary forklift.
I think that I made some other notes a while back… I’ll take a look…
I saw that article in MR but all the article really talked about is how to make a magnet tool to pick up the scrap. What I was really wanting to know is what kind of cranes are used…overhead or tall 360 degree cranes.
Most junk yards were (or appeared to be) run at minimum cost. One result was that unless there was already some sort of hard base in place little was done to provide hard standing let alone drainage. One of the features of many junk yards was therefore the oily quagmire that we squelched through in search of parts for our old cars. Concern about polluting run-off has done a lot to change this but the old guy with the perpetual cigarette sat in the shed all day wouldn’t have dreamt of the clean-up that would (one day) be required.
Where some sort of hard base was provided it was often demolition rubble. It became ground down and pounded hard by the trucks going in and out and by any cranes working around the yard.
Any rail tracks in a junk yard would, however, be fairly well maintained and drained and the places where anything crossed them would (usually) be pretty solid. This was simply because a de-railed gon not only tied up the yard but would be charged for its time and any repairs.
In order to avoid the risks to locos in junk yards the shorter spurs were often worked with a cut
This is the secoond time you’ve come across with a huge amount of useful information to one of my posts. The other was on “team tracks”. I really appreciate your insight.
Don’t forget modern yards separate everything, many use roll-off style containers to store stuff they’ll sell somewhere else,old tires, batteries.catalytic converters, aluminum. Most yards I’ve been in lately, still had dirt/mud/ crushed metal for roadways. Many use the big rubber tired front end loaders with forks, like GHQ makes. The one two blocks from me has an old crawler crane, I don’t know if it works, it’s in a corner like Dave said. The one buy me has many late model cars sitting in it. Years ago(the 60’s),one junk yard used a two ton truck with a home made, A-frame, cable-operated hook to move cars and such. There’s usually separate piles of white metals, refrigerators, washers, and the same. The last one I was in, the work crew had a beat up old car they drove around the lot in. It was missing both doors and one fender. Don’t forget stacks of 55 and 40 gallon drums, they’re usually in one corner too. There was one in Yonkers, N.Y. years back that had two crawler cranes, all dirt roads, weeds and the tracks were weed covered also. Sheepscot makes a nice truck-mounted crane, and I think Kibri has a rubber-tired crane with a grapple type clam-shell.
One of the scrapyards near Waynesburg, PA has a variety of equipment. They have a few large cranes, a few tractor-type things, and a few trucks–everything from old pickups to semis. Most of the equipment, although in good repair, is pretty beat up and covered with a coating of mud and rust. From what I remember, most of the scrap is sorted by type. That is, all the junk cars (except for the stripped Ford Aerostar minivan sitting atop the old mining cars) go in one area, the industrial scrap (siding, girders, etc.) in another. They also take some concrete waste–this is piled up along the riverbank to keep the water out during flood season.
One thing I didn’t see mentioned though. Several local yards advertise the prices they pay per pound for aluminum cans. Such signs are usually near the front gates. Speaking of those cans, they usually have their own bin somewhere.
Dave, I’ve got you topped in Fencing. A Junkyard in Grand Rapids Michigan, has a fence made out of old C&O Boxcar parts! I’ll post the picture when i find it
There are probably as many ways to model a scrap yard as there are scrap yards. Depending on the area of your layout you want to dedicate to this most anything would go. A screened fence (to keep the public from seeing an eyesore), a small office, a siding and a front end loader would suffice on my layout.
One way that I like to model space intensive industries, is to not model them. By placing them at the edge of the layout one can have a siding going to said industry giving the impression that it is off the modeled portion. This allows the CEO to incorporate however much of the scene he/she is comfortable with. There might be one or two buildings to give flavor or maybe a few piles prepared for loading or nothing at all. However; I really like the suggestions offered by the other posters. A scrap yard can be a very interesting industry if it is modeled well. One thing to look out for is complete cars empty of interiors and innards. They look odd when viewed in such an angle that one can see tires and wheels but no chassis to connect them. One other thing that I’ve noticed about the yards that I’ve seen, is that the fences are not uniform. There are generally sections that very in age, design, and condition. A yard that I remember from Oskaloosa Iowa had a rear section made up of old farm fence which was quite rusty; with an addition of several rows of barbed wire. Another fence was more of a wall made of wood planking which was around eight feet tall. The side that ran along the railroad mainline and enclosed the siding was of corrigated metal which I think was actually metal roofing material. Inside everything was sorted in piles by material, ie, steel, copper, and etc. Some of the more interesting piles were the sink and bathroom fixtures (bathtubs, toilets, sinks, etc), and the utility piles (washing machines, dryers, freezes, refridgerators, stove). This was a small facility and there were no cars in it. The buiding that was used for the office was an old Victorian two story home. It was highly weathered and as full of junk on the inside as was the outside. There was reference to a Rolls Royce (I think in jest) in one of the replies, but interestingly the proprieter, though dressed appropriately fo
Scrap yards have a lot of machines, from rail mounted cranes to grapple cranes, Kibri makes a grapple crane along with other scrap yard equipment in HO. Below is a photo of one of my scrap yard / steel mill equipment.
The scrap grapple is a Liebherr 934 wheel grapple crane made by kibri. The kress scrap box carrier is scratch built by me. Walthers makes an American 25 ton crane that would look quite nicely in a scrap yard of any size.
If you need other help feel free to shoot me an e-mail off page.
I toured a scrap metal dealer in Dearborn, MI with the Railroad Industrial SIG in April 2003 and got a few dozen photos, lotsa cool machinery [:P] — just give me a couple hours to scan them all in and I’ll post the links!
There have be a few articles in MR and RMC over the years, and I think one of the MR items was reprinted in one of their books.
There is an operating scrap yard near here that is - in comparision to most others I’ve seen - quite neat and clean. The yard handles high value metals (that don’t rust) like aluminum, titanium, stainless steel, and nickel alloys judging by the colors. Nowadays everything looks silvery in the yard.
As an alternative, a company has woodchip cars filled with demolition waste from NY and CT parked on an old Youngstown & Southern siding where they are unloaded with a “pincher” type tracked crane into semitrailer dumptrucks for transport to a nearby strip mine for disposal.
OK Here are the image links I promised earlier. The images aren’t in any logical order, and I can’t really offer any detailed explanations of what some of these things are. Aside from that, they still “cry out” to be modeled![:D]
One way to have fun is to have an old bad loco to cut up. Any poor cheap model that dosen’t run can apply. Any old freight car you don’t have all the parts for & don’t want to convert to MTL/ KD couplers/trucks. An old boxcar less it’s wheels could be used as a blacksmith shop.
For equipment, you most likely need a wheel loader to move scrap around. A large one equipped with forks could load the scrap into the gondola. A Cat tele handler would fill the bill.
If you want to recycle wood waste or building materials, a tub grinder would be a good machine to have. The tub acts like a huge grinder to turn trees into wood chips. Cement from the street gets turned into pebbles or sand. A side business is to bag & sell the matertials for homeowners or other uses. The wood waste can be good looking mulch. Most of it would be sent off to the paper mill or concrete plant.
