Help me design a steel mill

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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Hi guys.

I need your help. I like big things, I have a huge passenger station on my current layout and since I plan to expand the layout room with a 24*24 foot expansion I want a large suitable focal point there too.

Which leads me to the steel mill. Since Walther’s are releasing their steel mill next year my plan is to buy and start building the buildings then. Partially because I like building building and they do take time but I’m also afraid that they might be gone when the expansion is done(which will probably not be for another year.

So basically the only limitations to this steel mill is the dimension mentioned above. it will be double decked. On one of the levels I plan to use a pier and a freighter to ship iron ore on.

So that is my first question. How many piers would make a suitable and decent ore pier?

Second and more importantly, which of the steel mill buildings would I need duplicates of?

Third, any additional building required to make it a credible steel mill?

Fourth. How would you go about designing the plan? I got two ideas.

Number one is to make a long shallow, 2 foot mill area which could then be very long. The second alternative is to use a peninsula which could then be 4 feet wide. But that would be limited in length to about 18 feet when considering aisles.

Any hep, any link to plans over steel mills would be very nice. Right now I feel that I lack knowledge of how to build a good and credible layout.

Thanks,

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First I would buy the Kalmbach book by Dean Freytag on steel mills.

You don’t want a pier to SHIP iron ore, you want a pier to UNLOAD iron ore. Why would you ship iron ore from a steel mill? Most of the unloading is done with huge unloading cranes or Hullett unloaders (for which there are no commercial models). To get a credible ore LOADING dock you will need about 8-12 ft of Walthers ore dock kits.

Depending on the era and type of steel mill you could use all of them. Since you are wanting to have an ore ship, that means you will want a blast furnace. To fuel the blast furnace you will need coke, which means the coking plant. Then you will want rolling mills. The Walthers one is very small. You could easily put 2 or 3 of them together to get a building a little more in scale with a real mill building. If you wanted you could have an electric arc furnace too, for speacialty steels.

Depends what you think is credible. Steel mills are large animals. The larger you can make each of the buildings, the more credible it will be. I bought .060 sheet styrene and made large buildings with that styrene core and then covered it with Evergreen corrugated plastic sheet (for a brief moment in 2004 I owned every sheet of .040 spacing corrugated Evergreen sheet within a 50 mile radiu

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Dehusman. The Freytag book has long been on my list that i scout for at a reasonable prize and that ships to Sweden. So far, no such luck. 200$ is the cheapest I’ve been able to find and then ad taxes when it hits Sweden and it’s to much for me right now. But I do want that book.

I’ve been reading up on Swedish steel mills(yeah we are huge exporter of iron) but I’m not sure how much are the same.

About the loading dock. The entire layout that I’m gonna end up having will be rather large. So I plan to actually have a loading dock as well as the steel mill at separate locations. How this will fit eventually isn’t determined 100% yet but I love marine modelling so much that I will include this. This doesn’t have to be huge and it gives me a reason to ad another boat.

The unloading crane is already bought and built. So that is already fixed.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

Magnus

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Dean Freytag’s layout was in the November 2003 Model Ralroader. It features the steel industry. This abstract is online:
http://www.trains.com/MRR/default.aspx?c=a&id=211

Also see Darius Chagnon’s article on steel mill layouts in MR, January 1999.

Byron
Model RR Blog

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Magnus;

24’ x 24’ expansion, might be big enough for just the steel mill. I’ve worked in maintainence in the Lorain(Ohio) works for 36+ years. Our mill is approx 1 1/4 miles long, by anywhere from a 1/2 to 3/4 miles wide.

Heres a basic flow of the area. Start with a 1300’ long dock, for the ships to unload iron ore, and coke. Coke is also brought in by rail CSX and NS yards at each end of the plant. Rail movements inside the plant, are handled by Lake Terminal RR.

The raw materials are the loaded into underground bins to be carried by skip cars to the top of the blast furnaces (4). The raw iron is then tapped into submarine ladle cars, and taken to the B.O.P.

The bop, a huge cavernous building, converts iron to steel. From the bop, the steel travels to either a continous billet caster, a continous bloom caster, or is poured into ingots.

From there the flow is; Ingots go to the reheating pits after stripping. Fro the pits to the rolling mill for rolling shaping and sizing, to either squares, for the Bar Mills, or rounds for the Seamless Pipe Mills.

Cast blooms skip the reheat and first series rolling, going to a separate bloom reheat furnace, then into the rolling mill intermediated rolling area to be rolled into squares or rounds for other applications

Billets can be sent directly to other mills or customers.

Best way to get a better idea of an integrated steel mill, is to research them on the net, or better yet, if you know someone who works in one, wrangle a drive thru tour.

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Magnus; If you have more questions, contact me @

randystaller@hotmail.com

R. Staller

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Bernard Kempinski has done a remarkable steel mill layout(s) and in N Scale!

“Super-compact Steel Mill” - 1999 Model Railroad Planning…

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=MRP&MO=1&YR=1999&output=3&sort=2

“Building A Steel Mill, Part 1” - March/April 1998 N Scale Magazine…

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=NSCA&MO=3&YR=1998&output=3&sort=2

“Building A Steel Mill, Part 2” - May/June 1998 N Scale Magazine…

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=NSCA&MO=5&YR=1998&output=3&sort=2

All three articles are in my library. They are quite extensive, and the steel mills are built with a combination of Walthers kits plus scratch-building. The articles also go into rationale of the different types of steel mills. Can you imagine the prototype scaling by using Walthers HO Scale mill kits plus N Scale ladders, windows, fixtures, engines, gondolas, etc.?

2 more Bernard Kempinski articles are in Oct. 2000 Railmodel Journal…

http://index.mr

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Magnus

Railroad Line Forums\Forums\Model Railroad Forums\Model Railroad Construction\Harrisburg Terminal Railroad (HTRR) shows one mans steel mill and a lot of discusion about operations involving the mill.

Hope this helps,

Wayne.

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Magnus

Go to http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/STEEL/

Everything you want to know about steel mill modeling is there

scott

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Thanks R. Staller and all you others as well. Great answers. This will let me get started planning some what. The good thing about planning is that it’s free and it’s fun.

I’m gonna look into to those articles you guys suggested as well. I need to read up on these issues to get a better grasp on what each part of the mill does.

Thanks again guys, especially R. Staller for your description of the mill.

Magnus

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Have you seen the video of the new Walthers steel mill yet?
http://www.walthers.com/exec/page/videos

Looks really nice.

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I, also, recommend Freytag’s book on steel mills, (or go to the MR article). My 24’x24’ layout may give you some ideas for your “expansion” (Wow!) I find that a large peninsula gives me room for a pass-through staging yard, a round house, and town. In 2009, I plan to include parts of Walther’s Steel Mill complex on the peninsula, which borders on the harbor with a 4 track raillroad car ferry and an iron ore carrier. The 18 shute loaqding dock requires elevated ore car delivery train tracks. What you want is a crane to unload the ore carrier onto ore cars, for delivery to the Steel Mill. Or, you may choose to include a mountain mine with a three track ore loading building. It seems like the Walthers Steel Mill complex will be sold by eBay, where you can plunk down $599.95++, for year 2009 delivery.

Bob Hahn

PS. Be sure to download the peachcreekshops.com mentioned by Chris on the following Post. I ordered the Coke Oven and Quencher and the Walthers Blast Furnace. I spent nearly an hour viewing all the attached photos and articles. Wow!

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Have you had a chance to look at Peach Creek Shops in Laurel, MD?

www.peachcreekshops.com

They have a section on steel mill models and steel mill modeling groups. This is a great resource.

Chris

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The NMRA website says they are sold out of the Dean Freytag reprint from Walthers.

The Walthers steel mill diorama that is featured on their video was at this year’s Trainfest in Milwaukee. Very nice. The old kits are significantly improved.

Dave Nelson

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Yes I know about the book, I just hope that it returns along with the rest. It would be kind of logical.

The new kits sure do look nice and I really look forward to building them.

Thanks for all the links and sugestions guys. I’m looking in to them all and picking up some useful info. Now, if I only could find that steel book!

Magnus