I love this posting, as it gives me a chance to talk about the oil bizznessss…
As someone indicated, the vast majority of “additives” come into the refinery in a liquid state, obviously almost always via tank car.
However, Boxcars do have their place in a refinery, bringing in various bagged/drum chemicals, high value platinum catalyst (replaced every two years or so in the FCC - fluid catalitic cracker unit), clays & special earth, etc., etc. Also, refineries have huge maintenance departments (often about 1/3 of total employees), and various metal/wood building materials, pumps, valves, lubes, and the like were brought in as well.
On the outbound side, boxcars took out “used” chemicals, wax production (if they had a wax plant), and lubes in various size containers (if they had a lube plant), etc.
During construction or “turnaround” (the periodic complete redo of various units), you could find flat cars or even depressed center flat cars bringing in vessels or generators or whatever.
Frankly, it is highly possible to see just about any car you would normally run (ex stock cars) in a refinery at one time or another.
For my HO Colorado Kansas and Nebraska Railroad’s oil storage/tank farm industries, I plan to use ABS/PVC fittings. I work at a plumbing supply house in Denver, and have looked at the 1 1/2, 2, 3, and 4-inch couplings, end caps, etc. and such for the storage tanks. I also plan to use a 4x2" reducer, capped on the 4" side, on top of two 2" couplings; puttied, sanded smooth, painted, and lettered as a water storage tank for a small town. (Also 2" pipe cut and glued for a grain elevator or two. )
How many valves, fittings or such metal items does a refinery go through each month? Im thinking of building a industry that will make these items and ship em to refinerys for additional traffic.
That’s a very big question. The answer really depends on the size of the refinery, the status of existing piping/valves/pumps/etc, and the like.
Large refineries tend to rebuild their own pumps (and often valves) and most will keep spares readily available (downtime at a refinery is extremely costly). If they don’t do the rebuilds themselves, they will ship them out. Pumps/Motors/Valves come in all sizes, and “these days” those large refineries tend to be in areas where service companies have cropped up nearby - thus movements are mostly via truck. But the humongous items tend - not always - to go by rail.
Usually the major traffic is right before a construction/expansion project or right before a major “turnaround”. Turnarounds typically happen in the spring, at the time a refinery goes from maximizing winter fuel oil production to summer gasoline production. During this time, major units within the refinery will be shut down, torn apart, rebuilt, and brought back on line. For major refineries, this is a 6-8 week process, typically about every two years.
I would suggest that you could always have a flat or two of machinery and a couple of boxcars of “stuff” going in/out of a refinery at any given time - and no one should find fault with that.
If I were to use 2-bay covered hoppers (Like the ones used for Cement) what kind of facility could I use to load the Hoppers? I’ve played with the idea of kitbashing a Walthers Medusa Cement facility by only using 4 storage bins instead of the 8. I also have a Walthers Coaling tower (The cement colored one) I could modify, this way I could include a truck loading shed as well. Just looking for some ideas on the loading procedure for the Coke stuff by rail. Any ideas?
I did get a back issue of the NMRA Scale Rails (Aug 07) with the nice refinery (Augusta mimic). He (Stephen Priest) did an outstanding job! VERY inspirational! May take me awhile, but my Augusta “Mobil” (Not Texaco) Refinery will be atleast that good and
I also used PVC fittings but in N. Worked great. Fittings cut in half and used in conjuction with a painted background greatly improved the illusion of debth/size. Sorry, no pics as layout has gone to layout heaven.
As a commercial real estate broker, I specialize in selling existing rail / marine petroleum terminals and development sites. Oil refineries are massive in size and will need a large amount of space even in HO scale.
I am in progress of constructing an HO scale 2’ x 12’ shelf layout that will provide operation for two different yard staging and switching applications. An Ethanol / Gasoline blending and tank storage facility with an adjacent semi truck loading rack will be on one side of the layout.
My petroleum terminal layout plan will include oil storage tanks, tank car unloading racks / pumps / piping, Etc. I spent six months planning the track design and also visiting proto type terminals here in NJ. I also spent a lot of time on Google Earth looking at terminals and tracks from the air.
The track plan I finally chose consist of ( 2) six track rail ladders (opposite each other), with a single track main line running through the middle of the yard at a 45 degree angle. There are several engine and car sidings on both sides of the yard, and three bypass tracks. I used Code 100 Atlas Flex and all 17 turnouts are Peco Code 100 Switches. NCE Power-Cab DCC system.
The opposite track ladder at the left end of the layout is planned for an Intermodal Container staging and loading yard , with an overhead traveling container loader. There will also be a warehouse and shipping facility with several tail gate truck loading doors.
I can send photos of the work in progress if asked.
I have been meaning to get out and get permission to extensively photograph this abandoned refinery near Farmington NM. It looks like the perfect size to model. I think it was built in the 50s?
This one also near here (Bloomfield NM) was more recently mothballed about 5 or so years ago. Its larger and more complicated but would definitely be cool to model or approximate. I have visited this one a few times as I am acquainted with the (former) chief chemist. The lab is the longer central building in the center of the refinery.
The thing that interests me about a model of a refinery vs a photo of a refinery is the complexity and the maze of pipes and equipment actually built in 3D. However, that does take a lot of time and knowledge to get it right. Mobilman ? It would be great if you could put together a book like Dean Freytag on modeling a refinery, with lots of pictures and diagrams. (in your spare time LOL)
Not necessarily so. Here is the Bakken Oil Express terminal in Dickinson, ND. It kinda looks like an HO scale layout from the air. Both loops are now complete, each loop has four tracks, oil arrives by truck. For the moment the left loop is used for incoming fracking sand, and different trucks take that stuff north to where it is needed. Those tracks will become a diesel fuel exporting station once the diesel refinery is built just to the west of this layout.
Ethanol plants are much smaller, here is the plant in Richardton:
The facility is on the BNSF main line in Richardton, there are four plant tracks, the plant leases two locomotives for its use. The plant uses coal for its heat, and the plan was to truck the coal from a mine about 60 miles northeast of us, but the engineers did not get his sums just so, and that lower quality coal did not provide the anticipated BTUs, and so now the coal arrives by rail also.
Corn arrives by truck and rail, coal arrives by rail, gasoline arrives by rail (to denature the alcohol, otherwise they would need a liqueur license to export the stuff, and it would have to be sold by the quart–What the heck: corn squeezin’s is corn squeezin’s.) Ethanol goes out by rail, and Brewer’s yeast goes out both by truck and by rail. Dry brewer’s yeast goes out by rail, wet b
I have a large tank farm on my ho layout. I kit bashed some of the tanks. Some of the tanks I scratch built. All of the scale piping and supports are parts from PLASTRUCT. Check out PLASTRUCT on line catalog before doing anything. I wish I knew how to post snaps of my tank farm.
Hey, I was just thinking of an oil refinery type industry for my new layout. Having seen a few of them and the tangle of pipes and tanks, with some creativity with plastic container tops and other things, one should be able to build a good set up. There is some protein drink my wife uses and the scoops could be used as tanks in a model. The plastic top off a shaving cream can and the list goes on as to what you can use.
I am working on my oil refienry/chemical plant. I is a combiantion of the Walthers North Island and Vollmer refienries. I will have two large tanks for crude oil and four small tanks for intermediate/finished products. The scratch built load rack is 13" long and will accomodate 5 fifty foot tank cars. It is not very big, but will give the impression of a larger refinery with all of the piping I will putting in…
Just a suggestion, if you model a tank farm perhaps consider placing a small aircraft (single or twin prop) in the field/buffer zone around it, why you may ask, well recently a small plane went down in a tank farms field it happened about a week ago, it was a belly landing and damaged the craft a little, anyway now a week later the plane is still there, perhaps it’s something to consider to add some little bits of uniqueness to the scene.
I figured I would add my two cents since i have been working on my Refinery for the last 5 months. The main refinery area is approximately 42 inches wide x 24 deep but also extends down the length of the penisula approximately 1x wide and 8 foot long to the Tank loading racks. Products in are catalyst, piping, empty coke hoppers, empty tank cars, and box cars to the warehouse. Products out are filled tanks (jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, asphalt), petroleum coke via hopper and spent catalyst (coverd hopper) for the FCC unit. I am modeling the 1980’s.
Here is an overall shot.
There have been a few more bulidings added since this photo was taken. The primary crude unit has been installed (the heart of the refinery) as well as the crude distallation column. I am still working on the cooling tower and the last little bits of piping between the units. The FCC unit is a actually a photo on the backdrop. I tried very hard to make it difficult to know where the 3D Models begin and the backdrop ends. The piperack going over the track is actually covers up a hole in the backdrop that leads to a staging yard.
I can’t post all the photos here but here is a link to bunch of the different components of the refinery in the d
