Greetings,
One of the big attractions at Trainfest 2005 was the N-scale “layout” from P&H Mining (Harnischfeger Co) in Milwaukee, WI. I happened to see video of the P&H Layout being shown off at a Mine Expo in Las Vegas, NV when I toured P&H with the NMRA Industrial SIG in April 2005. They said it was the hit of the show.
Well they decided to show it off at Trainfest 2005. Again it was a big hit. It shows P&H equipment working a Powder River Coal Mine. It is complete with a tipple loader and coal train. The coal train actually loads and unloads itself. The train enters the loader empty and comes out loaded. The tricks is pretty neat, a brass collar goes over the track and trips a small wire on top of the car which turns the load inside over to either load or empty.
Here are some photos of the layout at Trainfest. Over 2600 hours of work went into the layout.
Here is a portion of the layout. Several Electric shovels plus one big Dragline are working, plus a blast hole driller is preparing for the next blast.
One of the electric shovels fills a mine truck.
The Dragline is BIG. It is digging down into the coal seam.
Here the trucks dump into the loader. Also the servicing area can be seen.
The P&H crew is putting together a NEW shovel. On the right are railcars bringing in the larger components.
It was very interesting to see a large corporation build an N scale layout to show off their products, and it was nice to see the great response from the people.
Keith Schmidt