I am working on a N scale shelf layout and have run into a small layout problem. I want to model a power plant with coal cars coming to the plant. The problem is where do I place it on the layout? I orginally planned to put it near one of the ends but was wondering in really life how close are power plants to towns, cities, etc? Are there power plants placed within towns? Any info would help.
how big of power plant do you want to model. If its the Walthers Northern power and light then it could be in town. Many small towns or citys had a small power plant ran by a local power company. While you do not see many left, they can still be found. Most of the larger power plants are outside of a town. They might have been built away from a town or city but as the city grew, it grew around the power plant. Like their is a good size power plant near downtown Madison Wisconsin.
To a certain extent it depends on your era and the size of the power plant. I worked at the City of Dover (De.) power plant and the City of Vineland (NJ) power stations. Both of these were small plants, operated (at least originally) by the namesake cities. While not exactly in the center of town, they were close enough to be considered within the city limits. I know that when the Dover plant blew the soot out of their boilers, it generally upset the neighbors who had their laundry hung out to dry next door.
On the other hand, modern coal burning power plants tended to be a little more remotely located. They require large properties both for the physical plant, as well as for the coal pile and the ash handling facility. Other things affecting the location of the plant are access to a railroad if the coal is brought in that way, or access to a waterway if the coal is barged in. Generally there is a river or other large waterway adjacent to the facility because water is needed for the plant’s turbine condenser and other cooling, but it is also common to get the water piped from some distance away.
When you do build your power plant, please do not use that large door in the side of the building for coal cars like I’ve seen in the photos of some models. Even though there is a railroad track going into that door, its real purpose is/was for large equipment to be brought into or taken out of the plant. Typically that area in the building was called the crane bay. The turbine hall crane was used to lift equipment on/off either railroad cars or trucks parked in that bay.
[1] The larger (with very high smokestack) coal-fired powerplants in Western Pennsylvania can be next to rural population areas, but are still isolated from those same population areas.
[2] The only time I can recall in-town powerplants was to provide electric juice for the local traction compny PCC passenger units, and; were in a smaller, not extremely large, building that could later be converted to a machine shop after the traction company went out of business. Smaller power substations were also found either in the city or at a more rural location.
The latter example is planned for the N Scale Conemaugh Road & Traction with a powerplant within the community of Conemaugh at least near or adjacent to the car barns. There may also be 1-2 power substations which could be placed in one of those spare layout corner(s).
John Armstrong also wrote about a concept called “loaded coal hoppers in” at one end of the building and “empty coal hoppers out” at the other end of the building. This is actually two trains with identical engines for the visual effect, and would require careful planning, and a layout end would probably not work as a powerplant location.
I always thought the same thing about the large doors. However, I saw a show on one of the learning channels (TLC, History Channel or Discovery) where the guy was on the Alaska RR during the entire hour episode. On one segment, they pushed coal cars into an unloading facility at some university power plant through a big rollup door. They then had to open the doors and manually rake the coal out of the hoppers with shovels into grates in the floor alongside the hoppers. I am convinced there is at least one prototype example for even the most zany situation!
All of the Georgia Power plants here in GA are in mostly rural parts of the state, and always adjacent to a major waterway. The two closest to Atlanta are two of the three largest coal fired plants in the USA. I was going to model one of them, but the space required was so large that I decided to represent it with a staging track running through a hole in the wall.*
Regarding smaller power plants, I can think of the one at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. This samll facility is located on campus very near Stanford Stadium where the Dawgs play. It has a spur running to the coal pile that looks like it has not been used for decades, although I have been told they still receive 3-4 hoppers of coal on a regular basis.
Here are some links to aerial views of the plants I have mentioned:
Georgia Power Plant Scherer, near Macon, GA (largest coal fired plant in the USA
I live near Baltimore, which has at least two large power plants downtown (on the waterfront, of course - hard to make steam without water!) Regarding where to place your powerplant, however: you might take a lesson from a common arrangement in large, often remote western power generating stations. The coal arrives in trains on a “balloon track,” which in model railroad terms would be a tight reverse loop. This could be modeled in an 18-inch diameter in N scale, so if you have a space that wide at one end, you COULD put the power plant at the end of the line, and coal trains could be pulled through the unloader, then loop around on the reverse loop and come out the way they came in. The only hitch is, the loop must be big enough to hold the entire train, or it will run into itself coming out. As an easy alternative, you could make the balloon track actually be the end of a dogbone, so you could use seperate tracks coming into and out of the area of the power plant.
Yes, there are a number of power stations in the area of Baltimore. You’ve got Brandon Shores and Wagner sort of to the east, and Crane Station to the north. I worked at all three of those locations. There was another plant I believe just south of the McHenry tunnel. Worked there also. I forget the name of it, but it was an old place and I think they shut it down a couple years ago. The other place I think you are talking about is around I395(?). I think this is actually what they used to call a trash to cash facility. I believe that they burn refuse there.
The water from the river/bay is really used for cooling of the turbine-generators, the turbine exhaust steam in the condenser, and balance of plant coolers. A lot of the newer plants use what is called a closed cooling water system to do the same thing. When raw river/bay water is used for cooling, there is a lot of gunk that can accumulate in the cond
http://cs.trains.com/forums/1461093/ShowPost.aspx
In this thread are some links and diagrams of the two coal-fired plants in MADison, WI. A ways down on the first page. Both plants are in the middle of town, one is in the middle of the UW campus.
I am planning a small (Note small) plant with chimneys and feeds a industry. I noticed that on this thread is posting about the large door being only used for crane of machinery into and out of the facility. Does the overhead crane inside the place have the “Reach” to get to a boiler or turbine?
WHen i think of Power Plants I think of Conowingo Hydro or really large plants around the USA. However, I think there was a hospital or school power plant on the B&O that recieved coal up a steep grade.
Doesnt a power plant with coal have the ability to pipe hot water and steam to a industry?
Does the big brick chimneys have to rest on the ground or do the base must be elevated? Does it mean that there is a basement to some of the plants?
How many coal cars does one feed a small plant (In a workday) with three boilers about 120 ton each? I think some of the really big power plants consume 400 ton per boiler per hour in modern times, way too much for what I have in mind.
Doesnt the coal require some kind of cannon to be fired into the boiler to burn?
What is the different between a shore plant and those used in Maritime Commerce?
Didnt power plants require firebrick replacement or other services in addition to just coal?
How often would that big door be open to bring out or in machinery and why?
Finally what about alternative fuels? You think a coal plant would also have oil as a backup or in extreme cases a Steam Locomotive parked nearby and hooked up.
Sorry for many questions but Im hoping to learn more before construction starts.
I was hoping to get a wide variety of options and it looks like I have. I saw the discovery channel episode in Alaska and was looking at building something similar to that. My new layout will feature industries that my family and friends work at. I work for a company ships John Deere products overseas (I am supervisor of a division that puts big disk plows and backhoe parts in containers and ships them all over the world). My wife works for the local power company and is going to set up a tour of their plant and rail system. My hunting buddies work for a pork processing plant. I figured I would throw in a warehouse and a grain elevator for grins ( I live in Iowa so they are common). I also get to see the Davenport, Iowa yard for the Iowa, Central, and Eastern on my way to work everyday and see locos pushing in cars to industries around where I work so I have some good inspriation.
Last Chance:
Some answers (comments) to some of your questions.
Conowingo is, as you state, a hydro-electric plant. Obviously there are no coal cars there.
When people start talking about hospitals, universities, or factories that get coal delivered up an unloading trestle, in many cases there was no power generation equipment associated with the coal. The coal was used only to feed a boiler which made steam for heating and hot water.
In other cases there would be a turbine generator. A boiler made steam, which was fed to the turbine to make power (electricity) which was used to power the factory. Many times the turbine used would be called an extraction turbine, especially if it were used in a refinery or a paperplant. Different processes in the plant would require steam at different pressures, so steam was extracted from the turbine at different locations (called stages) at the required pressures.
In some cases a larger power plant would provide steam heat to a larger area, say a city. Obviously we are talking a much bigger plant than one used to heat an industry. Pennsylvania Electric used to have a plant called Front Street (iirc) in Erie Pa. that did this.
The typical power plant is divided into two sections, the boiler (or reactor) and the turbine building. I’m familiar with the turbine building. That large door you are talking about generally goes into the crane bay. If there is more than one turbine in the building, there is typically more than one crane bay. The door is generally kept shut in the cold months and only opened to get stuff in or out. In the hot months it is not unusual to keep the door open continuously to get some air circulation. Yes, birds, bugs, and furry critters also sneak in.
The turbine sits on its own elevated foundation or pedestal. This is generally concrete, but steel foundations were sometimes used. The rest of the surrou
What era is your layout? Today most small industry buys power and even steam in cities. The one exception I know of is college campuses (sp). They all seem to have their own power plants for heating all the buildings. Put in the corner of your layout the college of your choice could be done in a photo mural behind it and it could receive as many as three or four cars a day dependent on how big the school was.
It wouldn’t be unusual for a big city to have one or two older, smaller power plants ‘in town’ with one or two larger more modern plants located on the outskirts. I know here in St.Paul the High Bridge plant gets coal by rail in regular shipments, it’s pretty close to downtown St.Paul and has been there a long time.
University of Minnesota gets coal for it’s heating plant by rail, and uses an ALCO switcher to move the cars around!!
The era for my layout is modern (today). I am looking at building a small N scale shelf type layout in sections. My track plan fits with the power plant at the end of the layout and it seems to work spacing wise as well as realism wise.
Historically electric generating stations were built as close as possible to the load center because transmission lines are expensive, transmission losses are costly, the technology for long-distance transmission had not been developed, and emissions regulations were limited or non-existant. Most coal-fired generating stations in the 1910-1950 era were built immediately adjacent to the industry they supported or as central as possible to the municipality they supplied. If possible they were built next to a lake or river to obtain free cooling water.
During the 1930s and 1940s rapid advancement was made in long-distance electrical transmission technology, in large part to enable the construction of power stations at remote dams such as Boulder, Grand Coulee, and Bonneville, and it became economical to employ. Beginning in the 1950s, many large generating stations were built mine-mouth in order to reduce the high cost of coal transportation whether by barge or rail, or both. Numerous mine-mouth plants were built in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as several in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, and one in Washington State. Railroads were able to use the mine-mouth threat to convince the Interstate Commerce Commission to agree in 1958 to allow railroads to offer unit-train rates on a broad basis (which had been forbidden by law since the early 1900s). The first railroads to widely employ unit trains were the B&O, PRR, and Erie. As a result of railroads being able to reduce their cost of coal transportation drastically, mine-mouth plants were rendered less attractive to utilities and many large powerplants in the 1960-1970 era were constructed near to the load centers instead of at the mine.
Local emissions ordinances began appearing in the 1940s and with the enactment of the federal Clean Air Act in 1970 the small coal-fired powerplant inside a city became uneconomical. Many of these plants were old and their equipment obsolet
It seems that fuel oil is somewhere between bunker C and Desiel.
270 gallons make a ton. How much does this stuff get consumed and how long does it take to burn it to raise steam and turn power?
The reason Im asking is that 8 and 10 thousand gallon tank cars suddenly only hold…37 ton each or less and 4 of them on the power plant intake spur suddenly seems inadequate. Other power plant oil threads refer to hundreds of units in oil if not millions.
Am I on track here?
Are you on track ? That depends on where you are aiming to go [:)]
Is four 10 000 gallon tank cars on a power plant unloading spur reasonable for a model train layout?
Depends on what you are trying to model - the operation of a powerplant or railroading, and it depends how much selective compression you are willing to or forced to live with, given whatever amount of physical layout space you have available.
You can of course always increase the frequency of deliveries - ie deliver cuts of four cars more often, or postulate larger underground storage tanks, or postulate that today is a slow day since a lot of tank cars was delivered and unloaded yesterday or whatever.
You do what you can with what you have.
As a rule of the thumb when I draw a H0 scale track plan based on a prototype, I use 1:3 or 1:4 as a somewhat reasonable selective compression ratio for a switching layout - making a typical layout local freight train of about 8-10 cars the equivalent of a local with 30-40 cars in reality, or a spur with 4 cars on it the equivalent of about 12-16 cars in reality.
Seems to work okay for me visually, your mileage may vary [:)]
Grin,
Stein
I had 4 per operations session planned and these were the little ones in the steam era. Once I starting to think about the late 70’s and each tank car capacities increased I realized that power plant must be more hungry (If you please) and want to drink more of the fuel.
Space on my area happens to be limited, I think it cuts a 10 inch by two feet space so far depending on switch placement. So, a cut of 4 steam fuel tank cars or two/three modern big tankcars is the maximum.
I remember a very small boiler house that fed a campus of several buildings. It was a pair of boilers that were 12 feet across and about 20 long inside a large structure that had very tall windows. These things would roar in the morning supplying hot water to 4 seperate dorms I think there would be approx 460 people making morning preparations at the same time the Cafeteria would be fixing meals.
Ive seen other boilers and power plants over the years live or dead and knew that I would be modeling one someday. But details such as fuel useage/hour and maintaince is only now being dug up. Alot of these places were kind of not allowing stray drivers or lookyloos to poke around and take a look see.
In trucking we have witnessed some oversized loads out of Ohio with B&W Boilers and some of these loads required the very best equiptment and extreme math associated with high, wide and weight to run em legally and safely.
See if you can Google some pictures of Raton, NM… they have an old coal powered plant right in town.
Here is a plant on the Mississippi north of st louis on the Illinois side and about 1 mile or less from town
And this building is a sub power plant in the middle of town a few blocks from me