Does anyone know what size power plant Walthers Northern Light & Power is modeled after? I have a friend which has it but wants to make it a little more realistic with enough trackage to keep a few days worth of loaded coal hoppers on site. He has already bought the Walthers interior detial kit and is in the process of tracking down the substation detial kit. We are in the process of debating who gets to buy Industries Along the Track Side: 2 and who gets to borrow it. He bought it for the coal customer chapters but there are a few chapters that interest me.
Along the same topic, out of plain curiosity how big are the different 50T, 55T, and 70T hopper cars? I have XtrckCAD and noticed their listings for hopper cars came in 25, 30, and 45 feet instead of the car tonnage and it made me curious.
It’s not a far cry from the one in the town where I grew up. It was a pretty small power plant, only supplying the town and local area. As I recall the track could only take a couple of hoppers at a time, so lots of hoppers and unit trains are out of proportion. My guesstimate was a handfull of cars per week at the most and perhaps only one or two.
What was most interesting was the power plant was basically on a manmade island between the river and a canal and was served by a switchback that also served a cotton mill and pole yard.
Are you aware that there is a “limited preview” version of Industries Along the Tracks 2 on Google Books? At least several pages can be viewed that way and might include the pages you want most. I am glad I have the entire series of books in hard copy of course and would highly recommend all of them.
A Walthers publication which is also on the internet (something called The Insider’s Report) talks about the Northern Light & Power, provides some info on prototype power plants, and has a photo by Walthers employee (and frequenet Railfan & Railroad author) Bob Gallegos of a prototype in Owatonna Minnesota that I suspect was the major inspiration for the Walthers structure. A lot of Bob’s photos are used by Walthers in that way as he is a proflific and much traveled photographer of structures and scenes. Try this link:
Coal isn’t always delivered and dumped directly into the plant, it’s not unusual for a power plant to have coal piled up near the building for later use - maybe as a reserve in case of a shipping delay?? Also, it would be common in even a big city that a power plant like the Walthers one might be built in say 1899, with later additions added over the years, either additions to the original building or additional buildings.
The Walthers plant is about the size for a small city or large town if they don’t have a lot heavy industry Most power plants will keep 7 to 30 days of coal on hand (that’s on the ground, not in railcars). If a bridge washes out and the trains can’t get there or the miners go on strike they don’t want the lights to go out.
50-55 ton cars tend to be 34-37 ft long (30-34 ft IL), 70 ton cars tend to be in the 45 ft long (40 ft IL).
Random information, the Indianapolis steam plant brings in 175-250 hoppers of coal a WEEK in sections of 50-75 cars a train, another cvalcade of coal n DUmp trucks, to keep the prices competitive. A hair larger than the Walthers, I believe, but not terribly so. Different kind of building, most definately
Figure 1-5 on page eight of Industries Along the Tracks 2 isn’t actually a power plant. It appears to be the Bellefield Boiler Plant in Oakland PA (for a modern, large color picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bellefield_Boiler_Plant_Pittsburgh.jpg) . I know this facility, as it was the first industry I chose when designing my layout. It provides steam heat to the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon University, the Carnegie Museums, Carnegie Library, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Phipps Conservatory, and so on and so on. As you can imagine, that probably takes a lot of coal to do it. Althought it recently ended coal use and no longer sees rail service, I have it from a reliable source on the matter that it received between 700 and 800 tons of coal every other day. I am wagering this based on being told seven or eight carloads every other day, and the hoppers sure look like they’re 100 ton ones. It is also notable to me in that all of the coal is stored indoors.
If that’s not Bellefield, then there is some other coal burning plant with a curving wood trestle entering it while a bridge that looks suspiciously like the Schenley Bridge is in the background.
Buy stuff from walthers, they’ll start sending out their plastic-paper shopping catalogs, it’s the centerfold article. Not as cute as some things to be folded in the center, but more informative.
Hmmm - I have been shopping from Walthers for years, and must have received quite a few catalogs over time. Will go back and see if I still have them laying around.
This is the coal fired Potomac Edison plant in Williamsport, Maryland. Up until the mid 1980’s it was served by the WM/Chessie then CSX decided it didn’t want to be in the short haul coal business anymore. All the coal you see piled up on the left came in on rubber tires. Anyway, there was a small rail yard roughly in the area the grassy field is in now. The track came in parallel to the driveway on the left side. The stockpile was there during the period of rail service. All the pollution control apparatus around the exhaust is new, but otherwise the plant looks pretty much the same as it has since it was built.
The approach to the plant was cool because it crossed a little steel lift bridge that carried the tracks across the C&O Canal, which was still in operation when the plant was built. According to the historic marker, the lift bridge was used only one time (1924) before the canal was shut down permanently after the floods of that year…
