Being , that I only have one day a week off from work,it leaves me with very little time for my hobby right now.
I need to model a scrap pile for the EAF and BOF as soon as the BOF building is done. I’ve thought about using florist foam for the mound as a base and them cutting up old scrap tyco freight cars {thats a really good use for these cars anyway}. Then adding pencil shavings to the pile and then painting the pile with rust color paint. I have three Kibri scrap grapple crane’s, to work the pile along with scratch built haul trucks, to feed both the EAF and the BOF. Sitting on the back burner for now is a Kress carrier.
Paint aluminum foil with whatever spray paint you have available, put it in an old blender and shred it. Gue it onto a foam or other pile and spray it with rusty colors.
Soaking steel wool in vineager gives a great rusty mess that can be used for scrap.
Don’t overlook a car with cancer, it can give great rust chips .
if you are going to cut up Old freight cars. make sure you tear them down approprietly. In most photos of train cars succumbing to the scrappers torch that I have seen. The tear down sequence seems to be as follows. First the car is removed from its trucks and the doors are removed. Then if the car has a roof that is removed. Then the ends and sides are torched off and pushed outward so the car resembles something like a modern “Flat” kit awaiting assembly. Then any wood is removed and is presumably stacked someplace where it can be put to good use. Maybe the main office fireplace? Then the sheet metal is removed. from the structural members. From there I do not know of the sheet metal is bundled and stays flat or is cumpled up into a large cube or something. Some one who knows more about how a scrap yard really works would be able to tell you. Then after the sheet metal is removed, the structeral members are cut up into small pieces and are assembled into a pile to await shipment. This is not a difinative breakdown of how scrapping a freight car is done, but Its what I have been able to piece together from looking at various photographs of railroad equipment in scrap yards and applying a little logic to the imigry I was looking at.
I’ve also included some old trucks and wheels, rolling stock parts, wire, pieces of balsa wood, even some old resistors or diodes with the leads cut off and painted a rusty color can add to a junk pile…chuck
Some stuff may be recycled… like couplers, brake wheels/drives, brake parts. These can be put aside in neat piles or dropped into dumpsters. Also, depending on era, you may have ladders and roof walks (running boards). Doors seem to be a favourite way of fencing scrap yards… maybe also for segregating piles of stuff. Sliced through cars also make good open-ended sheds.
You would probably want to have some oxy cutting equipment around somewhere. Sledge hammers and pry bars are pretty popular tools as well. How are you going to lift the car to get the traucks out? A crane? A fixed A frame with a hoist? jacks? Once the trucks are out you want to rest the car on something so that it doesn’t tip while being cut.
Been to a auto junk yard lately? I would reckon that until crushed and baled most of a scrap yard is pretty see-through… layers of cars on each other and one behind the other… a really 3 dimensional heap rather than a solid pile.
Cutting the cars up to components would seem likely to be pretty difficult… most of the bits would be way to thick… so using the cars to hold the bits for recycling would be a lot easier. Reason for no cars being cut up at present? switch to cutting something else up as supply of cars has dried up. Something else that impacts is the price of scrap steel. When price is high yard will be bare, 'cos it’s been sold and shipped.
Hi dragonriversteel
The following will also be helpful if you can get it.
steel swarf from a lathe
broken kitchen timers (for the gears)
beer can
“O” rings the dia of car tyres in your scale
The carp cars from auto racks these can be crushed slightly under foot
and stacked up.
broken road signs
oil drums
pipes
structural shapes
one old time fuel pump
one work bench
one tow truck
one pick up truck
corrugated shed for office
scratch built rough old work shop
out house
screw hole plastic plug from industrial power point the septic tank for the out house
ply wood base to build scrap yard on
lots of scale planks roughly cut from balsa for yard fence and gates
length of sectional track or two and broken bumper post for the siding
one figure leaning on oil drum
one dog
one scale oxy set
one set of scale tools
scale sledge hammers
scrap rail
one dumpster and a few tiny screwed up balls of coloured paper glue gunge coloured paint to 1/2 fill the dumpster with rubbish
empty crates
left over kit windows and doors
odd scale furniture bits
bath and wash basin
a couple of pot belly stoves
shorty coal car intact (almost) mounted on blocks full of coal
a sign that says who evers scrap and salvage yard you want it its here somewhere.
one manufactured scrap pile just to get something in the yard quickly
Locate the thing close to the layout edge so all that wonderfull detail can be seen and that next bit of junk can be easily added
regards John
if you have access to an old rusty car, use some flakes of rust for peices of metal. if you have a woodstove, a light sprinkle of powdery ash over a scrap pile might look good.
GEARHEAD426
Chooch used to make cast resin scrap piles, and I think some others do too. I recently saw a gondola load of scrap from Chooch. Their older piles were for steam era with engine wheels, and others of general scrap, such as old automobiles. Maybe look them up on the 'Net and of they still offer them use their photos as a guide.
