There are two scrapyards that I am working on in our module club’s layout. I have this one on my own modules:
!(http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee101/jfallon_tar/My Model Railroad/IMG_2852.jpg)
and there is this one on another set for the branch line:
!(http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee101/jfallon_tar/My Model Railroad/Other modules/IMG_2822.jpg)
I was inspired by the lost engines at Roanoake, Va for this scene.
John
The scrap yard on my modules is based on a real one that was located in Suffolk, Va. just off of the NS (N&W) main line. This yard was quite small, only about three city blocks, but it did have a rail spur into it. I have seen old boxcars being scrapped in there, I assumed that the scrap was hauled out via the railroad, too. The place closed down about ten years ago, and it is just a vacant lot now.
John
This is not a scrap yard as such, but isvbased on some yards I have seen in industrial districts where old parts and items are left for possible salvage re-use.
Mostly pieces of used insulin syringes.
Very inspiring modeling everyone. I am in the process of getting a 10x12’ room ready for a switching layout and I think I see a scrap yard in its future.
I plan to have a scrap yard on my layout…including thomas the blue turd being cut up for scrap.
I model this gravel industry that is scrapping the old plant for the new one built.
The shortline that runs throgh my town ends in my town. The only industries are a small lubricant company and a scrap yard. the scrap yard gets three to mores cars at a time. If they can run on that, a model railroad should do well.
I live in a small town with a scrap yard just a couple miles outside town. Lately they’ve been doing a lot of RR cars. For a while the local short line was crammed with old hoppers.
One aside that could make an interesting model. The plant where I work had several old tank cars sitting on a siding for years. Rather than use the railroad to move them (they must have been too far gone to move in a train) they loaded them on a flatbed and trucked them the eight miles to the scrap yard. Made for an interesting sight to see a tank car loaded precariously on a truck convoy moving about 20 miles an hour.
I know this is an older thread ,but the target customer for my layout is a scrapyard. The scrapyard takes inbound loads of scrap, and then they shred the scrap and send it to a local steel mill ( off layout.)
like some scrapyards, Insly Steel uses an engine to move around railcars and dead engines which are going to be cut up ( naprano iron and metal used a Baldwin s-12 ex PC 8319 for those chores, and I believe northwest steel and wire used old GTW 0-8-0’s). Insly’s house engine is an alco switcher, but since Insly is going to cut it up when it stops working, it could be as rare as a Fairbanks morse h12-44, or as common as a GE 44 tonner. I keep it interesting with a two car spur. Insly goes through more than two cars a day, maybe 5, so more cars of scrap are stored in a nearby yard.
by the way, a scrapyard will need a crane if it’s going to stack cars and remove prime movers.
Just to counterpoint TT, it must depend on where the scrapyard is. In my area loose junk is all over the place at most yards.
I plam to model a portion of Rockys in Mingo Junction. It’s huge. Look it up on Wikimapia (just northwest of the junction proper) I need to figure out how to make a couple thousand junk vehicles cheaply though.
There are also a few right along the tracks in the Youngstown area, likely that at least one is rail served. Been awile since I was there but IIRC they are on rt7 or 11.
I’m replying simply because you asked everyone to.
The choice of modeling a scrap yard is purely up to the individual; however, I would say the choice to model one is a good one. Most scrap yards would not have steam engines included in the scrap they contain. However, most engine facilities probably would have a scrap yard and if it was at the end of the steam era, a steam engine might certainly be something being stripped in the scrap yard. What is enough traffic, would it be O.K. if it was to generate some traffic, or does it have to be enough?
I have a small scrap yard near my roundhouse, it was place to throw some “STUFF” I wasn’t going to use on the layout in any other way. Therefore I am a scrap yard proponent! “So, Yea for SCRAP YARDS!!!”
There must have been some type of “GLITCH” in the forum machinery, as this was a double post of my post on the previous page.
However, let me reiterate: “Horay for Scrap Yards!”
A scrap yard near home was sufficient to inspire one of my first modeling projects, a 25-ton GE diesel in robin’s-egg blue. I ended up modeling other areas. Built the roadbed for a very simple “Inglenook” style micro layout modeling the Simsmetal scrap operations (basically transferring loads and empties to and from the main) using the little GE diesel but never completed the layout–got too distracted by the main layout, and never could get the tiny 25 ton GE to run reliably enough to be a usable switcher.
Why is one obligated to build a full-sized scrapyard? Build it on a layout edge, just build the part next to the tracks and let the viewer’s imagination fill in the rest. No different than most of the industries on most model railroads–they’re almost all scaled down or scenically “off stage” because the focus of our mind’s eye is on the trains. Modeling buildings in proportional dimensions would, very often, look “unrealistic” to a model railroader because the trains are so often dwarfed by the real-world industries they serve.
As to what to put in the junkyard, there are no rules. Bits from the scrap box, the kitchen, the backyard, the garbage can. Run steam and fill your scrap yard with bits of cut-up diesels!
A good example (and how to) of a non rail seved scrap yard…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TLaq2ejAkqM
Speaking of scrap yards, how about an industry that receives scrap? I’ve been reading about large mills (such as for a copper mine). These often took in gondolas full of scrap iron. Why? Because the ball mills (which crushed the ore) needed a constant supply of iron balls, as the old ones wore down, and the most cost-effective way to do this was to melt down scrap and cast their own.
All kinds of scrap could be used, including locomotives. Most of the steam locomotives from the Nevada Northern ended up in the mill at McGill, NV.
What time period do you model?
I don’t know about the past, but modern “public” scrap yards and RR scrap yards are mutually exclusive. Someone mentioned already that RRs do their own scrapping. You get caught these days showing up at a commercial scrap yard with any RR related items, and they WILL know them when they see them, you’re in SERIOUS hot water. RRs protect their assets closely and will prosecute thieves, with full cooperation from scrap yards, who themselves have no pity for thieves.
Now, whether a larger scrap company may have a contract for RR stuff, I don’t know. After all, it has to change hands at some point between the railroad and the furnace.
Just a thought.
scrapyards are great for modeling. Every scrap yard is different, so they can be modeled however you want to model them. They can be as simple as a heap of junk being loaded into semi dump trailers to go to a bigger scrapyard where the shredder is, to a complex one with a few building and conveyors.
The big scrapyard near me has a contract with Chrysler. If a brand new Chrysler product has a minor flaw ( Engine tick, small scratch in paint, etc…) they get shredded. The scrapyard across the street does alot of vehicles (beverage trucks, city busses etc…) as well as buys scrap from local peddlers. The 2nd scrapyard has made alot of their own vehicles with the materials brought in by peddlers and from parts off of vehicles. That gives a great opportunity to show off your creative side…fabricate a “frankenvehicle” dedicated to working the scrapyard. The possibilities are endless.
Jeff
Is thievery much of a problem at model railroad scrap yards? I mean, if I decide to bring in a piece of junk I got from my railroad’s equipment and put it in my scrap yard, can I get arrested? I guess living life is a risky business! [:|]
Quite a bit of the traffic on my layout is generated by the steel industry. I have a coal mine, Hulett ore unloaders, blast furnace, rolling mill and electric furnace and, yes, a scrap yard.
This isn’t a recent photo (I’ll have to work on that!) I’m still working out some details here.
I have to make exception to the idea that railroads did ALL their scrapping and you would never see a steam locomotive in a scrap yard.
I have a detailed roster in front of me showing the disposition of only the Pennsylvania Railroad’s J class, numbering 125 locomotives only THREE were scrapped by the PRR at Altoona. The rest went to any one of these other companies:
Summer & Co.; Southwest Steel Corp.;LaClede Steel Co.; The Deitch Co. or Luntz Iron & Steel Co.
We were exporting scrap steel to Japan up until Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, 1940 “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.”
I rember being at a Luntz scrap yard in Ashtabula, Oh. back in the 1970s and there was four tracks packed solid with P70s, MP54s and old NYCRR commuter cars and probably 2 dozen cars from PRR’s Blue Ribbon Fleet.
All through the 1960s It seemed like every issue of Trains Magazine had photos of steam locomotives being cut up in different scrap yards.
So I’d say it would be pretty safe to have a steam locomotive or two in your scrap yard. I’m looking for my copy of a Ron Zeil book that had more information about the scrapping of steam through the '50s and '60s.
Tragically, one of the most recent scrappings of a steam locomotive occurred in July of 1987 at Blue Island, Ill. The GTW 5629 is a sad story of the legal system (and others involved) gone wrong.
A railcar scrapper in the Pittsburgh area. Notice that the place is ENORMOUS.