Source book for prototype steel mill railroading.

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed a number of questions about steel plant railroads. I was just at our local city library, and came up with what I thought was a very interesting book. The book is 'The Lake Terminal Rail Road 1895 1995. Author is Jeffery D Brown. ISBN #0-912113-46-4. Printed by J&KPrinting of Canton Ohio. Many scenes and rolling stock pictures, track diagrams, car and loco line drawings, and loco rosters from the Lake Terminal Railroad, US Steel Lorain plant, and the Newburgh & South Shore RR which operated between Bethlehem facilities in Clevelan, crossing the Cuyahoga river. Pictures of locos from an 1890s 0-4-0T Dinkie to the last Alco Schenectedy 0-8-0. Even a few shots of a 1911 Baldwin 0-6-6-0 that was apparently guaranteed to pull 21 loads up from the river side up to the storage areas. Even line drawings of 75 and 200 cubic foot ladle crs that were poured by hand crank in the 1898 ro 1903 time fram.

When I saw it, I had to check it out, since most of it is from my home town. The particular plant has the blast furnaces and BOP Shop on cold shutdown right now, but just last week, announced a $90 mil renovation on the cold end for sheet and pipe. They’ve been getting their bloom and billets from other facilities (By rail, of course). I believe their oldest loco is an NW-2 from around 1948. All their current locos have been converted to radio control.

Amazing how funny the larger locos look with the back sand box split and hung on either side of he boiler because of clearance issues. Or just how small loco #1 looked. Hard to imagine it pulling a 25 t load of liquid iron up any kind of grade.

2

Not much here on the mill operation or even the locos, but some superb scratchbuilding skills on display, and right within the timeframe to which you refer.

Gondolas of Lake Terminal RR.

While the thread is rather long, the pictures are well-worth a look, especially on the last couple of pages where he re-works some of the already-outstanding details.

If I’m not mistaken, the late Dean Freytag wrote the book on steel mill modelling.

Another book on the prototype, although it doesn’t deal specifically with the railroad side of the industry, is The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, by U.S. Steel. The prices shown are pretty decent, as my copy was over $100.00 new.

A companion piece to the second book would be this update, Volume 11 Steelmaking and Refining

3

Kalmbach’s new Model Railroader’s Guide to Steel Mills (including a 5-page preview) looks to be another gem by Bernard Kempinski.

My library includes his prior work from N Scale Magazine (March & May 1998) and January 1999 Model Railroad Planning where “Alkem Steel” adapts HO Scale kit-bashing into N Scale to achieve the structural-dwarfing of Alkem Steel’s industrial railroad.

4

Hey got this book from Barnes and Nobels called “Steel Giants” Its about the steel mills around Gray Indiana. Alot of pictures from the turn of the century.

Authors: Stephen G. McShane and Gary S. Wilk

5

EM-1 That renovation you speak of is at the U.S.Steel end of the mill, seamless mills only. The rest of the mil is practically dead, or will be shortly