Building a rock quarry

I know very little about the rock industry, but the best modeled one I have seen is the abandoned stone quarry on Lance Mindheim's N-scale Monon layout (fetaured in the GMR 2009 issue and since disassembled):

Jamie

The above picture is a representation of a dimensional stone quarry.  That isn't appropriate.  What you want is aggregate stone for your Walthers model.

The model accommodates two tracks entering the main building and a track parallel to the long wall.

The easiest way to model the quarry is to not.  Have either dump trucks and/or conveyers bring the stones to the primary crusher from off the layout.

Quarries are open pit mines.  They usually look like holes in the ground and slices off a hill or mountain.  Google "quarries."  But I'm sure you get additional information from future responders to your request.

Mark

I once took a tour of a local quarry that mines quartzite for railroad ballast a few years ago. The pit itself is as can be imagined; one deep, really big hole in the ground. Around the outsides of the pit was a gradual ramp that wrapped around the walls as it went up, and it was the way trucks could get from the pit floor to the top. Big drilling machines are used to place dinamite charges into the earth, and after the explosion the rock is trucked topside. Once there it is deposited into a crusher machine. Here the gravel was crushed into smaller and smaller chunks. After crushing it's passed through a series of screens that seperate the different sizes of rock. The screen are stacked on top of each other, and the rock keeps falling until it reaches a screen with holes that are too small for it to pass through.

For the railroad ballast sized chunks were then moved into huge piles next to the railroad track via a simple conveyor system. Here the rock would sit until it was needed. Then another conveyor under the pile could be used to transport the rock up to a load-out tower over the tracks. An operator in the load-out tower could control the rock flow as it would be poured into the railroad cars.

Right now the best shot I have of one of these loadout towers is behind the train in these pictures:

http://badgerrails.webng.com/photos/rocktrain/rocktrain4.html

http://badgerrails.webng.com/photos/wsor/reedsburg25.html

Basically a conveyor to a small hopper with a small operator cabin on it. There is another member of these forums who has better pictures of the load out here, and if he happens to see this thread he might be able to help you out with that.

Not all quarries use loadout towers, some simply fill cars by using a front end loader or a simple conveyor with no hopper or tower structure above the tracks. If I remember right though the Walthers model does have some sort of load out on it though, so I'm guessing you'll be modeling that type of operation.

One thing to note, the "preview" in this month's issue of Model Railroader mentions that there will be an article in next months issue about modeling a quarry. You might want to check that out.

Noah

An interesting aggregate quarry is alongside Interstate Highway 680 in Sunol Valley in west-central California.  The crusher is on one side of the six-lane freeway and a conveyer crosses under it to reach a stone source on the other side.  The quarry is alluvial gravel that over millenia washed down from the hills to the southeast.  There doesn't appear to be any big "pit."

When I was a kid in the 1950s and '60s there was an aggregate quarry within a mile of my house in Pleasant Hill (west-central California).  Explosions were heard periodically.  The quarry mined a tall hill, tall enough to warrant an aircraft warning light (there was, and still is, a municipal airport a mile from the site).  The quarry closed when the hill was gone and only flat ground remained.  It now hosts a suburban shopping center.

Mark

I have posted a lot of pics of my quarry. They are still in my photobucket as listed below, but it is a quarry. What some are talking about would be called a gravel pit in Minnesota and are laid out in any whay that works. Ther are just a carving into a rock pile, ussually left from the glacers.

Mike,

That is a nice kit. I think you will be happy with it. I kitbashed a pair for a two tier quarry. Advice given above is all good.

You might want to order an extra set of conveyors. (3 sections about 6-1/2" long come with the kit) Cornerstone 933-3149.

One of these days I will post a couple of in progress photos.

Karl

Aggregate quarries, like open-pit mines, golf courses and Nascar racing venues, are best modeled in virtual form.  Have a truck dump at the base of the main input conveyor, or have that conveyor disappear up and over the ridge.  Layout space is too precious to waste on a hole in the ground.

Just my .  Other opinions may differ.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with underground mines)

No pics, but my property adjoins a rock quarry!!  They blast twice a day - and shake my house in the process!!  I have been down in it - it is circular and about 3/4 MILE in diameter!!  The pit is about 250=300 deet deep, and the entrance/exit ramp runs about 2/3 around the perimeter.  The crusher is in the center.  They process rock for road construction, from 4" to pea gravel size.  No RR tracks, they load 500 to 1000 large 10 wheel dump trucks per day, 7am to 4pm.  They use track mounted drills to drill for the dynamite (or whatever they blast with) and have about a dozen giant dumps (with 10' diameter wheels) to haul from the blast site to the crusher, as well as a couple of large excavators, several large bucket loaders, and a variety of other tracked bulldozers etc.  We just had a snow/ice storm here, so I won't be able to get any pics 'till spring time probably, but if I can I'll add to this post for you.