Need Rock quarry

I don't have photos, so, a word picture:

The quarry is just a hill with a solid (or nearly so) rock core, that has a 'bite' out of it, a vertical (or nearly so) amphitheater-shaped void with a flat floor on which front end loaders move raw rock (freshly blasted off the vertical face) to a crusher/sorter, where it collects in bins until somebody runs a truck under one and fills up with sized product.

At the top, bobcats and larger backhoes strip the overburden, and vertical drills drill shot holes for the next round of blasts.  Any resemblance to the methodology of open pit mining is purely a matter of doing a very similar job in a very similar manner.  The difference is that mines are primarily interested in extracting 'values' which may be a fraction of one percent of the excavated volume.  Quarries which produce aggregate for concrete ship 95+% of the processed rock.

OTOH, the intent may be to produce sized stone suitable for masonry construction (or kitchen counters and grave markers.)  Then the drilling is much more precise, the blast charges are smaller and the rock comes out like dominoes or sugar cubes, not talus.  Some of the front end loaders would have specialized lifting arms instead of general-purpose scoops, and the gyratory crusher and gravel bins would be smaller since the major product is sized stone, not aggregate.  Such quarries would be more likely candidates for rail service, with jib cranes capable of swinging a forty ton monolith of granite from the quarry floor to the flatcar for transportation to the finishing plant some distance away.

I saw active quarries of both types on both sides of the Pacific, and the only real differences were the manufacturer's names on the well-weathered yellow machinery.  Nowadays, you would probably find Komatsu equipment on the eastern side of the Pacific as well.  Caterpillar and Bucyrus in Japan?  Unlikely.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

Though most rock quarries are in a side hill, I had neither space for such nor is it what I wanted. I wanted the straight hole in the ground variety. I stacked pieces of two inch foam with hot glue and painted. Here are a couple pics. My prototype was a Malachite quarry in Bisbee that never was, but should have been, thus the green stones and tan rock.

Thanks
Art
Awesome Layout, Are you telling me that the layout is in the dining room? I have to tell my wife about this. LOL.   That's what I need a nudge to the old brain and I hope I can come up with a nice version of my own.

Chuck
an excellent verbal description, I am already thinking of some ideas.

Have a good day.

Lee