Hi
I am modeling a great lakes port and all the heavy industry that goes with it, but what I am searching for are blue prints or layout drawings for a large refinery. I have purchased the Plastruct Refinery kit, but sitting next to steel mills, coke ovens and by product plants, it seems a little weak. I would use selective compression on some of the major sections of the refinery to build a refinery with enough detail to fit into the heavy industry theme.
Refinery plans would be a closely guarded secret. Also, they would probably be several hundred pages of sheets around 42"x30". There have been several threads here on modeling refineries. If you do a search, you will find helpful information.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Kevin,
Have you tried Google Maps? Not sure what you're looking for but there is a small refinery in my area that you can use Google Maps to get a pretty good idea of the layout and trackplan of the facility.
Just promise you won't tell the terrorist!!
Chris
Thanks for all your help.
I will try to develop something based on what reference material, pictures and drawings I can come up with.
Kevin Kutolowski
I'd take a little different route. I would go on Google Earth and zoom in on a refinery for a plant layout. You could either go to the one on Lake Erie in Toldeo, Ohio by the Maumee river or zoom in on Whiting, Indiana and the Amoco refinery on the shores of Lake Michigan. The production area of a refinery is pretty compact. It is the tank farms and dikes that take up the room.
Here are a few of the process flow diagrams (PFDs) that would comprise a small percent of refinery plans. There would also be process and instruments diagrams (there are usually several P&IDs for each PFD), electrical plans, mechanical plans, structural plans, civil plans, etc.
Note these links will probably be removed once the equipment is sold.
Atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit PFD
Hydrotreater PFD
Platformer PFD
Desulfurizer PFD
Source (with more PFDs)
Try looking at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana on Google. It is BP's largest and had been operating for nearly 100 years. There isn't a lot to see but a couple of cracking towers, miscelaneous buildings and lots of pipe and tanks. I would also suggest going to the nearest one and taking lots of pictures. That way the refinery could be on the backdrop with a loading rack or two in the front for the industry. BP Whiting must be 10,000 acres or bigger with many different locations for loading different products
If you take pictures of a refinery, you might want to figure out how you are going to convince the police why you are taking the pictures before you go, especially if you are in Long Beach, CA.
Are you modeling present day?
One of the exhibits at Corpus Christi (Texas) Museum is (was?) a large-scale engineering model of a refinery. I believe it was donated after construction because it was no longer needed, and was good PR, community relations...
You have the Plastruct refinery kit- but I imagine most of the elements in are sold separately. You can have multiples of particular type of vessels and tanks.
Many older oil companies have published company histories with lots of PR pictures. Check your library.
Since Spindletop: a human history of Gulf's first half century,
by Craig Thompson 1951? published by Gulf.
Phillip’s First 66 Years. Enterprise in Oil, A History of Shell in the United States by Kendall Beaton, 1957. A Great Name in Oil...Sinclair through fifty years. 1966 (Sinclair)
Phillip’s First 66 Years.
Enterprise in Oil, A History of Shell in the United States by Kendall Beaton, 1957.
A Great Name in Oil...Sinclair through fifty years. 1966 (Sinclair)
Chamber of Commerce, industrial district and port authority trade publications frequently have plant pictures.
Whether you have the Plastruct or the Walthers refinery you will need at least three of them plus many more items to come close to even a small refinery. That is unless it is to be just for a few products refined from products from a larger refinery.
I have both on my layout and I still need to enlarge both of them.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
Since you are modeling a port on the Great Lakes, a good source of information are the US Army Corps of Engineers Port Series maps. Many of these documents are posted on line and while they would not give you exact piping layouts, they would help you with the general arrangement of the facility, placement of tracks, and wharf arrangements.
An example of a Port Series map can be found on my web page:
http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~olsenk/pri_kearny_1965.jpg
I suggest you try a Google search for the name of the port and use the phrase "port series" If that does not work, the US Army Corps of Engineers has a public relations officer in each of their district offices. Another good source for these maps is the local university library or other government documents repository.
Good Hunting.
Kevin