another giant quarry and lime/cement operation is Mississippi Lime (might have a new name) at St. Genevieve Mo. they have a huge quarry operation and a plant that crushes and roasts the limestone. it is along us hwy 61 just north and west of town. served by the old MP (M&I) railroad.
i just looked at it on Bing Maps and the bird's eye view shows over 50 jumbo covered hoppers in the plant. everything is covered with white lime dust. when i worked on the railroad years ago we got a lot of cars out of that place off the TRRA and A&S. they were always covered in white lime dust so bad that it was almost impossible to read the car numbers. eventually the Mopac got smart and they started welding a short piece of steel plate to the side of the car to act like an awning and keep the lime from washing down and obliterating the reporting marks.
talk about an easy weathering project. just swab the car with white shoe polish and streak it downward. even the trucks on those cars were white.
grizlump
ChadLRyanSpecifically the crushers/sorters. I have looked for a kit (found none) & decided to scratch build one, but do not have any info or Pix of crushers/sorters. I want to model two of them for a 'timeline interchangable' layout, 30-40's era & modern.
Except for planned-to-be-short-lived operations most crushers and screens get put into large sheds of one kind or another. Old ones probably rough-cut wood or corrugated tin and modern ones steel or plastic cladding. I'm pretty sure that this is as much to keep the dust in an not have to compensate the neighbours as to protect the machines. It will also tend to keep the noise in.
As your following descriptions says a lot of what is to be seen outside the buildings is conveyor belts and stock piles. More dusty stuff gets stockpiled in silos.
I have recalled that I did once see a crusher/screener in the open. It was unusual in that the screen was a number of tapered drums angled a little upwards. I don't recall if they had blades inside like a concrete mixer.
If someone who can post pics wants to send me an e mail I can send them some pics of a modern facility of steel sheds and conveyors. It's actually a block works but it's pretty much the same as most quarries these days.
From the modelling viewpoint there may of course be loads of fuel and/or machinery into a quarry...
That's better
Meanwhile; back at conveyors...
Old style quarries worked downhill wherever they could. This meant that the structures could tend to be in a line down the slope.
Modern quarries... do all sorts of things! Massive lines of conveyor belts can go over hills for miles... and even straight through them so that what is a hole in the ground one side of a mountain looks like a mine on the other side where the processing plant is set out.
Before modern rubber/fabric conveyor belts there were other belt systems... as far as I have seen these were variations on bucket chains.
For more chunky material bucket chains were and still are used to lift material. Where the material allows it may be shifted with augers at angles or even vertically. Anything that can be fluidised with air tends to get blown from place to place. Both augers and air systems just look like pipes - of various sizes.
"Rock"/aggragate would tend to ride rail in open hoppers. Anything fine/powdered would ride in covered hoppers or pressure loaded cars... the car type.depending on the viscosity of the powder when the air is pumped in. When I was a kid I saw slate powder (used in lots of starnge jobs from making music discs to cosmetics) loaded in old cement cars (Presflos).
Sand is weird stuff... it varies from coral sand to hard stuff that can be used as building blocks. In between there is sticky soft stuff that gets used for mould making. There must be different grades of this last stuff as some of it goes in open truck and rail hoppers while some is moved in pressure loaded tank trucks. The same area also produced a fine freestone that was used for large ornate mantle pieces in big houses. A lot of this sand is mined rather than quarried.
(Someone opened the doors under one of the loaded sand hoppers when it wasn't over the unloading pit. I have never figured the physics/mechanics of it but instead of the sand spreading out or stopping the car rode up on the pile of sand until the wheels were about 2' of the ground. Very strange).
Along the road from that sand is a huge hole that they extract Fullers Earth from. The buildings are well hidden. Fullers Earth is used (among other things) in cat litter and cosmetics. A lot of modern quarry facilities like this are just huge "cardboard cut-out" boxes that could contain absolutely anything.
Going the other way there were several lime quarries. The explanation lies in the geology. IIRC those quarries shipped out both loose, unworked rough chalk and bagged lime. They each had their own internal rail systems -2' gauge in the quarry and 4' gauge in the works and to the railhead... why they messed about with the difference I don't know. Bagged stuff is almost always palletised these days.
I spent some time at a cement works: most product went out in pressure tanks but a small amount
(2%?)
went out bagged on pallets.
Working the other way round I have known ex quarries used as landfill sites. These can be rail carried compactor containers taken off the rail cars and "extruded" into the hole. One site took train loads of track spoil from major relaying jobs ("deep digs" where everything is taken out and replaced). The hole itself wasn't very big. This surprised me as I thought that it would fill up too fast to be worth laying the connections and track into... but they were burning any timber, recycling any metal and screening the spent ballast for road aggregate to be sold on... as well as getting paid to take the spoil in the first place. They must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
... and all this just skims the surface of quarrying...
Just a couple of general points...
1. Quarrying (and mining) are broadly era specific. A simple example is that at one time most of a quarries output might go by rail except for a tiny amount for local use. More recently everything might be trucked out with some specific exceptions like limestone for the steel industry.
2. You wouldn't usually get two completely different products (e.g. salt and granite) from one quarry but you could get two or more different variants of the same thing from one place. You might, for example get blocks, aggregate and dust from one quarry. This would tend to depend on product demand and the nature of the rock. (A quarry producing blocks will not just shut down if the demand drops but is likely to switch to crushed stone... unless the block value is very high when demanded e.g. marble). The rock might vary (possibly either side of a fault line through the quarry.
3. A block quarry will tend to drill and/or saw the blocks out of a face with little or no use of explosive... and any explosive will be "soft" to crack the block away with minimum damage.
4. An aggregate quarry will usually blast any solid rock (as distinct from say draglining a sand or gravel). The thing with this is that times change. Older technology tended to blow great chunks out any-old-how and then smash them up (hard labour for penal establishments). More recent quarrying tends to blast the rock to specific sizes to order - they can even work on the % of dust produced.
5. Old style blasting produced random chunks that may or may not have to be further broken before being shipped to some form of crushing machine. What went into the machine varied in size from maximum acceptable to powder. What was in the tub/skip/bucket got tipped in and crushed. This produced masses of dust. In a lot of cases dust was waste product or (because so much got produced) low value. It tended to cover most of a quarry and large parts of the surrounding area in dry weather and coat everything in rock coloured slurry in the wet.
If that wasn't enough old style blasted rock tended to end up with all the edges knocked off. This was because of being tipped, rolled, thumped about in the crusher, dropped out the bottom, scooped up, moved, dropped and so on. All the many actions acted in the same way as a gemstone polisher to smooth the rock. Both this and the time involved had an effect of dulling the colour of the rock. The dulling was, of course, increased by the coating of dust that tended to be left on the rock.
When moved and dry the rock could shake off its coating of dust. This applied to train loads of crushed rock... they could leave a trail of dust of varying thickness. If you were trackside and saw a rock train coming you protected your eyes and breathing.
6. Sticking with the older stuff for the moment.
Rock of many sizes tipped into the crusher could be broken to selected maximum sizes by controlling what was allowed to fall out the bottom. This only stopped the big stuff dropping out until it was small enough though. Everything under size got through (or clogged up the machine).
If a bulk of a specific size was wanted the size and smaller would then be put (possibly directly) onto a line of big sieves. These usually sloped downwards by a designed amount and were vibrated, shaken or rocked to both shift the rock along and sort it. This was called screening. The first screen was usually the largest (it got the most rock on it) but had the smallest holes for all the little stuff to drop through. Succesive screens got larger holes until the end of the line where anything still too big to drop through got dumped out the end... possibly to go back to the crusher.
8. Crushers could and still can be stamping machines (big hammers), rotary, or crushing wheels. It depends on what is going in and what they want out the far end. Some machines have great munchers that look like bevel gears with nasty big teeth on them... the sort of thing the baddy drops into in movies.
9. Modern explosive technology means that specific mixes can be designed for specific rocks right down to individual quarry characteristics and the principle size of rock required. When the charge is blown the rock will lift out and drop in a predictable zone already shattered to the size required. Very little "cleaning" of over or under sized material is needed.
The result is a lot less dust, shifting about and/or reworking and the rock is both brght and sharp(er) edged. It is commonly unneccessary to screen modern shattered rock. I'm using the word "shattered" to distinguish it from "blasted" - and then worked.
10 As far as I have seen...
Old quarries drilled into the rock face from the front (more-or less horizontally). This was done by hand before suitable machines were developed that could both do the job and get into position. This also applied to cutting rail track routes through rock... as p[er the SP heading east. The bores were not that deep and the blasting took off a slice of the face.
Modern quarries usually bore from the top and will drill several lines of charge holes parralel to the face. These bore holes can be at least a hundred feet deep (I haven't actually measured one!). They will be blown electrically either together or in a planned sequence. You see the whole face and ground behind it lft and drop out... an amazing sight. ... then the front loaders or (because the rock is uniform in size) bucket loaders move in en-masse.
Old style blasting was smaller scale and more frequent... and more dangerous.
Okay that's mostly aggrgate type stuff...
Rock that is wanted in block form varies from huge great lumps of expensive stuff like marble for stautes and columns to granite (or similar) paving pieces that can be as small as 3" cubed.
Rock in block form varies from the real hard stuff like polished marble to surprisingly soft stone... some of which historically proved too soft and crumbled to nothing.
A lot of cut stone for small jobs has been replaced by moulded and cooked artificaila stone... the sort of stuff they sell you for driveways and patios.
The thing with big blocks is that you don't want them to chip, crack, fracture of bust while producing and/or shipping them. So they get handled pretty carefully. The really big stuff is hard to get so it is worth xxx$ more than "ordinary rock. It gets crated. These days it will ride an air suspended truck.
The small stuff used to be manhandled into stacks and stack to stack. A % got chipped or bust but, when paving for example, people wanted some half or part blocks to start/end lines so a bit of damage wasn't a great problem. As with masonry people ordered allowing a % of waste. This also applies to the modern ersatz blocks. The modern product gets palletised. Like bricks this can be with or without an actual wood pallet depending on the material. A lot of bricks and blocks get banded and/or shrink wrapped. Most of this traffic is now by trucks... with specific exceptions.
Of course both large expensive blocks and the small stuff can be put in containers (especially the more exotic rock that might travel internationally)... in which case you never get to see the load even if it does travel by rail. On the other hand it could mean that your model quarry does have a number of containers waiting loading (probably to be shipped by road for a first stage at least).
Then again (for the model scene) containers do get used for a lot of things from storage to offices in and around modern quarries...
Something I haven't covered is conveyor belts. Old quarries frequently used narrow/standard gauge internal rail systems depending on the quarry size and what was being shifted. Of course many used critters to haul the car loads around. Most internal rail systems have been replaced with conveyors, fork lifts and trucks of appropriate size.
I need a coffee
Hope this helps
I too, am interested in this topic.
Specifically the crushers/sorters. I have looked for a kit (found none) & decided to scratch build one, but do not have any info or Pix of crushers/sorters. I want to model two of them for a 'timeline interchangable' layout, 30-40's era & modern.
I lived a 1/4 mile from a sand quarry in childhood, they dragline dreadged it then & barge suck it now. In college I saw that MASSIVE I-80 Limestone quarry on (whiplash) both sides of the HWY (like the BB cartoon) in IL mentioned previously.
From my young exploriation [of the SAND Quarry] (before I knew I would want to know what I was looking at) I saw a semi trailer sized box clad with angle iron, with 2-3 conveyors exiting it. One had stone & rock chute piling up rock that was larger than say 1/4" to 1/2"+ or so, into piles that were then moved by end loader elsewhere. Another feeding a large elevator conveyor that piled the refined sand to the 'Great Piles' that were endloaded & trucked to their destination. Under the conveyor there was an ultra-fine pile of dust like stuff that I eagerly collected for the toys (I was pre-teen then). The possible 3rd conveyor (different crews & times) may have been a mid-sized aggregrate the 1/4' -1" for concrete mixing, again endloaded out. All the crusher/seperator conveyors were short 20' -40' or so, & if needed a larger independant one was added as a booster for larger piles.
Honestly, I wish I could go back in time & unleash the Nikon on it, so I could reproduce it in 1/87 scale for my layout as well. That was great info, when I didn't know any better..
To your post, perhaps there are different crusher/sorters that could seperate the sizes of crushed stone for a specific purpose, as our sand quarry did/does. Usually (in my NE IA area), all the stone is limestone in a single quarry, so it is a crush & sort operation, not a composition sorting op. (From what I can observe).
I would love to see some pix of crusher/sorters to put with this recollection, & help with the groups building options. I was shocked when I could not find any applicable kits of just a crusher or sorter.
I don't know if this will help, but I hope it will. Feel free to ask more, but I pretty much said what I can recall.
Sean,
First you need to decide if this is a gravel quarry or if it is mining 'cut' stone like granite blocks. A good Wisconsin example is the ballast quarry at Rock Springs that provides the 'Pink Lady' ballast used on the ex-C&NW lines. Something like this would have a crusher and rail loadout to fill hopper cars.
If mining large cut stone like the granite quarries around St Cloud & Mankato, MN: then there is a large 'jib' loadout that places the blocks on rail cars. I still see some blocks shipped by rail, but many times the wire cutter is on-site and the blocks are cut into slabs that are shipped by truck to local momument companies. Many years ago the 'rainbow' quarry at Morton shipped blocks via rail to the Cold Stone Quarry for cutting. The Rainbow quarry was on the M&StL and the Cold Spring Granite was on the GN.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
I think it would be very unusual for a quarry, especially a small quarry, to mine two different types of rock.
Some quarries only produce cut rock (blocks) and other produce only crushed rock.
Crushed rock does come in different sizes most would screen the rock and sell different grades.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
there is a large limestone quarry near me and they run all the stone through a crusher and seperator then store the different grades and sizes in seperate giant piles. although they no longer ship by rail, they load trucks directly from the piles with large front end loader machines. truck pulls up beside the pile and the operator loads the rock inito it.
rail operations would not doubt use the same or similar procedure with elevators or conveyors and perhaps the same machines used to load out trucks.
there was a giant quarry on the south side of chicago right next to I-80. if you can locate it on bing maps bird's eye view. you can probably see what you want to know. there was a big one just north of joliet too, i think it was on hwy 53.
Hi everyone,
I am planning on modeling a small rock quarry on my new layout. However, I am not sure how rocks leave the quarry. What I mean by that is, do quarries only provide one size and type of rock? Or can customers request a certain size, shape i.e. block vs stones? Is it geologically possible to have multiple types of stone quarried in the same place? I realize that the earth, or what is in it, is not uniform so there is probably not going to be a concrete answer to my questions, but any information you can provide would be a big help. BTW I am modeling the midwest, Wisconsin to be exact, if it makes a difference.
Thanks,
Sean