Modeling rolling mill

[ndbprr]

There really isn't a lot to see on the outside of a hot strip rolling mill. Usually they are steel siding and colored in whatever the mill colors are. The vast majority are a variation of oxide red for obvious reasons. Various extension buildings stick out down the length for offices and shops. There are usually a couple of scale pits with overhead cranes and a railroad track for gons to outload millscale washed off by high pressure sprays at a couple of places and parked management cars. At several places tracks will enter through roll up overhead doors that are shut the vast amount of time. Coils at the finish end are handled mostly by motorized vehicles that take them to outdoor yards to cool and age or by conveyer to a storage yard where they are handled by motorized vehicle or overhead cranes(rarely). There is virtually no activity that happens outside and there is no hustle or bustle the length of the mill (usually 3/4 of a mile or more). Generally at the entry end of the line there is also a recycled water system consisting of a couple of open top settling tanks with Door Oliver rakes or a smilar system and a cooling tower or two to recool the water before being sent back to the mill. there will also be a small pump house associated with the tanks. The best way to model a mill is to model the ends of the buildings rather than the sides. Most have railroad tracks that enter the end from every conceivable angle of mainline but all wind up running with the length internally. Merchant mills and rod mills operate the same way but since they use billets instead of strip they can receive the raw product on mill flats and generaly store the billets elsewhere and bring them in a JIT fashion to a slab furnace. Billets can be up to 14" square and 40' long although that is really big. They are much more easily handled because they don't weigh as much and aren't as big as slabs. A rod and/or wire mill will lay the finsihed product on a cooling bed in overlapping coils which will be torch burned off and bundled. A straight prduct ( angel iron, channel, etc.) can either be saw cut or burned off in lengths. A straight product mill will usually be longer and a coil product mill will be wider as the product can be bent around and head back the way it came if needed. You can tell the entry end of a rolling mill because it will have stacks sticking out the roof from the heating furnaces. Most modern mills have waste heat boilers that the offgas is fed through with supplemental heating to make steam. This requires a usually large square building that is four stroies or higherbuilt over the furnaces to house the boilers. Everyone I was ever in was 100-120 degrees in the winter and 120+ in the summer.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, coalminer3. I'm looking forward to shopping for the "little things"--the details that will add life to my mill!

[coalminer3]

Go to the next topic "steel mills" on this forum. The books I mentioned in my post on that section have pictures of rolling mills, machines, etc.

work safe

[Anonymous]

I'm currently building the Walthers rolling mill for my N-scale layout. Anyone know of any websites where I can access good photos of a real mill to provide me with some ideas for details, accessories, weathering, machinery, etc. to help bring some realism to that corner of my layout?