Walthers 933-3052 Rolling Mill

[BDD]

Was wondering if anyone knows if I can stack a Walthers 933-3052 rolling mill on top of another 933-3052 rolling mill to get a taller structure for my steel mill layout?  Or would a better/easier option be to take a 933-3052 kit and buy either some Plastruct or Evergreen panels and build it up that way to get the same effect?

[BigDaddy]

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1. Walthers lists it as discontinued, but they may still be around
2. I have no idea if a mill would be that tall.  We have a member with steel mill experience so maybe he will comment.
3. It would probably be cheaper to go with Plastruct.  If you have a Plastics dealer in town, you can by BIG sheets of styrene for far less.

Here is what we are talking about:

[NittanyLion]

A few thoughts:

There's not really any reason you can't stack them.  Granted, it would require surgery to the end walls to remove the peaks.  Once you've hit that point, the rolling mill kit is just pieces.  It might be cheaper just to buy corrugated sheets from Evergreen to raise the height.

It might look a bit odd though.  The proportions will look pretty odd because it will be twice as tall as it is wide.  Length, in my book, is the bigger factor in making steel mill structures look "right."

And speaking of the height, you might be getting too much height.  Judging from the door size, I'd wager this mill building is about 70 to 75 feet tall (https://goo.gl/maps/tgk8BPFAVmgYdUf99)  Granted, it has a flat roof instead of a peaked roof like the Walthers kit.  Stacking two kits would get you a building closer to 130 feet, even accounting for the removed peaks in the "lower" segment. Compare the Walthers kit with the older buildings in the same complex: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6109498,-79.728819,56a,35y,214.12h,76.89t/data=!3m1!1e3 The kit is closer in height to these buildings of similiar design, but much, much longer.

It is, of course, your call, but I'm not sure I'd stack full height pieces from a second kit.  Maybe, at the most, raising it by 30 percent.  Even so, you're spending a lot of money on parts you aren't really using.  I suppose you could reuse the leftover bits of wall and the roof as a second structure, but a lot of the price is the mill stand you're not using.

[gmpullman]

Many Walthers Cornerstone kits are quite flexible for kit-bashing. The rolling mill in particular has several "score lines" molded into the back of the courrigated wall sections for modifying the size of the finished structure.

Mill_litup by Edmund, on Flickr

Using a little test fitting I'm certain extra height could be added to the rolling mill structure. You might have to sand down the bevel at the tops of the side sections or come up with a way to hide the joint.

I made a covered "craneway" which I've seen used on similar structures. Walthers has covered conveyor kits and I used these split in half to make the craneway.

Mill-access by Edmund, on Flickr

You would, of course, have to carefully trim the peak off the end walls. I don't recall if there is a horizontal groove molded in to these or not but it would be easy to trim with a straight edge.

The wall sections are fairly substantial but the addition of reinforcements on the back would help keep things straight and aligned.

So if you're looking for tall have you considered the Walthers Electric Furnace?

https://www.walthers.com/electric-furnace-kit-12-5-8-x-11-3-4-x-12-quot-empty

You could combine two or more kits horizontally if you have room but as far as geight it is considerably taller than the rolling mill and would result in a structure you might be looking for.

You can see my electric furnace here toward the left and the two (the rear one split in half) rolling mills in the distance.

Mill-Overall-R by Edmund, on Flickr

Have fun! Ed

[SeeYou190]

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The Walthers Rolling Mill, according to the instructions, is easily extended, but not so easily upward.

By the time you trim the sides down for the openings and the ends for the peaks, you might not get much.

-Kevin

[doctorwayne]

I spent several decades in a rolling mill, (one of many in the Steel Company of Canada), and a double deck version would be difficult to service, getting ingots to be heated and rolled, and then transported from an upper level to some sort of system to get it to the next mill in the process.
Supporting the pits needed for heating the ingots, along with another level of the overhead cranes that handle them, let alone another rolling mill, slab scarfer, slab trimmer and slab stamper, never mind the stackers and overhead cranes for loading them on suitable cars to take them to the next phase of the operation.

The mill in which I worked periodically lengthened the building in order to add more soaking pits, then doubled the cable-type buggy tracks which delivered the ingots to the rolling mill.

With well over 140 tons in each of the 36 soaking pits, were were rolling well over 3 million tons a year.

...a couple of photos...

My suggestion to you would be to see if you can find another one of the kits that you have, then add it on to the one that you already have.

If an additional kit cannot be found, you can get all sorts of styrene material from Evergreen, which will allow you to pretty-well replicate the building that you have...so that you can connect it, making it into a longer structure.
Their offerings include sheet material in various thicknesses with corrugations on at least one side, and all types and sizes of structural steel members in styrene, which is very easy with which to work, especially since you already have a structure that you can fairly easily copy.

Properly done, it will look a lot more prototypical than a two story rolling mill.

Wayne

 

[gmpullman]

Here's the rolling mill end wall overlaid on the electric furnace end wall for comparison:

Rolling-vis-Electric by Edmund, on Flickr

The ground to peak on the electric furnace is 86 HO feet while 74 on the rolling mill. Sidewall height is 63 and 47 respectively.

Hope that helps, Ed

[SeeYou190]

gmpullman

Here's the rolling mill end wall overlaid on the electric furnace end wall for comparison:

Wow, those are both huge buildings.

-Kevin

[NittanyLion]

gmpullman

The ground to peak on the electric furnace is 86 HO feet while 74 on the rolling mill. Sidewall height is 63 and 47 respectively.

So splicing sidewalls under a full rolling mill kit would be 121 feet tall. My 130 foot guess was pretty close!

SeeYou190

 Wow, those are both huge buildings.

And they're still undersized babies. My layout is going to have either a rolling mill or a galvanizing plant. They are only about 12 to 15 inches tall. But the rolling mill would be 19 by 44 feet if built to scale. 

[dknelson]

Didn't MR once `feature an N scale layout that used the Walthers HO scale steel mill structures, with appropriate modifications of doors and such?  Something that truly dwarfed the trains

Dave Nelson

[NittanyLion]

Yes, specifically the blast furnace.  The HO scale furnace is way too small for anything past the 1890s in HO scale, but a pretty decent early 20th century furnace in N scale.

[SeeYou190]

I think at one time Fine-N-Scale offered an etched brass and cast resin detail kit for the HO scale blast furnace. It might have been another company.

I am going to use my Walthers blast furnace model in my 15mm (1/100) scale Stalingrad terrain set for wargaming. It should be quite impressive on the table-top.

-Kevin

[doctorwayne]

NittanyLion

Yes, specifically the blast furnace.  The HO scale furnace is way too small for anything past the 1890s in HO scale, but a pretty decent early 20th century furnace in N scale.

 

Many years ago,  I began scratchbuilding a blast furnace, using blueprints from my employer STELCO (the Steel Company of Canada).

The basic structure of the furnace, without the down-comers and other details that were yet to be added to the top, was almost three feet tall, and with the casthouse added, along with the gas scrubbers, dust collectors, and stoves, would have been in excess of nine or ten square feet. 
Adding in the coke and limestone storage and delivery structure, although fairly narrow, would have added at least another 4 or 5 feet lengthwise.

 

Due to the projected size, I eventually decide to not continue the project, and over the next few years, dismantled what had been built.

 

E furnace, STELCO's largest of their five furnaces, and their only one left in Hamilton, was demolished last year, ending steelmaking at that site.

 

Wayne

[ndbprr]

very few steel mill buildings are very high. steel weighs a lot.  slab and ingots weigh in the tons as do coils.  there is absolutely no benefit to build a second level in a building that would hold hundreds of tons amd require massive cranes and methods of moving the product.  the one exception would be a basic oxygen furnace or BOF which is a melt shop that converts iron into steel.  also needed would be hot metal cars to deliver the molten iron from the blast furnace, gons full of scrap, ingot molds on buggys and a continuous caster to cast billets and slabs and don't forget the four acres of ground along with the environmental plant to prevent polution.  In other words nothing you can build with 2 of their mills vertical or horizontal will replicate any steel mill building I have seen in steel mils in the USA, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain or India.  That is probably close to  hundred plants I have been in.  Best way to model a steel  mill is to deliver cars to a yard and put a picture of a steel mill on the backdrop.  All the mills have a shipping and receiving yard off site from right outside to several miles away.

[Steelkid]

Great pics, Wayne. Always love seeing Stelco pics, my father retired from there in '01 after a long career in both cold roll and rod & bar. (Tried to PM you, but it wouldn't work.)