Layouts and layout building

Just a few views of steel mill possibilities, if any of you are contemplating the construction of a compressed steel mill complex. The total area of my HO Steel Mill complex is about 3ft.x8ft., on a peninsula that has a harbor at the end. The photo shows the (incomplete) ore boat being unloaded by the manually animated pair of Hulett unloaders. 24 ore cars are aligned on the four tracks spanned by the Hulett's bases. and a track outside the base. Click on any photo, ( to enlarge it). Then, click on small photos,( to the left), to view other portions of my HO layout. The second photo is an end view showing the position of the ore boat, unloaders, and the Rolling Mill that is parallel to the end-on-end Blower Building and Blast Furnace. The next photo shows the Slag pit, Blower Building, Blast Furnace, scrap iron piles, and rail complex. Note that both the "bottle car and the "slag car" can be adapted for animation. Axles can be added to the sawed parts, so that they can tilt manually.

You have done a large amount of work to create your steel mill and I really hesitate to say what I am going to but there are some glaring issues to those who know steel mills intimately so please take this as constructive criticism.  An integrated mill receiving ore would receive it by either rail or water.  There would be tracks under the Hullets only at a port such as Cleveland where the PRR transferred iron ore from ships to railcars (mostly hoppers in the states south of the Great lakes) for transport to mills such as the Pittsburgh area.  If the Hullets were unloading ore for this mill they would be dumping it on the ground where it would be taken by conveyer belt to the blast furnace.  If this is your receiving station for more than one mill then you could be ok.  Blast furnaces do not use slag cars.  The vast amount of slag produced at a blast furnace precludes this and it can range up to ten times the iron produced in a tap.  There are two large rectangular pits at the blast furnace where the slag is dumped roughly the size of the blast furnace footprint.  One is being cleaned out by a front end loader while the other is being filled.  Once empty the role is switched.  The slag is hauled to a slag processing plant by off road dumptrucks.  A real steel mill would not dump into a slag pit where you have located it for a couple of reasons.  One, in rainy weather when you dump molten slag from a melt shop onto wet graound you usually get a massive explosion as the water is turned to steam instantaneously.  This has been known to be so big it has derailed the cars and had people call 911 to report everything from airplane crashs to buildings blowing up.  The second reason is that the slag could cross the pit and wind up flooding the tracks .  This would render them useless until it cooled and was jackhammered out and repaired. It would be extrenely dangerous to be on those tracks during a dump.  In addition the heat given off is tremedous that could take the paint of of cars passing by slow enough.  Slag pits are always in the remotest part of the mill (tough to do in a model railroad situation). Your modeling is excellent.  You need signs on the buildings numbering the doors so trucks know where they are going as well as the mill logo or name high on the ends.  Most of the buildings will need weathering.  The blast furnace should get a coating of dust and grimy black from the top.  I have walked up the outside of a few downcomer pipes and have always been amazed that there is usually four inchs of fine dust on the top outside of the pipe tapering down to very weathered pipe with water streaks from the rain at the edges. All the other buildings need streaky weathering on the black side also.  Hope this helps you make a good scene great.

Hi ndbprr, Thanks for your knowledgeable constructive criticism. Only one with intimate knowledge of what goes on in a steel mill can help us understand what is necessary to make a "good scene great". Your weathering tips will be applied , to the best of my ability. The "slag dump" was placed in a visible position so that the 6" black light tube would cause the slag to glow, as evening approached. The photo is a little misleading. The "pit" is a " pit", and the rails on both sides are above the flow of the slag. The flow of molten iron (fluorescent painted ribbon) down the troughs to the waiting bottle cars, and slag to the slag cars, will glow (due to another 6" black light mounted above them). The Huletts will be automated manually by "pull) strings and rubber band (retrieve), operating from the Hulett to a horizontal bar, attached to a drawer slide, beneath the layout harbor. The four tracks under the Huletts are for ore cars that have distant destinations. The one track behind the Hulett base is for iron ore and other rail traffic delivering to the local steel mill. Extra ore is poured in piles to the rear. The decals and weathering of the buildings, comes next. Thanks again for the info! Bob Hahn