Today they use ammonium nitrate explosives. MUCH safer than dynamite. As stated above, they can precicely determine how much explosives to use and how to place the bore holes for precise results. The ammonium nitrate is little pellets that are dropped into the hole from a truck, the detonator is lowered in and the hole covered. BOOM, nice rock to move to the customers.
Little Timmy! Not at all, my pleasure.
So good to hear from you. I could have missed but I haven't seen you around for a while. Maybe you just been busy working on layout stuff.
Well anyway, good to see you again
TF
Track fiddler,
I would like to thank you for taking the time to "resurrect " this thread. I Have been thinking of putting in an abandoned rock quarry on the Demon's Hollow & Pacific.
I knew a few things about rock quarrys and this information came at a very opportune time.
Lots of good info here!
Rust...... It's a good thing !
Double post, these old threads take a while to surface apparently
The old rock quarry thread, I dug up for Fred.
dehusmanNot necessarily. There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year. Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Thousands of tons per year would not make a very big or profitable quarry. One of our plants crushes, washes, and sizes 500 tons per hour. And this is one of our smaller operations. We have had it cranked up to 750 TPH but turned it down to get a better, cleaner finished product. To keep things sane and manageable we usually run around 350 to 400 TPH. The plant is fed with four 40 ton trucks and two large front end loaders out of a blasted quarry hole 1/8 of a mile away. Right now the wall is 200 feet long and 75 feet deep. This is a new quarry that just got built. The first jaw has a 30x48 inch opening crushing to 4 inches that feeds two 3 foot cones. Then it travels via conveyor to the four deck screen where it is sprayed with water and sized to 5 sizes of finished product. Stone dust, 3/8 inch, 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch 1 1/2 inch. We also have scalpers in the chutes to make dense grade of any size of 4 inch minus. I am not a geologist but the rock looks like Diorite or Andesite. Blasting is done 2 or 3 times a week.
Our other plants are primarily sand a gravel plants. Same system but no blasting. No stone dust but 2 or 3 grades of sand. Fine mason, course mason, concrete sand, 3/8 pea gravel, 3/4 stone, 1 1/2 inch stone, and more of a waste product but does sell sometimes is washed silt. Our oldest plant is the smallest. It was built in the fifties but has been revamped over the years. It produces 200 to 300 TPH.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
Westshorefan,
That website is great. The list of products and uses was a big help.
Sean
Sean - Google search = Tilcon rock quarry Haverstraw New York It is located on the Hudson River, about 35 miles North of New York City. They own a mountain (granite rock) just West of the river. They dynamite a section; load huge pieces into the crusher; the rocks then travel on conveyer belts thru the mountain via a tunnel (under a highway); and are separated by size, in enormous piles. A lot of them are then loaded onto barges, & towed South toward the city. A lot more are loaded onto tractor-trailers (again headed South). The product is used mainly to build roads, & building foundations. When they built the World Trade Center, the rock for the foundations came from this operation. Nothing is loaded on freight cars, even tho CSX (former NYC, then CONRAIL) main-line freight trackage runs between the mountain & the river. Hope some of this helps with your project, or, someone elses.
Westshorefan (nearing the end of the line)
enjoyed the videos, thanks. i'm surprised the guy stacking the stones when they come off the converyor doesn't have feet like a duck.
earlier, i mentioned the Mississippi Lime (new name is ?) limestone quarry at Alton Illiniois. after studying the bird's eye view on Bing Maps, my suspicions were confirmed. they do not have an open quarry pit. they are tunneling under the city of Alton and bringing the rock out from underground mining operations. the openings are visable if you poke around a bit on the site.
grizlump
Quarrying blocks was mentioned early on... try this...
http://www.encyclopedia.com/video/dtgji08uW8o-stone-quarrying-machines-at-work.aspx
I love the Personal Protective Equipment...
and there's a whole pile of links...
including aguy drilling with his feet... and enthusiastic sledgehammer work...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj06C59KPtA&feature=player_embedded
I have a gravel quarry on my layout - sort of. It's actually an "off-layout" industry consisting of a spur going through the backdrop to a pair of stub tracks in an accessible location. When I get around to doing scenery I'm thinking of a chain link fence with a gate across the tracks (to keep trespassers out) and perhaps a depiction of the crusher house in the distance on the backdrop. This makes for a nice empties-in loads-out operation, generating a regular stream of traffic while using almost no space.
But if I had the space... and a lot of photos, some good articles or a book, the choice of a kit or two (ideally from a Cornerstone-type industry-theme group of kits), and more photos, yeah, I'd put it "on-layout".
You can set up a whole rail business of moving stone. Some can be used as ballast for the railroad, but the majority of crushed aggregate is used for construction. I used to work on the W&LE and some material containing lots of fines were used for fill, but the vast majority we moved went into concrete block fairly small size stone, I think 1/8", 3/8" went into asphalt (Walthers made an asphalt plant), and 3/4" material went into concrete (Walthers and others make concrete plants). Rip-rap (large boulders of various sizes) was often used in waterfront construction projects and maintenance of way work along rivers and was moved by rail in side dump cars, but can also be moved in mill gons and unloaded with a backhoe with a grapple. I think Walthers also produced a stone crushing plant and conveyors I believe. Older quarries had processing plants with crushing and screening and tipples for truck and rail loading that look somewhat similar to coal processing plants. In some cases some kinds of stone create lots of fine dust when crushed and needs to be washed somewhat like coal. Stone is often fairly seasonal in northern climates as it can be very difficult to unload if it freezes.
Stone can be loaded in large volumes with overhead bins, or in many cases from trackside stockpiles with a couple of large front end loaders. Depending on the quality of the limestone, some quarries such as the ones on the WE in Ohio can produce not just construction stone, but chemical lime for covered hopper loading or high grade stone for steel mill blast furnaces. The prime stone is used for these purposes, and the lower grade stone in other parts of the quarry will be used for construction materials.
Lastly crushed stone can be moved in purpose built short length Ortner three pocket rapid discharge cars, short Greenville two pocket cars, or steel coal hoppers. Walthers makes all of these types of cars. Stone is usually short haul and therefore truck competitive, so much of the time it is hauled in older steel coal hoppers. The best coal hoppers have a continuous slope sheet (no change in slope sheet angle) so that with a car shaker the stone will flow reasonably well. Coal hoppers don't have as steep slope sheets as the Ortner and Greenville purpose built cars. The new Tangent 4-bay steel coal hopper of a UP prototype have 45 degree slope sheets make an excellent stone hopper as well. One benefit of a purpose built car is that they are shorter so there is less siding required in the quarry or destination sites which again helps to keep capital investment down in a very truck competitive business.
Actually, quite a large amount of stone moves by rail on the East Coast, CSX runs Rock Runners into the Baltimore area off the former Western Maryland. Tilcon ships trains of stone in Connecticut on the P&W down the Northeast Corridor as far south as Long Island. There are stone trains in the Atlanta area on both CSX and NS. NS moves a lot of stone in Eastern Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, and down the Delmarva Penninsula. The FEC and CSX move lots of stone in Florida. UP moves lots of stone in Texas - some of these trains are all older mill gons and are unloaded with a car topper (a slightly modified backhoe which can climb up on the car and rides along the top chords of the gons and scoops the stone out of the car into piles next to the rail or into trucks). The WE moves lots of stone in Ohio, as does CSX. UP also moves stone in the San Francisco Bay area. BNSF moves stone in Oklahoma and Texas as well. The P&W moves stone in Oregon. The Alaska Railroad moves up to three trains a day of gravel in the summer from pits outside Anchorage to terminals in Anchorage where it is crushed and sized at the destination instead of where it is mined. Most stone now moves in unit trains from 25 to 75 cars long. Unit trains are used because equipment utilization is critical to keeping costs low enough to compete against trucks. Interline service is not common (except sometimes for rail ballast) as the low rates are hard to divide between railroads and equipment utilization is harder to manage in interline service.
Sand can also move by rail for construction (concrete block, asphalt, and concrete plants), but is less common as the fine nature of it makes it leak from doors which are not tight when the material is dry, or it sticks together and is hard to unload when it is wet. However, NS has done some backhauling of sand back to the stone quarries. Often where there is sand there is no native stone and vice versa, so backhauls can be a possibility.
In a few cases granite and trap rock ground fairly fine (roofing granules) is loaded in covered hoppers and goes to asphalt shingle plants which may also take tank cars of asphalt and boxcars of fiberglass rolls (the base for the shingle) and in some cases the boxcars are reloaded with outbound shingles. CN moves a large volume of roofing granules in two-bay covered hoppers out of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and parts of Wisconsin. The WE had a shingle plant at Medina, OH. The color of the stone is important for shingles.
Lastly, you could also spot tank cars of asphalt (not too common because heat is required to keep the material liquid) or covered hoppers of cement at the block and concrete plants to add more variety. So you can model a very nice commerce around a stone quarry. Limestone is the most common material, and preferred for block and concrete production as it is generally cheaper and bonds better with cement. Granite is preferred for railroad ballast and asphalt as it is stronger than limestone and for asphalt wears better and provides a better antiskid surface. But price is critical so whatever is produced locally is what is used for most projects (although some projects such as airport runways require anti-skid stone such as granite or trap rock). So have some fun with an interesting and often ignored commodity which can generate some pretty nice business for your railroad.
markpierce dehusman Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades. Track ballasted with crummy limestone (Kaibab in this case) but with some granite on one shoulder in an apparent attempt to slowly upgrade the line: Mark
dehusman Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Track ballasted with crummy limestone (Kaibab in this case) but with some granite on one shoulder in an apparent attempt to slowly upgrade the line:
Mark
Limestone is found in lots of places and varies a huge amount. At one end of the scale there is chalk and at the other there is seriously hard stuff that's probably as durable as granite. Limestone, in all its forms, is a compressed sedimentary made up of billions of sea creatures' skeletons. The critters snuffed it and sank to the bottom of their ancient sea. Depending on what, if anything got dumped on top of them the layers of bones did or didn't get compressed. The ones that got more squashed formed harder rock.
Granite is weird stuff. Back when I did geology they weren't sure what caused it and their were theories about "granitisation". In its many forms (and colours) it doesn't seem to conform to any of the main categories... it isn't properly ignious, sedimenatary or metamorphic... it's just awkward... but almost always very hard and durable. It is usually fine grained but it isn't a freestone (i.e. it can't be sculpted with great ease).
I have given up trying to count the number of main colours of granite ballast. You can start with grey, green, purple, pink and blue... in multiple shades... and they all change depending on the weather and the light. You also get more or less bits of quartz and mica (IIRC) making the bits more or less sparkly.
Meanwhile, back at the track and the pic...
I have hundreds of pics like this (must learn to post them one year). New stone has been "run in" along one side by the MoW. This could be for one of several reasons...
All these things happen all the time at one place or another. This looks quite like the first option.
Raised shoulders appear in lots of engineering texts (I have many copies from them) but they seemed to have become honoured by their absence... until the turn of this century. At least over here they have re-appeared with a vengeance... and they are foul things!
They're foul because you have to skuttle up them to get up oput of the cess onto the track, you can't walk on top of them easily - they slide about - and you have to go up over them and then down to the cess when getting off track. What they are for is to help maintain the track's lateral position. They have been re-introduced first where speed limits have been raised.
Raised shoulders get dropped pretty much as in the picture: usually on both sides. There can be one side on the outside of a curve or that side can be higher than the inside one. They also appear between track - in double and multiple track. (Great fun to walk on). The reason for only one here could be that the MoW train simply ran short... I have known it "once or twice".
Raised shoulders can be just dropped... sometimes they are also shaped by ballast regulators as well... this tends to be in conjunction with tamping activity and/or a stone blower shifting stone about.
One thing about raised shoulders is that they do tend to sit on the tie ends.
On the other hand this could be a top up... the older ballast looks pretty lean... if I were the local MoW boss I'd want to know why the drop was down one side and not all over though. Could be that they've run in the leftovers from a main job behind the camera... It is quite possible that when doing a big drop along a length one side of the cars will get emptied more than the other. there's no point in taking the stone back to the quarry - and this length could clearly use a top-up... so leftovers get dropped where they will be most useful. The local MoW men will be hoping for a machine to come and re-distribute that pile... 'cos shifting it by hand is hot and hard work ... there's more than a house drive's or patio's material to be shifted there. (Don't forget that in the old days most ballast was shifted by hand at some point).
That brings me to the last option... if that side has dropped and/or generally been weakened the strip of stone could be there to be worked in to lift it and/or strengthen it. Again the locals will be hoping for a machine to do it for them.
Track and track maintenance are dynamic things... one of the dynamics being the factor of ballast wandering out of the formation ... another is other (unwanted) material wandering in. The old ballast here looks pretty loose so I wouldn't be surprised if a ballast cleaner has recently been through. This would also account for the relatively low level of ballast. Given the overall view I would be hoping for further drops of stone before a machine or two did some more lining, leveling and packing and profiling.
Anyway... it's nice to see a pic like this. I'm not sue what the machine is... could be one of a variety of beasts.
Who says that ballasting model track is boring? You can add all this detail and "history" to the scene.
dehusman There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year.
There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year.
Ballast cars (hopper cars) are the most common non-revenue car on this railroad.
dehusman Dave-the-TrainMost of the RR equipment will be the tip cars. Flats and gons might be used for moving blocks and would be used in re-locating the temporary tracks. The only other thing you need is a suitable loco or two - or three... You don't ship "ballast" in side dump ("tip") cars. You ship ballast in hoppers,
Dave-the-TrainMost of the RR equipment will be the tip cars. Flats and gons might be used for moving blocks and would be used in re-locating the temporary tracks. The only other thing you need is a suitable loco or two - or three...
You don't ship "ballast" in side dump ("tip") cars. You ship ballast in hoppers,
Read the context... I am specifically refering to RR equipment within the quarry operation. Your observation would be correct about the kind of cars the external-to-quarry Railroad Companies would haul the finished product away in... but you wouldn't see many conventional or ballast hoppers /MOW cars in use within the quarry... temporary tracks don't usually get ballasted for a start.
Anyway, what I was going to add was a long link... http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YoHVpEea6bgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bucyrus&source=bl&ots=auzh7YX632&sig=HwLmn7SK72IzAbnVrukw4NqybHs&hl=en&ei=h9RYTPSADYW80gSd9-XoCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
The thought that I had was to look for examples by searching (with a certain well known search engine frequently mentioned here) for some of the machine makers' names. Only one I recalled straight off was "Bucyrus". I would suggest looking at some of the dams etc, spotting makers names on plant and then searching for them...
I just scrolled right through that link... and toward the end there are regular RR cars in one pic... ore cars... but ore working is usually different from rock working.
For later era (post war) machines... http://www.bucyruseriemodels.com/be71-b.aspx The home page says that the models will be available in 1/87... but I haven't dug up anything on where or when yet...
Modern cranes (for block lifting) and more... http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/materials/bucyrus/
conveyors and stuff... http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/materials/bucyrus/
wrong scale but some nice toys... you could by one and make your own smaller scale copy... http://www.bucyrusmodels.com/
Another maker, Marion, mentioned here... http://www.stripmine.org/bucyrus.htm
try here... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3A*&q=Marion+earth+moving&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Nope! There's absolutely nothing out there... until I stumble on the right search word...
That's why I hate it when people respond with "Try a Google search".
It took me a few days to get the inspiration to find these few...
Hope they help...
You don't ship "ballast" in side dump ("tip") cars. You ship ballast in hoppers, either conventional bottom dump or special cars designed to control the distributions between the rails. Ballast belongs on the track. By design a side dump car dumps to the side of the track. Side dumps are used for dumping rip rap (large chunks of rock) or material used for fills or to repair washouts.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
locoi1sa Rail road ballast would be a small product line for a producer. Most ballast will outlive the owner of the railroad. Rail road people are cheap by nature and would reuse everything they could and that includes ballast. Ballast cleaners have run the rails as far back as the thirty's.
Not necessarily. There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year. Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Rock, even when blasted isn't earth. I'm not being pedantic (well not very). Limestone is hard stuff... at least the types used for track ballast are hard to very hard. I think that the stuff used in steel manufacture and cement making is different. Any geologists out there to help us out?
Anyway... for pre war I would look for steam shovels like they used to dig the Panama Canal and work on the big dam projects. Not all the machines they used on those were massive. Generally I would look for a crawler or rail mounted machine with a forward pointing bucket. I doubt that a drag line would be suitable for lifting the rock... although a dragline (or two) might well be used for removing overburden from the top of the quarry... that's an essential but seperate operation.
In the pre war era there wouldn't be a lot of heavy trucks to shuttle the rock around. Again look at the Panama canal and the big dam projects. You'll see lots of temporary track... and on them you'll see various flats, gons and dump cars... where there's a lot of dumping to do they are likely to be air dump cars. the harder the rock the more rough-and-tough the car construction. Some cars had two seperate dump bodies on them. This was to avoid too large a body capsizing the whole car... the seperate bodies had to be tipped one at a time.
Another place to look might be both RR construction and grade seperation projects. The work is similar... shifting large amounts of material from one place to another on a short rotation.
Smaller quarries would tend to use narrow gauge (often 3' in the USA) rather than dump rail use for road wheeled carriers... tyre and probably transmisision technology weren't up to the rigors of quarry work. Don't forget that even the oil industry moved a lot of stuff around the oil fields by rail and not by road.
The quarrying process is only a few stages (some repeated)
Most of the RR equipment will be the tip cars. Flats and gons might be used for moving blocks and would be used in re-locating the temporary tracks. The only other thing you need is a suitable loco or two - or three...
Pete,
Thanks for the ideas, it looks like the list of off layout industries is growing.
Ray,
I too have drawn a blank looking for pictures of older mining equipment. But, as a suggestion, I would think any earth moving equipment in your era would be very convincing on your layout. The only draw back would be if your quarry is a big operation. I would assume the bigger the operation the bigger the equipment needed.
Talk about a useful, timely, thread..... I am in the process of building a limestone quarry for my layout! My time period is around 1925. I have searched the internet for many hours to try to find some suitable photos of quarries and equipment from the first part of the lasy century and have pretty much drawn a blank.
Do any of you have (or point me to) photos of quarry operations dating back to that time? Please share!
Thanks!
73
Ray Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western R.R. (S.L.O.&W.) in HO
We'll get there sooner or later!
SeanthehackWhat would the smaller sized rock be used for and who would want it, the only thing I can think of would be landscapers
Concrete, Asphalt, road base, stone dust is used for a base for pavers. drainage systems, septic systems, roof shingles, filter products, erosion abatement, roofs of flat top buildings, aggregate enhanced brick and block, exposed aggregate pool and driveways, fill, sand boxes, the list is endless.
Rail road ballast would be a small product line for a producer. Most ballast will outlive the owner of the railroad. Rail road people are cheap by nature and would reuse everything they could and that includes ballast. Ballast cleaners have run the rails as far back as the thirty's.
Its a great concept. All this dirt in the world and people buy it!
When you refer to ballast do you mean RR track ballast - which is a whole subject in itself - or the generic "ballast" that goes into concrete (which I think is called "aggregate" in the US??)
Either way... everything to big can usually be knocked down to smaller - everything too small can be found a home... if only back in the hole it came out of. Better than that there are all soprts of people who want aggregate in all sorts of sizes for all sorts of jobs.
It does depend on what the rock is and how it breaks up at the smaller end of the scale. Some will only go to dust... but even dust has its uses.
The LSWR's huge Meldon quarry produced thousands of tone of rail ballast but also a whole load of "Meldon dust" that the railways used for walk ways.
A whole load od roads and parking lots require different grades and sizes of rock that are tipped, profiled and rolled as a sandwich is built up. The top layer of concrete or tar that we see is usually supported on a lot of much less expensive stuff.
Very few rock quarries end up with waste tips... someone is usually looking for material. From the quarries point of view it saves them bother if someone will even take the worst stuff away at their own expense.
Thinking about it slate quarries have spoil tips... and they can be a problem decades later... but that is exceptioanl. In fact even slate can be crunched to powder and sold.
locoi1sa Sean. A quarry would more than likely produce different size finished product. When we set our jaw crusher to 4 inch it produces an infinite size of product up to 4 inches. producers can then screen out the different size material from there. Every product that a small operation produces would be a minus size. That means it is not a consistent size. There will be as example 1and 1/2 inch stone pile would contain some dust up to 1 and 1/2 inch stone. Producers would take advantage of that different size material and screen and wash it to a consistent size finished product. Therefore a small producer providing ballast would also provide some stone dust, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4, 1 1/2, and so on. If there is a particular size product that sells better then others then a size larger would be re-crushed and screened. The quarry I work at produces 3 inch minus. The 1 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch stone sells better then the other sizes. By adding a scalping chute to the 3 inch we can direct the 3 inch stone back to the cone crusher via conveyor to re-crush it to the smaller size that sells better. If you set up your plant to produce one size of finished product what do you do with all the under size? In fact you would be producing more waste than product. Pete
Sean.
A quarry would more than likely produce different size finished product. When we set our jaw crusher to 4 inch it produces an infinite size of product up to 4 inches. producers can then screen out the different size material from there. Every product that a small operation produces would be a minus size. That means it is not a consistent size. There will be as example 1and 1/2 inch stone pile would contain some dust up to 1 and 1/2 inch stone. Producers would take advantage of that different size material and screen and wash it to a consistent size finished product. Therefore a small producer providing ballast would also provide some stone dust, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4, 1 1/2, and so on. If there is a particular size product that sells better then others then a size larger would be re-crushed and screened. The quarry I work at produces 3 inch minus. The 1 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch stone sells better then the other sizes. By adding a scalping chute to the 3 inch we can direct the 3 inch stone back to the cone crusher via conveyor to re-crush it to the smaller size that sells better. If you set up your plant to produce one size of finished product what do you do with all the under size? In fact you would be producing more waste than product.
Thanks, the under size stone was something I had not thought of. So if my quarries primary (best selling product) is ballast, there is going to be a sizes smaller than that as well. What would the smaller sized rock be used for and who would want it, the only thing I can think of would be landscapers.
markpierceAggregate quarry (model under construction) on Seth Neumann's layout. It is based on Kaiser's facilities in Pleasonton, CA. The model looks like it would have sufficient volume to use rail transport. Mark
Aggregate quarry (model under construction) on Seth Neumann's layout. It is based on Kaiser's facilities in Pleasonton, CA. The model looks like it would have sufficient volume to use rail transport.
That is some excellent modeling, although larger then what I was planning, Still very impressive!!
As you have written close to a chapters worth of information, when does the full book on model railroading and quarry's come out.
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.
Thanks for all the great information, Dave-the-train I am impressed with your amount of knowledge. I am leaning more toward modeling a gravel quarry that would only supply one type of stone, most likely ballast. The "story" for the industry that I am forming is that of a family owned business with minimal equipment and just enough business to keep the operation going.