Friends. I would like to be able to show you photos of a beautiful blast furnace and even though I have been working on this for three months nothing so far has happened. So why am I posting a "nothing" message? First a project like this for one person to do is massive and to keep the layout operating in between all this planning and changes is also a big job so today I will show you just one change out of many that I have had to do before I start on the Furnace. The high line an important part of the Steel mill it feeds the raw materials to the furnace and I am not going into any details of how the mill works as I am no expert at anything just a person that reads and researches endlessly even my patient wife gets sick of seeing me reading endless steel books in bed every night so lets stop there! I had to make some changes to the high line and move it towards the aisle so I had more room for the Skip and machinery house. Notice also how another Slag track has been added and now the high line has another short spur for a loco or a bad order car the photos show the changes are small I know but still takes time. Roo.
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Roo keep up the great work. I will be watching what you accomplish as well as copying your ideas.
I'm lucky as my son is helping with the layout and he is building the blast furnace. i will do the rolling mill. we are lucky as we have 2 lasers as well as a 3d printer. he is also going to start working on the ingot mold as well as the flat cars to carry them.
Nice! If it was easy, everybody would have one!
Dave
That's a good looking layout. It looks like the wait will be worth it for the rest of us.
Fantastic Roo!
I will eagerly follow your progress. Perhaps you can add dimensions?
thanks
Thanks everyone for their kind words. Sure I can add some dimensions BRADA, but not for a couple of days. Most of today was spent measuring the space, the track, the cars that will be using the furnace, MTH and Lionel Slag cars are both different sizes this is important to keep in mind, anyway, the whole pouring floor is now in the computer and my friend is working on a CAD drawing at the present time. to me the Pouring floor and the position of the pillars supporting it is one of the most important to get right as this is the basis for the whole thing. Now I must make this clear my friend and I are not Steel Mill experts and our mill is not based on any mill anywhere, it will look the same or similar but is strictly freelance. If anyone wanted to build a furnace in O scale the measurements that I will give is for a freelance blast furnace in O scale nothing more, just had to make that clear! A couple of things I wanted with the Blast furnace was five tracks starting from left to right, two on one side (One for storage) for slag cars, two underneath that are capable of holding two MTH bottle cars on each track, and one further track for slag on the other (Right) side this is important for me as the layout is an operating layout and we want to deal with four pours per session. Each Hot Metal train will have one locomotive a spacer car (Old AHM Gondola) and two MTH bottle cars OR three Lionel bottle cars. The Slag trains will have one locomotive either with six MTH slag cars OR four DOUBLE Lionel slag cars (I joined two Lionel slag cars together to make these) as I felt the MTH looked so much bigger or the Lionel looked so much smaller so a double Lionel filled the roster just nice. I could talk all night about cars I use for this project there are many but lets not get to carried away even though it's taken three years to get this far it's still early days. Keep in mind this is just one way of building a O scale Steel mill there are lots of good modellers that have built mills a lot better than mine will be Dave for instance has a beautiful Blast Furnace in O scale right here on the website with some great photos.
Definition of an Operating session.
An operating session goes all day , five hours running trains, two hours eating drinking and talking every Friday. I spend the Thursday checking the paper work and printing it out, cleaning and checking Locos and staging the layout and maybe cleaning some track. I also provide the food and drinks. No wonder I need to get away now and again!! It's still fun I love it and the operators do to. Hooroo from Roo.
Roo,
Have you installed Kadees on the slag and bottle cars? Mario has an interesting setup. I was curious how you might have tackled it.
Too bad we don't live closer!
Dave
I had a fella convert my mth slag and hot metal cars to 2r with Kadee. The mth cars are too large, I may get the new Lionel and convert as their size is more accurate.
You are doing a beautiful job. Everything looks great.
I need an excuse to travel to WA.
Dave. I have converted all my rolling stock myself the one thing I haven't converted yet is the Lionel bottle cars to Kadees the trucks I have two railed I would dearly love to get some Kadee spacers from Mario if he makes them.
The way I was going to approach the Lionel Bottle cars is similar to the way I converted the Atlas SW locomotives and that is making a plate with four holes two threaded for the couplings the other two using ordinary holes and the Atlas screws but with the Bottle cars I was going to drill and tap the metal car screw the spacer then drill and tap for the Kadee coupler. here is my adapter for the Kadees to SW locomotives and here is a eight wheeler bottle car fitted with Kadees I have not painted that yet it's still brand new. I would like to buy Mario's adapters but have trouble reading his website maybe I need more practice trying to do to many things at once! Thanks Roo.
Hey Max, if you ever come over make it a Friday! (operating day)
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Lousy photos sorry. Should have checked them out first, the number on the plate disregard it's just something from my long ago engineering days when you numbered everything, old habits are hard to break but I'm trying! Have to go out the wife is yelling at me to get off the computer! Thanks everyone for the kind words now it's down to the Shopping centres for Christmas shopping which I detest (Not Christmas... shopping!) at this time of the year. Should just give her my wallet and stay home. Roo.
Friday it is.
Roo
I studied books on steel mills for a long time before I was able to construct a steel mill. It is a massive project and there is a tremendous amount of equipment involved. A train layout has very limited space for a structure like this. Take your time so you capture the concept of a steel mill.
Since there is not a construction deadline or a bonus/penalty clause for construction, take as much time as you like and enjoy every minute of constructing the mill.
Alan Graziano
I have some sizes, keep in mind this is to fit the space on the layout, the side elevation of the furnace is only to scale in height the width has been compressed because we don't have an A3 printer so we can only print on A4 size sheets if I had plenty of money I would buy an A3 printer instead of a loco! Please excuse the dreadful way I have posted the basic plans as I can't work out how to post PDF files here maybe you can't. Sizes are Metric sorry. Slag car ladle is MTH as it's bigger than the Lionel. Blast furnace is based on one from Beth steel works. Roo.
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Alan.
You must have posted your message at the same time I posted the basic plans. Wise words indeed and thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to post that most helpful advice.
I have never built a Steel mill but so far I have been working on this project for three years and only in the last three months have been seriously thinking about the Blast furnace. I have built up an enormous amount of literature in that time including all the books from Morning Sun, I like to try and do as much research as possible myself first, then when I get stuck on something I have to call in the experts which is not yet I hope! I'm laughing. I don't like to annoy people or use them to get what I want it's just not the Aussie way of doing things we like to battle along and enjoy the ride but you can be sure if I do get stuck I will be asking questions in the mean time I am trying to finish the highline section for tomorrows running session and of course clean up the room where I have been working.
Thanks again Alan and everyone.
Roo.
Roo
if in cm, how high, wide and long are these drawings? I cannot tell on my device.
100mm = 10cm
High 87cm from railhead
Length 110cm
Width 47cm
These measurements are not set in stone and there are many other lengths, widths, heights, I haven't mentioned also don't forget there is a large blower house and other cylinders pipes etc involved. These measurements and plan are only for the blast furnace which includes the pouring floor. Please read what I said about 12 messages back about how this is a freelance project to suit our needs on the Yulan Valley Railroad.
If anyone is really honest about building a blast furnace similar to this you can email me offline and I will sent you the PDF files in an email to you I can't help you much more than that at the moment and if you do receive the files I will expect you to use them for your own use only and not to print them in any journal or forum I am hoping anyone will honour that if they don't I can't do much about it as they are not copyright I hope you will do the right thing. Thanks Roo.
neville-1234@bigpond.com