The Ore Yard

Even though the prototype, Bethlehem Steel, had their ore yard at a location remote from the blast furnaces, we have chosen to model the traditional ore yard arrangement on the skip hoist side of the furnaces.  

In the photo you can see the preliminary work on the ore yard.  The bridge crane is from a Walthers kit that Jimmy won as a door prize at the Steel Mill Modelers Meet.  He built the kit entirely on his own - not too bad for a 14 year old.  We are going to augment the out of the box kit with scratchbuilt stairs and platforms on both legs, railings along the bridge platforms, and other details.  

 The walls of the ore yard can be seen in the early stages.  Additional buttresses are to be added on the outside of the wall.  The wall is made out of 1/2" MDF.  I use this material a lot.  MDF is basically a particle board with smaller particles and a higher compression.  The thing that is nice about it is that the cut edges can be left as is.  To be sure, they need to be sealed properly and primed before painting.  We will be using 120 grit sandpaper to round over the sharp edges and then using awls to scribe in cracks and other defects.  It will then get painted with a concrete paint and weathered.  Rails will be added to the top of the wall for the bridge crane.   This portion of the yard itself will be modeled using 2" foam that is removable.  

To the right of the ore yard will be the high line.  I have made a prototype section of this already.  It will be a big undertaking involving about 8' of styrene scratchbuilding.  Not extremely complicated, just repetitive.  More on this in a later post.