A-Furnace part II

I didn't mean to do a part two, but I guess I can only post two pictures at a time on here.  Or maybe it's the length of the post.  Anyway, here is the completed A-blast furnace body.   It is shown on Mike Rabbit's plans of the prototype.  There is a HO ruler in there for scale, although the plans are HO scale, which makes life real easy.   I still need to drill the holes for the tuyeres - they will go around the second band from the bottom, with the iron and cinder notches below.  The break about a third of the way up is for the steel supports for the furnace.  Four uptakes will be also added to the conical section at top.    For all this work to replicate the prototype, as you can see from the plans, only about an inch or so near the top is outside of the enclosing structure. 

A-Furnace Construction Underway

Furnace A is meant to be a scratchbuilt replica of Bethlehem Steel A-Furnace.  Where possible I am trying to recreate the prototype exactly.  This wouldn't be possible without the plans of this furnace drawn by Mike Rabbit.  I am using the set that shows this furnace after a rebuild in the mid-1950's.  The original furnace was constructed in the 1920's.  The 1950s updates appear to have been mostly related to the gas cleaning systems, but I believe that the top works were redone, as well as some reconfiguring of the stoves.  I chose to model this blast furnace for a number of reasons:

- I've always been a big fan of Bethlehem Steel

- The furnace is small so it will fit under my low basement ceiling

- The furnace used the older 3-pass stoves till it ceased operating - they are more interesting for me to model.  

- There are a fair number of historical and present day photos of this facility

In fact, it is the only Bethlehem furnace that you can partially photograph in detail without needing permission to go on the former plant property.    Despite 

all this information, there are still elements of this structure that I don't have 

any pictures of.  Also, the plans don't include water piping, electrical conduits, steam lines,...etc.    The photo above shows the raw material for the blast furnace body sitting on the floor, Mike Rabbit's plans at the ready for measuring, and the piles of shavings that results from turning these blocks of wood on the lathe. 

  The block was roughly 5.5"x5.5"x14.5"  It was made using five 5/4x6 boards glued and clamped with yellow wood glue.  I glued up blocks for A and B furnace at once, separating the stacks with wax paper.  I allow the whole bundle to dry for two days and then I run the blocks through a table saw to remove the edges and give the block 8-sides.  I do this to save some time turning, but also because even with the edges removed I'm at the limit of my lathe's capacity.   Until the block is turned into a perfect circle the off-center block will cause the lathe to wobble and jump - the more mass and the larger the diameter, the worse the wobble.    To control this to some extent I start turning at 500 rpms, until I get the block round, and then move up to 800 rpms, and then eventually 1200 rpms.  In the picture above you can see the partially turned furnace body  - I was working left to right, so the right side is just rounded, but not shaped yet.  

The Port

The port section of our HO layout is one of the older sections.  It represents a portion of a much larger port facility, only depicting two piers.  The track in this section is all code 70 and will probably remain so, unless we start getting major shorting issues.   The one pier is a coal loading facility, shown in picture on right.  The other pier is a general merchandise pier for loading freighters.  

Both piers are loosely based on prototype practices.  Inspiration for the coal pier is from the New York Ontario and Western facility in Weehawken, NJ, the Norfolk and Western Piers in Virginia, and a facility in Brooklyn I believe originally operated by the navy.  Again, I said loosely based - this structure is obviously the Walther's Ore Dock Kit.   Sometimes Walther's comes out with pure crap, other times, like in this case, a pretty awesome model.   So much so that I had to figure a way to put it in my fictitious northeastern port.   The structure is built, painted, and partially weathered.  It also has rail.  I need to build a connecting line still, which will go through the backdrop to a staging yard and then from there on a long d

owngrade run to the main yard section of the layout which has yet to be built.   I also am going to mount a large sign, the Lackawanna logo looks good for  this on the end of the pier as was the prototype in New York harbor.  I am also going to add lighting to the pier and to add some detail to the backdrop.  You will notice the very intense blue - this might be changed to something more subtle.  At the time I was going for that Kodacrome blue 

that my older slides all have.  

The other pier is based on the "Long Pier" at

the Lackawanna facility in Hoboken, NJ.  It has two tracks and a port crane.  A lot of products from the steel mill will be loaded here onto ships - such as steel beams, rails, coil steel, slabs, and pig iron.   It will allow for a lot of on line freight movements.   At the land side of the facility will be a cement transfer facility (water to rail) that is based on a prototype on the Passaic River in Newark, and several other industries will be partially shown.  

You can also see the primitive form of a freighter.  I've formed the basic shape from foam and will be laminating most of the hull with .020 styrene sheets.   I also hope to fit in a coal barge and a tug.  

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.

Bethlehem Steel A Furnace

Shown in the photo t is the prototype for my A-Furnace.  It is the left most furnace with the three pass stoves (the ones with stacks on top).  There are actually four stoves - the fourth is next to the furnace, behind the others.  You can see the high-line in front of the stoves and the furnace.  In most cases the photo taker would be standing in the ore yard, but in this case, Bethlehem located the ore yard elsewhere and shuttled the coke, ore, and limestone from there on the high-line.  To the right of the furnace you can make out the downcomer and the dust catcher.  Beyond this is the cylindrical elevator serving A and B Furnaces and then B-Furnace proper.  Although I will have a B-Furnace on my layout, I am not using this B-Furnace as the prototype for that.   

I have started modeling the dust catcher and gas washing equipment related to A-Furnace.  
The photo at right shows the partially built dust catcher and gas washing structure.  The dust catcher was turned from a cedar block using plans purchased from Mike Rabbit.  Portions of the wood were covered in .010 styrene with some minimal details added.  Holes were drilled using forstner bits for the downcomer and gas pipe out.  I applied I-Beams to the outside of the dust catcher in a manner similar to the prototype.  The structure is supported by styrene H-Beams and has a small platform with a simply modeled pug-mill and electric motor (Plastruct M-3) 

The partially modeled gas washer structure is shown in the foreground.   The venturi piping (conical section), drop out chamber unde that, and then the gas washer/cooler were all turned from blocks of poplar.  They are on a base constructed of 1/2" MDF with brick veneer.  The foundations for the venturi and washer are constructed of .040 styrene.  The base and foundations will be painted concrete and a brick color.  I still need to add doors to the foundation structures as well as an elaborate steel framework around the structures and additional piping.  The wall seems to have been built to protect the gas cleaning structure from the slag being poured very close by.  The smaller pipe extending from the top of the washer is a blow off device/tower.  It is 1/2" OD pipe.   

Progress Made

We've made some progress toward the objectives that I stated in an earlier post.  Of course, you never get as much done as you would like, but I'm satisfied.    We spend most summer weekends as well as some fall and spring at the New Jersey shore or on our sailboat, so usually the modeling slows a lot during that time period.  In early September we were reenergized by our attendance at the annual "Steel Mill Modelers Meet"  in Lancaster, PA.  This annual event is organized by John Glaab, owner of Peachcreek Shops in Maryland.    The photo at right shows Jimmy in the display room next to the Magarac Steel Module.  This was Jimmy's favorite room - he spent pretty much every spare moment in it perusing the many items for sale or looking at the excellent model displays.

  I really can't say enough good things about this get together -  the presentations on thursday night and all day friday were excellent, and the layout tours on saturday were equally well done.  We are looking forward to next years event, which I believe will be in North Carolina.  We hopefully will be contributing with a free-mo mo

dule, depicting a modern pipe foundry - look some construction blogs on this in the spring.  

Summarizing the progress on the layout since last spring -

1.  The additional benchwork for the steel mill section is mostly complete and about 75% of the track is down.  We need to go back and substitute curved turnouts on the approach tracks to Blast Furnace A.  We cheeped out and used standard LH/RH/and wye #4s and the flow just doesn't look right.  We still need to lay all the service tracks for Blast Furnace B and extend the main switching lead in this area.   We have modified the plan slightly and this 

area of the layout will include two blast furnaces, a partially modeled ore yard with bridge cran

e, a portion of a rolling mill,  a high-line to service the blast furnaces, a heat treatment shop, a pig casting machine,  and many auxilliary structures.    We are modeling the Open Hearth Furnaces on a different part of the existing layout.   

2.  The steel mill staging yard is mostly complete.  All that remains is to build a connecting line to the high-line.   This yard will serve as the destination for all freight transfers from the main line.  From there cars will be sorted for different trains serving various parts of the mill.  The yard will also serve as staging for the remainder of the mill not modeled.  For example, we are not modeling a slag dump, so slag from A Furnace (B Furnace will have a slag pit) will be transfered to this yard, representing the move to the dump.  The recent book on Bethlehem Steel Railroads was a valuable source of prototypical operation info.  

3.   The connector line from the main, thru the mill, to the staging yard is complete.  This is one part of my layout that I'm pretty unhappy with because of the extreme grade.   I have

two basic choices - lower the entire rest of the layout or live with it.  It functions fine, actually much better than I ever thought, but it just looks bad visually.  I don't have the room for a loop or helix so I'll have to live with it.   (If you don't remember, the steel mill portion has to be lower so the blast furnaces will clear my low ceiling)

4.  I've been working in spurts on Blast Furnace A.  (this in the next few blogs)

5.  Coke works partially built.

6.  More work on the port section of the layout.

So Much for blogging more regularly

Despite not updating my blog in over half a year, progress on the layout and steel mill has continued.  My New Years resolution is to update this blog regularly, so we will see how long that lasts.  I'll start tomorrow with a series of updates on the steel mill and our other activities.