- Iron Ore Mine & Steel Mill in N Scale

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Hi everyone,

I thought I'd kick off this thread for my layout dispite not having any photos that I can share with you yet. I do have pictures that I've taken, but my computer is unable to read the new fancy SDHC card in my digital camera and I left my USB cable back in the office; but I should be able to get my hands on it soon and give you a photo update shortly.

For those of you unfamiliar with my project, I cam building a steel mill facility in N scale. This includes major structures like blast furnaces (x2), coke oven, electric arc furnaces, and rolling mills. I will also be including supporting facilities such as the blast air blowing engine house, chemical processing plant, settling tanks, power plant, workshop, etc. to try to make the layout as realistic as possible.

Also, there is a harbor with an ore dock and bridge crane (maybe a hewlit someday) with room for a couple of bulk carrier freighters. At the other far end of the layout is a high grade haematite open cut mine (Western Australian style) and stock piles with a gaint bucket wheel escavator. Needless to day it's a big project, but I'm loving it.

I'm going old-school DC and have two separate "lines." I have a main line whick basically takes iron ore from the stockpiles to the blast furnaces or to the ore dock for export. The other line is for all the switching with the steel mill; for example: carrying hot metal to the BOF or rolling mills, carrying slag, transporting steel to the dock, and carrying coal to the coke ovens.

Only the main line is wired up right now, but neither thr branch to the ore dock nor the branch to the blast furnaces highline are done so the GP38s justt chase each other around the the loop which suitably satifies my 1 year old.

I've got a decent track planning CAD program that I'll have to produce a track plan for you and post it, but I can't be bothered right now, so I'll have to put on my to-do list.

I was a bit torn deciding if I should post this thread in the N Scale section or into Logging/Mining. Obviously I've gone with the later since I am modelling an iron ore mine and the section appears to be underrepresented.

Anyways, again sorry for no photos, and thanks guys for PM'ing me to let me know about the new "the-gauge.net"

-Dr.J

Glad to see you made it over here 2285_

Thanks for the update, looking forward to seeing some more pics from you, hopefully you can get some pics uploaded soon Misngth

As promised I got ahold of my USB cable and have few update pics now.

As you can see the two Blast furnaces are well underway; they just need a quick coat of paint before proceeding to the next stage of constrction.

The bridge crane is essentially finished apart from a new controller's cabin since I'll have to kitbash something that will suit N scale since the brudge crane is a HO kit. In the background you can also see the nearly finished ore dock.

[Image: Layout.jpg]

Today I plan to do a bit of scenery work since I want to take a break from the glue fumes.

-Dr.J

That is one very large project! Off to a fine start, though! Thumbsup

WOW love it all1! That Bridge Crane is impressive and i really like the idea of using an HO kit for N scale. The Blast Furnaces are turning out sweet too, i like how you layed the tracks out around them Thumbsup

As mentioned, I spent some time today doing some scenery on the layout. This is my first ever attempt at doing anything like this, so my methods may not exactly be "by the book."

I started off by getting a big tub-full of river sand/gravel and let it dry in the sun. Once dry, I took some fence paint (doe skin colour) and painted my foam surface. I then took my dried sand and used a standard kitchen sieve to scatter the dusty material all over the wet paint. The sieve only lets the fines through to ensure a consistant spread. I left a gap next to the track for where the ballast will go.

I can add subtle relief later by applying more paint on top of the exting cover and sprinkling more material on it. I have a bag of Woodland Scenics blended turf "Earth Blend" that I will use to give some final organic detail.

I also gave ballasting my track a shot using a brown fine ballast, which I think suitably compliments my terrane's colour scheme and fits the overall theme of eing in an area of an active iron ore mine. Keep in mine that there is no prototype for my layout by it's very loosely based on Australia.

The area shown in the photos is the 'virgin' ground in the high wall of the open cut pit. Of course there will be more detailing, this is just what I've got done so far.

[Image: Scatter.jpg]

-Dr.J

Looks great! Thumbsup

I think you did a great job on it, and i like the method you used to do a large area all at once Thumbsup

OK, so we've had a minor set back. I decided to tack up some thin plywood skirting around the base of my benchwork just to make things a bit more tidy looking on the layout and while shifting my desk, on of the two blast furnace towers fel on the concret floor and broke.

The good news is that it wasn't too serious. The entire matle ring came loose, the hoise assembly came off and the offtakes came off. Amazingly things only came apart where they've been glued, so it's just a matter of tacking it all back together.

Lesson learned: "Take models of the desk before moving the desk."

I just threw up a couple of shots of the broken furnace getting it's matle ring glued back on, next to the unbroken furnace #2. Also you can see my plywood skirting. I tried painting some of it black as I've seen done on so many layouts, but it just looks aweful on mine. I'm thinking of instead using that textured spray paint that looks like stone; however, I'm having trouble finding it here in Australia, back home, I'd just go to Canadian Tire.

[Image: broken.jpg]

-Dr.J

Wow...those are some impressive structures. Nice job!

This is going to be a nice project. I have a friend here that has a steel mill on his layout and the realestate it takes up is unbeleivable.

Glad to hear no broken pieces on the furnace tower that fell Goldth

there looking good Thumbsup

The plywood skirting looks good to Thumbsup

Sorry I haven't done much with the layout; been busy with work and spent the weekend at the -inlaw's.

I do have a question for anyone who has built a n scale walthers blast furnace, TruckLover, I know you have so may be able to help me out with this.

I've slid the pouring floor base (red) over the floor suppor columns and there appears to be a gapbetween the foundation base walls and the floor. the gap is caused by the cross I beams under the slag runners. This gap between the floor and the foundation, in my opinion looks really ungly and not very proto-typical.

I'm just wondering if anyone else who has made this has noticed this gap? I know I can "fix" this by cutting the cross beams so that they fit between the brick support encasemnts rather than on top of them, but the instruction clearly say to set the beams so that they rest on top of them. I know it's my model and I can do whatever I want, but I just wanted to double check to see that I'm not crazy.

You should be able to see this gap between the floor and the foundation caused by the I beams in the following pics...

[Image: pouringfloor.jpg]

-Dr.J

Im not sure i remember that gap being there on mine. It was quite some time ago lol

**EDIT** After looking at pictures from my construction process on the old forum, i can see that there WAS in fact the same gap that you show Dr. J

[Image: attachment.php?attachmentid=30475&stc=1&...1185335205]

[Image: attachment.php?attachmentid=30476&stc=1&...1185335241]

So I painted the pouring floors for the two blast furnaces, and well, stupid me I left them outside to dry in the scorching Australia summer sun and they warped really badly Curse

I'm pretty sure that I can rectify the problem with some cleverly placed steel angle bits and some serious clamping and gluing, but in the mean time the warping is pretty ugly.

Dispite this ugly defect, I couldn't help but to mock up the major components and take a couple overview shots of the layout to preview how it will all fit together. I also took a shot of the material handling area at my bridge crane where I have coal cars waiting to be loaded and taken to the coke ovens.

[Image: warp1.jpg]

Another issue I've been stuggling with is my blast air engine house which is made of three "car shops" combined. Three car shops equals A LOT of windows. I read somewhere that you should always paint the interior of strucres black if they have windows; this seemed reasonable to me so i did it. Unfortunately, becuase I painted the inside walls the windows don't glue very well to the paint. Normally the plastic glues reasonably well to painted surfaces, but the windows are a different kind of plastic (obviously because the are clear) and this plastic doesn't bond well to the paint. Anyways, the result is that the windows fall off constantly. So I figure I will resort to using black electrical tape to hold them in, because I'm tired of re-gluing them and I want to get the blast air house done.

[Image: blastair1.jpg]

-Dr.J

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