Hi Val, it's looking great! Those prototype photos have so many details! I could never attempt it but look forward to seeing your progress. Regarding the thread problem, I recently built an ash conveyor and a coal dock, both of which required simulated cables. The coaling tower wa a walthers kit and came with some thread, which I did not use as (as I recall) it just would not straighten out. Instead I used a thread from my wife's sewing kit. Because it was on a spool it too presented the need to be straightened out. However this smaller thread was easy to straighten, I hung pieces and attached weight on the bottom, and sprayed them with hair spray. I left them for a couple days and when I went to use them they worked well. You cn see them on the attached photo of the under construction ash conveyor. The attachment point to the bucket leaves something to be desired, but that is a limitation of my eyesight, not the thread![attachment=682]

That's a neat tip Gary! The many uses of hairspray, hehe.

I've had the same thoughts looking at prototype photos of steel mills. There is an insane level of detail!!! The maze of pipes, valves, conveyors is somewhat daunting. I've already resigned myself to the fact that the best I can achieve given the space and budget limitations will be a representation of a tiny part of a very small steel mill, which is fine by me. As long as the placement of track, structures and pipes makes sense, I'll be happy.

I recently found a thread on another forum about scratchbuilding the blast furnace precipitator. It's quite a read, and is here if you're interested.

http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/topic...hichpage=1

cheers
Val

Better view WITH the locomotive, slug and some cars

Tom that is an amazing picture!!!

Well, it's been another week so it's time for an update.

Lots of free time lately because of a strike (long story), and I had afew days to finish the gas storage tank. One of the earliest photo's I found of a steel mill - an aerial shot - had one of these, and I always liked the look of it.

btw, the walthers blast furnace release has been delayed until Feb 17


but the coke oven is out!

Meanwhile, down at the ore docks...





Remove some buildings.



The kit fit together well, but was a repetitive build, so, whenever I found myself getting bored, I tidied up my little work area in the kitchen and took a break. Or made dinner. I've built these last 2 kits in the kitchen and I like the daylight, and I also kinda like the discilpine of having to get it out of the way. Or maybe I'm just fleeing my cluttered work area which is total chaos right now!

cheers
Val

COOL Val!!! I like the gas storage tank, and the bridge crane is looking sweet too!! Looking forward to some more pics Keep up the great work

COOL, Val. I've been following your progress, but for some reason I just noticed the title of this thread this morning. I have to tell you "Taking the plunge" when it refers to model railroading is usually NOT a good thing. It usually results in broken models, most often expensive highly detailed locomotives!

That fuel tank is awesome! The proto pic is really cool too. Looking forward to more progress on this.

Thanks Josh, Russ and Tetters!!

Russ, I never even thought of that when I started this thread but you're right!!! I hope I'm the only one taking the plunge and not any of my loco's!

cheers
Val

Looking nice Val!

wow,nice progress val ,the fuel tank looks sweet! and did you ever straighten out your ore cranes lines?--josh

Thanks Josh.

Now for a progress report.

While waiting for the coke oven kit, I decided to try making a benzol plant, part of the coke gas recovery operations. I found some great documentation on the HABS/HAER site. Here's the plant I am using for reference.



At first the building looked like it could be easily assembled out of Walthers modulars, but there are a few things that made this harder than I expected. First, on the second floor the windows are shorter, and I tried to cut up some of the modular walls, but ended up with really ugly seams.



Also, the top of the door should line up with the top of the window, so I went off to the LHS to pick up some Walthers brick sheets. There are cheaper brick sheets, but the Walthers one are an exact match for the brick on the modulars.

Here's the second attempt. Much better.



I made the shorter windows by adding a piece of .020 x .080 styrene strip across the mullions.



The next thing about this building is that the end walls do not have a brick pier running down the middle. The Walthers cornice pieces do, so I had to cut it out.





This was attached to an new end wall made from the brick sheet. I had to cut out the window openings, which was not exactly fun. Somewhere I have a tool that is supposed to punch out square holes, but of course I couldn't find it!

The modulars attach to the corner pieces by means of tabs and slots. Here I've made tabs out of .040 styrene strips.



Well, after a few days of working on this, here's where I'm at. I have one more wall to make, and then I can start working on the platform and distillers and whatnot.





Meanwhile, I now have the coke oven kit in my hot little hands as well as a 3 pack of bottle cars and one of slag cars!

cheers
Val

Looks great val! Thanks for the progress shots!

Looks good, Val.
Don't waste too much time looking for that corner punch - I used mine on the Walthers brick sheet and shattered the piece.

Wayne

looks cool,i think i have the same habs plans on my computer that you used to build your model. i downloaded pretty much everything steel related from that site onto a few CDs,so if you have trouble finding something your looking for,just ask --josh