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+--- Thread: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge (/showthread.php?tid=9623)
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 07-08-2023
While I'm waiting for glue to dry that adheres the grass to my scenery around the maintenance shed, I started thinking about the other area of my layout yet to be addressed lying between the backdrop and the tracks - that being the leadup from Black Creek toward the city of Hazleton.
Hazleton, along with Wilkes Barre, and Scranton was an anthracite boom town. When hard coal was found in the region and once someone harnessed the secret to getting it to combust, anthracite was a huge source of heating for the cities of the northeast. In the folds of the Appalacians, in many cases it was only necessary to remove the topsoil to find the black diamonds. Many northeastern railroads profitted by this discovery and shipped millions of tons of the stuff to Philadephia, New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Boston and Washington, D.C. The Reading, the Lehigh Valley, the Erie Lackawanna, the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh and New England, the Lehigh and Hudson River, the Delaware and Hudson, the CNJ all had a hand in moving the coal. The establishment of the interstate highway system killed the passenger traffic for each of these lines, but the evaporation of the hard coal market really drove all of these railroads toward bankruptcy and the formation of Conrail.
Hard coal was notoriously chunky - some mined coal pieces weighed more than 3 tons, and before it could be sent to markets, the coal had to be broken into "shovelable" pieces. Coal breakers were born. I've heard that these giant structures dotted northeastern Pennsylvania and numbered nearly 400 during the boom days of hard coal. The coal was elevated from the strip mines into the top of the building (usually about 100 feet off of the ground), where it was sorted and ground with machinery until it was small enough to load in coal hoppers. These buildings were massive, dirty, dusty, loud and employed hundreds of people. Vintage photograph of the Woodward coal breaker in Kingston : r/Pennsylvania (reddit.com)
When hard coal went sour, so did the towns and the breakers. The last to be torn down was the Eckley in 2014. Since railroads were so important to the breakers, many were built right over the tracks to load coal. I'm going to take advantage of that. On my layout, Hazleton is right at the entry/exit to my storage level, and right now, I have a big hole right through my blue curved backdrop where trains emerge and disappear. I've been pondering how I can hide that hole, and my current thought is to build the semi-facade of a breaker right over that area to both hide the entry into the storage area and resolve the back corner of the backdrop where it turns into the wall of my office.
I'm going to be fooling around with building orientation, so I'm going to resort to building a cardboard cut out to see how it might look and it may jog a few thoughts for details of the structure. This thing's going to be a complete kitbash - it may be another thing that takes a while, but I think that's what energizes me in this hobby. Big challenges are elephants that have to be eaten one piece at a time. More (of course) to follow.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 07-09-2023
More progress on scenery around the maintenance building. A little magic in 12 inches of depth from the tracks to the backdrop. Grass, Shrubbery, trees and then plant the building. On to the coal breaker!
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - tompm - 07-10-2023
Sweet! Looks great. I am jealous you are getting so much done.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 07-12-2023
Thanks for the compliments, Tom! Turn that jealousy into industriousness (eat that elephant one bite at a time)! Speaking of elephants...
So, I've been focusing on ideas for my coal breaker. There are some pictures out there, but not much from my model timeframe (a lot of early 1900's stuff, some at abandonment). I've decided to wing it and design my own breaker.
My available height is 28" at that point of my layout, which would allow for a breaker of roughly 200' in height. Most of the big ones didn't typically exceed 150 ft (a view of the St. Nicholas breaker is here... https://www.vagabondish.com/wp-content/uploads/st-nicholas-coal-breaker-pennsylvania-800x600.jpg), so I don't have to go all the way to the ceiling. I'm also doing one side in full facade and angling away from the track as it makes it's way down to the storage level, so there's going to be a short side wall and a long side wall off of the facade. The structure itself will be concrete posts for the first floor, and then steel posts with corrugated sheet metal skinning the structure. There will also be walls with a bunch of dirty windows that would have allowed some light to get inside for the sorting. I'll also make the upper floors with a smaller footprint than the base, so, some sloped roofs (corrugated steel again) at various points upward along the structure. After placing the finished structure, I think I'll be doing some painting on the backdrop to extend the depth of the breaker (which is going to be a challenge because the backdrop has a substantial curve!).
I'll want to anchor the structure to the backdrop, so I'm thinking that the "floors" in the structure will be curved just like the curve of the backdrop and progress to square at the face of the breaker - I'm thinking painted foamboard for those.
That's the basic idea. I'm thinking the clutter and low ceiling of the ground floor should discourage viewers from too much view of the entry into the storage level. All of this is just in my head at this point. I think I'd already thought about developing a quick and dirty cardboard mockup, and I may still do that... or, just wing it.
I took a peek at some models I don't yet have from Clever Models Inc, and I think there are a few that I'm going to purchase and adapt for this project:
1) Corrugated sheet metal sides, roof and windows - The Small Steel Mill Building is ideal for those http://clevermodels.squarespace.com/catalog-pg-08x/. Although there's also a Large Steel Mill on the same page, the small one is more weathered and worn and has better windows. It also has some nice doors that I'd like to use somehow.
2) First floor posts, (and maybe also an overhead crane outside the breaker!) - the Electric Overhead Traveling Crane kit http://clevermodels.squarespace.com/catalog-pg-26x/
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 07-14-2023
Made my purchases for the kits needed to bash my coal breaker. I'm starting on the ground level and building support posts for the structure. The posts are from the Traveling Crane kit (sheets shown below in the photo). Built my first one (cutting, folding, edging, gluing), splitting time between last night and this afternoon after hiking, running errands and cutting the grass. I figure I'll build about 10 of these posts which are just about 4 inches tall. Once they're built, I'll then integrate each onto the layout, which is not flat or level, so shimming is going to be necessary to get a level first floor. Once all the posts are built, there are also horizontal beams that run between each post that will support my floor level.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 07-15-2023
After building a few posts, I thought I'd built a girder that runs between them (also included in the crane kit). I'll have to build enough girders to run between each post and the decide if I want to run stringers between posts in depth to support the first floor of the breaker. There's a lot of folding and cutting for each girder, but they do look pretty good when complete. Gravity mounted a girder between two posts, and I like the look. Vertical distance between the base of the posts and the underside of the girder is 3 inches, which is good clearance for almost all of my rolling stock. I'm probably going to build a small base under each post to add a little more verticality.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - tompm - 07-15-2023
Pretty good looking!
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 07-30-2023
Progress has been slowed - my wife's on a cruise in Europe, but even though I've been living the bachelor's life, I haven't seemed to end up down here in the office and working on the layout.
I did build some more piers and some girders and started laying out my vision for how I'm going to present the breaker.
The layout here is not level, so one of my first tasks was to develop a level reference line on the backdrop near where I'll install the 2nd floor, which will be a piece of foam board fitted to the curvature of the backdrop. Got my laser level out and marked the backdrop.
To get the piers right, I'll have to shim under each one (after adhering them (and their support girders) to the foam board). I'll also probably end up doing all of the scenery on the base level and around the piers before anchoring the foam board and the piers. I'll also need to paint out or scenic the backdrop on the base layer, which will further disguise the entry to the storage level.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - hillyard999 - 07-30-2023
Really enjoy looking at your layout progress.
Thanks for sharing.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 08-02-2023
Pleased you're enjoying the ride and I hope you find something useful in what I'm doing.
A little more progress to report. Spray painted the underside of my foam board I'm using for the first floor and attached (glued) three girder on the front edge that'll be supported by the concrete and steel columns. These girders were also in the crane kit - they are the trolley for the overhead crane and are longer and the web is shorter - don't have to worry about rolling stock headroom.
I then did a little test fit over the posts (which still haven't been shimmed or leveled - but I'll do so soon).
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 08-06-2023
I don't know if it's obvious from the last photo but there was a slight bend (upward) on the left half of the foamboard that was a bit annoying and was enough to throw level off. Fixed that this afternoon by cutting a congruent piece of 1/4" plywood and gluing it to the top of the foamboard. On the underside (shown below) I've added some more girders - the breaker's a heavy hunk of steel. I'm getting closer to the point where I'll be permanently positioning the posts - scenery is still necessary on the full underside of the breaker and I need to put up some walls down there to obscure the entrance to the storage area. Got a trip to Texas later this week, so I'm guessing a progress picture probably won't make it to the site for a couple of weeks.
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - Charlie B - 08-06-2023
(08-06-2023, 03:13 PM)TMo Wrote: . Got a trip to Texas later this week, so I'm guessing a progress picture probably won't make it to the site for a couple of weeks.
Have a good trip Todd.
Charlie
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - jim currie - 08-06-2023
by a coal braker are you looking at a rotary or a grizzly type most modern mines use a rotary as the coal is mined by machine reducing the need of a grizzly type braker unless you are doing a strip pit i think i can dig up some photos of the rotary used at the mine i worked at if you would like .
Jim
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 08-07-2023
Just going for structure, Jim, no internals. Coal will come in the top and broken coal will come out the bottom, but I was unaware of the two types. Always interested in photos, though!
RE: Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge - TMo - 08-19-2023
Back from the Lone Star State. As far as we could tell, the granddaughter was happy to see us (she's only 3 months old, so we're making some assumptions here).
I've had a little time to work some issues on the coal breaker and play around with some ideas for the first floor. The first goal there is to disguise that great big hole in the curved backdrop that descends to my storage level. I painted a dull dark gray on the segment of the backdrop for the first floor - a big improvement over the light blue where that hole was in stark contrast. In a little while I'll be mounting printed breaker "internals", pictures I've pulled off the internet inside breakers as well as sections of sheet metal walls that'll project from the ground to the ceiling.
I also decided that I'd permanently place some coal hoppers under the breaker, but I didn't have a stub track off my mainline for that. I just decided to slap down a section of track that wouldn't tie into any portion of the main. I had a short section of track, but no more cork roadbed. Cut out at strip of foam board and painted it gray - same elevation as the roadbed, and it'll all be disguised by ballast soon. The space between tracks was a perfect location for Plant #2, which also breaks up the sight line between the edge of the layout and the hole in the backdrop.
The two layers of double-sided tape wasn't working too well to hold up the first floor. Replaced those with a single strip of PVC molding held on with a piece of double-sided tape. Also painted that gray.
I also began getting the right shims under each of the piers that'll support the girders under the floor. Once I get all of the shims permanently in place, it'll be time to lay the plaster cloth on this "ground" floor. This is one case when I'll be building the rest of the building over a finished basement.