please need help on steel mill!!

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
waz up my fellow hobbyists. All this input is really helping me out so did my plan for how to set up the mill sound ok cause that was my main question.but all this help is really guiding me.im buying some stuff of internettrains.com they got some really cheap stuff.im buying the walthers blast furnace kit and rolling mill most of the other stuff is going to need to be scratch built.oh and the coke ovens buying them too.:wave:
 

slagpot

Member
bigsteel said:
waz up my fellow hobbyists. All this input is really helping me out so did my plan for how to set up the mill sound ok cause that was my main question.but all this help is really guiding me.im buying some stuff of internettrains.com they got some really cheap stuff.im buying the walthers blast furnace kit and rolling mill most of the other stuff is going to need to be scratch built.oh and the coke ovens buying them too.:wave:




Hello again Bigsteel,

Thats great your buying most of the stuff you'll need for your mill.Below is a link that will help you find Deans book.Now being reprinted as a second edition by the NMRA,their store has the book for sale for about $65.00 for none NMRA members.

http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/976284/ShowPost.aspx

Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
oh hi guys i need something else could you or someone else post pics of ther stel mill set ups it wuold help alot.:thumb:
 

doctorwayne

Active Member
Check out the links that I posted in Post #15 of this thread: some views of a stripper building and a coke oven battery.

Wayne
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
nobody has checked out my # 18 post .does it sound right or am i missing something.i know i forgot the powerhouse and blowerhouse.but is it enough to look like all the buildings and materials ther to make steel from the beggining to out the door as coils.i also need to know like how the materials wer mixed for the blast furnace or if i should use a hullet unloader for the dock or an ore crain.if ther is anything i missed like certain buildings to run other ones please give me a list at least of all the buildins in making unfinished steel coils plzzzzzzannounce1 :wave:
 

doctorwayne

Active Member
Your ideas sound pretty good, but it's difficult for any one person to know the complete operation, from raw materials to finished coils. Your best bet is to get a copy of Dean Freytag's book, or have a look at the book that I mentioned. The pictures will give you way more info than a dozen of us typing until our fingers bleed.:D :D
Some answers: A coke oven battery consists of a number (could be a couple hundred) of coke ovens, with "doors" on both sides, and charging holes in the top. Running on rails along the top is the charging car, or larry. It lifts the lids on the charging holes, then drops a charge of coal into the oven below, then reseals the lids. When an oven is ready to be "pushed" (the coal has been turned into coke), the pusher, a large, usually electrically-powered device, running on rails along one side of the battery, will move into position and remove the door on the side of the oven to be "pushed". At the same time, another machine on the other side of the battery, also electrically powered and running on rails, "extracts" the door on the "coke" side of the oven, then moves it out of the way, while at the same time lining up a "coke guide" with the open oven. On an adjacent track is the quench car. (By the way, all of these "tracks" mentioned are a wider gauge than a railroad track - sometimes as much as 20' or 30'.) The pusher inserts a ram into the oven and pushes the coke out the open door on the opposite side of the oven, through the "guide" and into the quench car. The quench car takes the red-hot coke to the quenching station, where it's sprayed with water, then dumped. (The link in post #15 will give you an idea of how the battery is set-up.)
The coke, ore or pellets, and limestone are usually kept in bins in a stockhouse alongside the blast furnace. This is usually a long structure (couple hundred feet) with a ramp at one or both ends, with one or two railroad tracks on top. Beneath are storage bins for the raw materials. The usual method is to load the ore, coke, etc. into hoppers at the storage fields, then push the loaded cars into position on top of the stockhouse for dumping into the storage bins.. Underneath the bins, and, in most cases, enclosed, is a scale car, also running on rails, which moves along under the bins. The raw materials are dropped into the scale car, which takes the material to the skip pit, usually located at the mid-point of the stockhouse. Here the material is dumped into the cable-operated skip car, which carries it up the skip bridge (a long, steeply inclined track) to the top of the furnace, where it is dumped onto the small bell, an arrangement for distributing the charge in the furnace. In addition, the scale car weighs each load so that the proper mix of raw materials is used.
I hope that this answers some of your outstanding questions. I see that Illus has taken care of the hot metal end of the process:thumb: , so I'll go bandage my fingers.:D:wave: And, seriously, if you have more questions, just ask, as I am pleased to be able to help.

Wayne
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
thanks for the help wayne on the loading and the coke furnace its really helping me get an idea of what everything is and does and how to set it up.all this help has really been great .

p.s sorry about your fingers:eek:ops:
 

Illus

Member
Just for the info, at Rouge, our Powerhouse had a Turbine Room in it, that was where the 'Wind' was created to keep the stoves pressurized, (the stoves heat the 'blast gas' for the furnaces. So basically you could scratchbuild a building about 1/2 the size of a powerhouse, and run a 6 foot (scale) pipe from that to the stoves for your 'blowerhouse'.
Of course, that was before the Powerhouse exploded in 1999...
The turbo room is still there though.
 

Illus

Member
Your plan from your #18 post sounds good, as for how the furnace is loaded (or was in that era), the ore bridge unloaded the boats, sorted the pile, AND loaded the rail car. once it was all loaded, as DoctorWayne said, it was dropped thru the bottom, into a skip car, and lifted to the top of the furnace where it was loaded.

The way a blast furnace works is you keep feeding raw materials into the top, and every so often you 'tap the furnace' by drilling out a mud plug on the bottom, and drain a set amount of iron. The furnace is never emptied, it's always add more, so you can take some out.
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
hi guys .im getting set up to start buildin.:thumb: and i was just wonderin if any one knew a site where i could get blue prints on all the different steel mill buildins. if not it no biggie.it would be a little easier having a referance im used too (im an engineer for G.E).so thanks to every one .the gauge is now my #1 info center.

P.S This is the greatest hobby ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:wave:
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
i dont know much about that job union hooknlad but i do know i need more helpsign1
ive built the walthers coke furnace kit and am weathering it now (i like to finish things one by one)but i still could use maybe some blue prints or pics of a BOF since i might detail the inside since its open anyway.and if its possible have all the pics come from the same company for matching.so far ive bought a walthers blast furnace,coke oven,and the rolling mill .but the rolling mill im cutting in half and using it for a backdrop building with the crane to lift coils into gondolas.im going to scratch build quite a few buildings like the power house/blower house, ore crane,and any other buildings i dont know about.see ya later.
 

CRed

Member
I could have helped you out about 15-20 years or so ago before they tore down the ol' Minnesota Steel Plant here in Duluth.As kids we used to sneak in and explore it,it was menacing to say the least.

It was kinda eerie going through buildings that most of my family may have worked in at one time or another.

Chris
 

CRed

Member
blast.1.jpg
uss-photo1-small.jpg


Not the best pictures,but better then nothing.
 

Illus

Member
IMG%5D
Heres a pic of our BOF at Rouge (Severstal now)
Arrrrggghhh Why don't all VB powered forums work the same?!?!?For some reason, I can't get the pic to post from Photobucket, here's a link.
Rouge_BOF.jpg

Rouge Steel BOF


IMG%5D
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
thanks for the pics guys i just printed them out and am now looking for the iside pics because the BOF i have is open at the base and i want a semi detailed interior.ive got a basic drawing of how ill build it.so tks.:thumb:got 2 go
 

bigsteel

Call me Mr.Tinkertrain
hey guys gotta make this short.i need interior pics of either a real bof or ho scale and any detail pics of different buildins like therolling mill.oh and how does the finished coils get from the mill to a strage yard then to gondolas.thes are some of many questions to come tks.
 

CRed

Member
Illus said:
Not at all, I just can't figure out why it wouldn't link for me...

When you hit post reply,above the window is an option to insert a picture(looks like a post card),when you hit that a box will pop up for you to put the URL of the picture you want to post.Just put the URL into it and submit reply.

Chris
 
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