Runaway Project

Pitchwife

Dreamer
Finally got my lower staging area figured out (Thanks Train Clown!) but then got to looking at my main level industrial park and the more I looked at it the less appealing it was. I don't even think that it qualifies as a "timesaver" or even a time waster so I set about trying to figure out how it would be laid out in a prototypical area. Nothing but frustration.
upper_ind_grid.jpg


Then I got the bright idea (and here's where the trouble starts :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ) instead of 5 or 6 smaller industries, to make one large industry. I was looking for something original, that I had never seen or heard of on any other layout, and here's what I came up with.
A major recycling and reclamation plant handling the waste from a large part of the Pacific Northwest where my hub is located.
I started out with the obvious things, paper, plastic, aluminum and steel. But then I got to thinking that if it was going to handle waste from such a large region it needed to be able to accommodate other things. For example, if it accepted junk cars it would be necessary to process:
steel
aluminum
plastic
lead
zinc
battery acid
rubber
petrochemicals
ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
textiles (seat covers & carpet)
glass & mirrors
copper
freon
and probably a few more that I haven't thought of yet.

If it was going to handle all of those it might as well expand into:

other liquids like acids, chlorine, fluorine ammonia...
other gasses like hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon dioxide, argon, xenon, methane, neon, etc.
other metals like mercury, gold, silver, magnesium, manganese, brass tin, platinum, titanium...
other compounds like nitrates, nitrites, sulfates, sulfides, and other oxides.
organic waste
and as long as it's doing all of that, biohazard medical waste, asbestos...
The list keeps growing. :eek: :eek:

A search of the Internet came up with no prototypical plant that does all of that, which in a way is good because that gives me a lot of latitude as far as laying it out goes.
Basically waste arrives in the form of solids, liquids and gasses with several overlapping areas where things need to be separated and directed to the appropriate processing area, and the processed and sorted reclaimed materials are packaged and then shipped out to various customers to be used in their varioous manufacturing processes. The only exception would be combustible materials which would be burned on site to provide electrical power to the region.
So here's the problem, as you can see, it has turned from a simple facility to a mega plant and I've been trying to figure out how to lay it out. the second figure shows the area in green to fit it into with it's only entrance and exit point in the lower left. There is a major classification yard close by so loaded cars would not have to be stored on site. The grid is 6".

upper_ind_grid_1.jpg


I thought I'd pick the brains of the members of the Gauge to see what you could come up with. I almost forgot, the scale is N and the era is the 80's to the present.
 

MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
Maybe you could have some largish industrial looking buildings, but without all the processing stuff necessary to handle such diverse materials. Maybe it's just a dismantle-and-sort plant. So stuff comes in in a variety of cars - gondolas, boxcars, flats, and is shipped out much the same way. Liquid waste goes out in tanks, and plastics, steel, and aluminum are either shredded or "cubed" and shipped in gondolas or other appropriate cars.

Andrew
 

Pitchwife

Dreamer
That's kind of what I had in mind. I need to figure out things like the placement of storage tanks, bins, warehouses, etc for different materials before and after processing. I suppose an conglomeration of tanks, silos and so forth would work though. I was hoping for some rational for placement of loading and unloading areas, some sort of explanation of why something was where it was, what it was for and so forth. I have learned a lot about recycling while researching this project. I suppose that it's obscure enough that not very many people would know if something didn't make sense. :p :p
 
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