MRH 2nd Annual One Module Challenge

I know, it's been a while since I posted. That's not to say I haven't been thinking about model railroading. I actually think about it all the time.

To catch up and sum up with a "state of the union", I'm still in armchair modeling mode. The number one reason for that is that I'm finding out the easy way rather than the hard way that a lot of my ideas just won't work in the space that I have. The easy way is to discover this on paper or on computer; the hard way is by buying and building stuff to discover it doesn't work the way you planned.

If you have followed this blog at all or have at least gone back to the beginning, you can see that my initial interest was in passenger operations in the late 1940's and early 1950's, focused in the Cleveland area.

If you read any Lance Mindheim or Mike Cougill, you will constantly be reminded that you should follow your original interests in railroading/model railroading, don't try to bite off more than you can chew, build small projects to completion, and don't try to stuff too much into a scene, and the list goes on. I'm happy to report that I haven't learned any of those principles the hard way.

That being said, I am really tired of being in armchair mode.

The One Module Challenge

MRH is running a "One Module" challenge for the second year. Here is the rules page from the online magazine:

I've seen this posted in their magazine since the August 2016 issue. It just dawned on my that with all the time I've been spending on AnyRail designing stuff, it wouldn't take much for me to submit an entry to MRH. Notice I said "submit an entry" to MRH... I never said anything about submitting a winning entry to MRH...

My First Idea for a Starter Module

Given the rules of the contest and that the layout is restricted to a 10' x 14' room, In my mind this is just screaming to be done in N scale. I really don't know anything about N scale because other than at model railroad shows, I've never really seen an N scale layout in action. Most of what you see in N Scale at the train shows is pretty much just toy trains on an oval, with the possible exception of a few well done N-Trak modulars.

Getting right to it, here is my initial attempt at the first module for the contest submission. This is an N Scale module on a 2' x 8' table and the theme is passenger switching operations. All turnouts (12 of them) are #8 and the curves in N scale are minimum 36" radius (quite broad in N scale). There is of course some selective compression going on here but it actually is fairly close to prototype dimensions. The actual prototype of the area represented is about 2000' long, or about 12 1/2' in N scale if I wanted to model it to scale. In HO scale, 2000' would be just under 23' modeled to scale.

Keep in mind this is the main module, the idea here is that there will initially be temporary staging added to both ends to allow an operator the ability to have a place to enter and exit trains being operated on the module. Future modules would connect to actual yards and industrial areas.

If anyone is familiar with the former Akron Union Station in Akron Ohio, this is what it looked like after the Union Station building was built in 1950. The Erie station to the left of it was there first, being built in 1947. Prior to 1947, the Akron Union Station was about a half mile further north (railroad east) or off the right side of the module.

One key takeaway here is that this probably would not be very interesting to actually model as Akron Ohio on a model railroad. By the time the Union Station was built, there were only a few trains stopping in Akron at all on any of the lines. It would be far more interesting to use this module as a "stand in" for a much larger and busier passenger terminal such as Cleveland or Cincinnati, ala Chuck Hitchcock style in his Argentine layout which used a much smaller station as a stand-in for Kansas City Union Station. This module could also easily be anywhere else in the country, for instance it could be AT&SF and Union Pacific with separate stations sharing the same area.

Erie used their station exclusively and the line through Akron was part of their main line from New York to Chicago. PRR & B&O both used the Union Station on shared trackage through this part of town. B&O also had their Valley Station to the north of this location, which was used on the Valley Line that ran from Cleveland to Akron until the early 1960's. B&O used Union Station for trains running on the New York-Chicago mainline, which this line was part of. For the PRR though, Akron was not on their mainline and in 1952 only one PRR train (the Akronite between Pittsburgh and Akron) ran through Akron at all. Passengers wishing to travel via PRR could either take the Akronite to Pittsburgh or take a 40 minute Greyhound bus trip (the terminal was attached to the Union Station on the west side of the tracks) up to Hudson which was on the Cleveland-Pittsburgh mainline and had more through trains that stopped there on their way to and from Cleveland & New York.

What is just off the north (right) end of the module is an area affectionately known to Akron railroaders as the "Akron Diamond". This was where the PRR/B&O tracks crossed over the Erie line, essentially flip-flopping the track arrangement so that the Erie ran on the east side of the right of way instead of the west side as depicted here. Movements through the diamond were controlled by JO Tower, which is an interesting little piece of Akron railroad history in itself. The diamonds actually were sharp enough of a crossing that they had movable frogs and were controlled by the JO Tower interlocking. The "Diamonds" are in my mind an essential operational element to modeling this area because of how movements would have to be controlled at the crossing point.

Operationally the starter module when connected to staging at both ends would allow one or more operators the ability to operate trains terminating/originating here, as well as through trains and trains requiring sleeper/diner/lounge car switchouts at this station. Through freights, whether they be local or long distance, could also be routed through the module as static traffic because there are bypass tracks for through trains to use to get around any passenger trains stopped at a platform. Mail & express cars could be spotted at the sidings, although the prototype has a separate express/REA terminal just off the north end of the module that had access to both ends by both B&O/PRR and Erie. Even just working head end consist switching on a parked passenger train would be challenging enough to keep a single operator busy and could be done with a minimal amount of off-board staging.

For the contest, I plan on roughing in the rest of the layout in the room representing construction of a full layout in stages.

After that? Maybe my own 13' x 27' space is just screaming to be done in N scale as well...

Upson Nut & Bolt part IV

I was doing some more research on the Nut & Bolt plant when I discovered the incredible photo below on a retired website called Teaching and Learning Cleveland, which was run by Cleveland State University at one time. This is a photo of the Upson plant circa 1910 according to the citation, although the web page where the photo was located does not identify this as being the Upson plant.

“Industrial flats at bend in Cuyahoga River at Cleveland, Ohio, circa 1910,”Teaching & Learning Cleveland , accessed October 8, 2016, http://exhibits.clevelandhistory.org/items/show/549.

The photo is very large and a lot can be seen in it. The open hearth furnaces were built in 1910 and it is obvious that they are not yet built in this photo because the towering stacks for the open hearth are not present. If you look closely though, you can see what appears to be the gabled roof of the open hearth building being constructed in the background behind the right leg of the ore bridge. Therefore I would concur that the photo probably is from circa 1910. Had another photo been taken 20 years later from the same spot, Terminal Tower and CUT would be visible in the background above the ore bridge.

From a modeling standpoint this photo is very valuable. The blast furnace can be seen in the background above the ship along the dock. The boiler house with its large stack is just to the right of the ore bridge and its elevated coal dumping line is clearly visible along the left side of the building. In the foreground the Erie boxcars are sitting on a siding along the Erie line which interchanged with DK Yard just to the right of the photo and accessed the Upson plant from this end (south end). New York Central accessed the plant from the opposite (north) end from DK Yard.

Most importantly though, the high line which fed raw materials (ore, limestone, coke) to the blast furnace can be seen leading up to the blast furnace just under the center span of the ore bridge. From this photo it is obvious that the ore bridge did not feed raw materials directly into the bins of the high line as I originally thought it might have and which was common for some blast furnaces around the country. Instead it appears that the ore bridge loaded raw materials into hopper cars (a few of which are parked to the right of the ore bridge) and the hopper cars would have then been switched over the high line for discharge into bins that would have fed the skip hoist to the blast furnace. Had the plant continued operation, in later years the hopper cars may have been replaced by self propelled materials cars ala Bethlehem Steel style. Also of particular note is the ore bridge itself, which has one leg along the pier and a shorter leg above the concrete retaining wall leading to the high line. Going by the piles of raw materials, it appears that ore and limestone were both delivered by ship, which would have meant that coke was delivered by rail and most likely would have been pushed straight over the high line off the siding.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to compress this into a layout module or two...

Construction Report part 2

I took some photos that I was going to include with the previous post, but recently returning from a trip to NYC I still had my camera set at the highest quality image setting. This yields a photo that is 5184 x 3456 pixels and about 6.5MB, and they take forever to upload. For photos I intend to post on this blog I set the camera to a lower quality photo, usually 1920 x 1280. This makes the photos much easier to upload. So, I had to take the photos for this post and resize them in Paintshop, which takes more time than I had available when I created the post.

I forgot to mention in the last post that I recently acquired a large stock of sheet styrene, thanks to a blog post by fellow model railroader and blogger Chris Ellis, who lives just a few miles from me. There is a local plastic supplier called Piedmont Plastics and Chris mentioned getting some sheet styrene from them. I stopped by one day recently and walked away with about $75 worth of plastic. The folks there were very friendly and the stock manager gave me a quick tour of the place. Their warehouse is a model railroader's fantasy, with pretty much any plastic product (not just styrene) you can imagine in stock. If they don't have it in stock, they can get it.

Piedmont Plastics warehouse 

Piedmont Plastics warehouse

I picked up several 4' x 8' sheets of styrene, in .010, .020, .030, and .040 thicknesses. They also had some scrap 1' x 4' .060 cuttings which they sold me for $1.75 each, so I bought 10 of those. They gave me (no charge!) a scrap 1' x 5' sheet of clear .040 acrylic as well.

Considering Plastruct charges $6.95 for a four-pack of 7" x 12" sheets of .040 (a little over $.08 a square inch), the $17.95 price of a 4' x 8' sheet at Piedmont can't be beat (about $.03 a square inch).

Basement Prep

Before I even cut lumber, I added a 20 amp circuit with two outlets on the ceiling in the layout area specifically so I can run my power tools such as my table saw, drill press, and band saw without worrying about other electronics in the house. I also wanted to add some LED shop lights above the power tools. The table saw alone, which pulls 14.7 amps, was on a 15 amp outlet that is shared with another set of outlets elsewhere in the house. My small breaker box had a single empty 20 amp breaker left, so I added two 20 amp GFCI outlets to the ceiling since this is an unfinished basement. I do not intend for these outlets to be permanent because right now the power tools are all occupying space that will eventually be filled with layout and I will have to move my shop area to another location in the basement. For the moment though, having the tools where they are is handy. Eventually I will be upgrading my breaker box entirely, not only to give me the ability to separate the train room power from the rest of the house grid, but because the rest of the house is not wired very efficiently and I think several of the circuits are overloaded and some appliances which by code need to be on their own circuit are on shared circuits. Now the work area is lit up nicely thanks to the two LED shop lights. Previously this area was lit by a single light bulb on the ceiling. 

20 amp GFCI on the ceiling and an LED shop light

Wood Working 101

Disclaimer: I am not much of a wood worker. 

In the photo below are the four 2' x 8' sections of 3/4" birch plywood that I got from Home Depot and had them rip down the long length from a 4' x 8' sheet. These sheets are still quite heavy (over 35 lbs each) and not easy to maneuver or get down the basement steps by myself.

I used the table from my drill press to help support the plywood on the feed end for cutting. I have a plywood base mounted to the drill press table to increase the table space. I only have one roller support so I used it on the cut end of the table saw to support the plywood there as it came off the saw. This setup works well and really all I had to do was feed the sheet without having to worry about supporting it, which allowed me to concentrate on keeping the cut straight.

Each 2' x 8' sheet got ripped into five 4" boards, which after cutting waste ended up being 3 59/64. Left over was a single 3 3/4" board as well. I do not intend on making L-girder benchwork, but rather simple frame benchwork with corners reinforced by using galvanized framing brackets by Simpson Strongtie. This concept was borrowed from Alan of LK&O fame.

Although in my younger years I was a tool & die machinist apprentice, as I mentioned in my disclaimer I am not much of a wood worker. Still, many of the same principles from metal machining apply to woodworking as well. I soon realized that ripping such a large sheet of plywood makes it difficult to feed straight, even when using the rip fence. In metal working the work to be machined is secured using dynamically adjustable vises or clamps and is moved into the cutting tool, which insures a straight cut. Not so on the standard table saw, and it is easy to bump the work or make a crooked cut. To solve this problem, I clamped a scrap piece of wood on the other side of the sheet from the rip fence as a jig to guide the sheet through the saw. Key to this is to clamp the side jig snug but not too tight up against the sheet to be cut. This worked really well to keep the cut straight. Over the entire 8' length of each board, the tolerance ended up +/- 1/32 inch, which I am quite pleased with. The blade I use is a 60-tooth carbide ripping blade, and I use a zero-clearance blade guard around the blade to minimize underside chipping. This gives a very smooth cut even on the underside, but I will still have to sand or file all edges to minimize splinters.

After ripping two of the four 2' x 8' sections of plywood, I was left with 10 4" x 8' boards (3 59/64" x 8') and two 3 3/4" x 8' boards. When I am done I will have 20 4" boards and four 3 3/4" boards. This should be more than enough for my first TOMA module. I plan on using the 4" boards for both the legs and the horizontal top benchwork, with the legs being 48" in length. My target base level layout height is 52". The 3 3/4" boards will be used for vertical benchwork supports and additional bracing. I made sure to label the 3 3/4" boards with a Sharpie to "idiot proof" them to keep me from accidentally mixing them in with the 4" boards.

The 3/4" birch plywood from Home Depot is USA made and sanded on both sides, and so far seems to be a nice product. It will be much more structurally strong, stable, and straight as opposed to using dimensional lumber. It will also resist warping from moisture and temperature changes much better than dimensional lumber.

Next step will be to finalize the plan for the first module and to design the benchwork to go underneath it.

Construction Report #1

Not much posting lately, but I have been doing a lot of model railroading work. Mostly still research, but the emphasis of the research has shifted from prototype to actual model railroading. Specifically, how have others before me built steel mills on their layouts.

There are a few "celebrity" names in regards to steel mill modeling. The late Dean Freytag is probably one of the better known names to those model railroaders who have any interest in steel or heavy industrial modeling. He has been featured in Model Railroader and is also author to a couple of "bible" books on steel and heavy industrial modeling. Both of these books are still available but neither is cheap and I have not yet sprung for either one.

Jeff Borne is author of a pair of DVDs titled Superdetailing a Walthers Blast Furnace. I just picked up both these DVD's and they are a wealth of information. Too bad I don't actually have a Walthers Blast Furnace kit since it has been discontinued, but the DVD's are still valuable for the scratchbuilder too.

Bernard Kempinski has authored several books on model railroading, the one on steel mills I have already mentioned in a previous post. His book is probably the most recent of all the other publications listed.

Anyway, the title of this blog is Construction Report #1, so more on that.

I decided a couple weeks ago that I needed to get out from behind the computer and into the basement. The basement needs a lot of prep work before I fill it with layout. That doesn't mean I can't get started on building stuff. Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine has had a lot of discussion recently on the TOMA (The One Module Approach) method to building a layout. Several months ago I started building a small module on an 18" x 7' hollow core door just to get started building something. I didn't get very deep into that project and in hindsight I believe the main reason was because it had no relevance to what I wanted to build for a layout.

TOMA proposes that a layout be built in separate modular phases, each module being built as close to completion as possible before moving on to the next. The TOMA modules are not necessarily templated modules such as N-Trak or Free-Mo, although they certainly could be. I've kind of been visualizing building my layout this way from the earliest conceptual stages, not realizing that MRH had already defined TOMA.

I purchased two 4' x 8' sheets of 3/4" birch plywood from Home Depot. Each sheet is just under $50. The sheets weigh over 70 lbs each, so I had them rip the two sheets right down the middle long ways so that I could handle them by myself.

Even a 2' x 8' sheet of 3/4" birch plywood was somewhat difficult for me to get into the basement by myself. I then ripped each section into 4" x 8' boards (actually about 3 59/64" after cutting waste), which netted me 10 4" x 8' boards and two 3 3/4" x 8' boards for a single 4' x 8' sheet of plywood.

Before I started cutting lumber though, I had to do some basement prep work even for that. I realized that my 10" table saw draws 14.7 amps, and it was plugged into my only outlet into the work area which is a shared receptacle on a 15 amp circuit. I had one completely empty 20 amp circuit left in my breaker box, so I wired up a couple 20 amp outlets mounted to the ceiling above the work area. Now when my table saw runs I can be assured it won't cause any electrical problems throughout the house. I also added some additional LED shop lights above the work area.

Now I have some lumber to begin building benchwork on my first TOMA module. My intent is to build this first module as a free standing module and not attached to the basement wall. That will make it mobile enough that I can move it easily if necessary.

I will post some construction photos in a follow up post to this one.

Cheers

Trip to Bethlehem Steel, Labor Day weekend 2016

The wife and I took a trip to NYC to visit friends over Labor Day weekend. I took advantage of the situation to take a not too out of the way detour to visit the old Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem PA.

Briefly for those who don't know, the old Bethlehem Steel plant is one of the oldest steel mills in the country. It opened circa American Civil War era and closed its doors in 1995. Originally it produced steel rails during the time when railroads were transitioning to steel from iron rails. In the WWI & WWII years it was big in naval shipbuilding.

Instead of razing the mill buildings after it shut down, in recent years the complex has been turned into a museum, arts expo center, and even a concert venue. 5 blast furnaces and many of the old mill structures are still intact. In 2015 they completed the Hoover-Mason Trestle, which is a 2000-foot walkway built on the original high line for the blast furnace structures. You can visit the complex and walk the HMT for no admission fee. Even though the old structures are slowly rusting away and crumbling, it is still a great place to visit for anyone interested in getting an up close inside view of a large steel mill complex.

The beginning of the Hoover Mason Trestle and 3 separate blast furnaces. A fourth is just visible at the left side and the fifth one is further to the left off the photo. At the very right side of the photo is a partial view of the concert venue that has been built here. At night colored lights light up the old blast furnaces as a backdrop to concerts here.

A view of the raw materials storage bins below the high line. Iron ore, limestone, and coke were stocked in these bins and were added to the top of each blast furnace in measured amounts by skip hoist buckets from below.

3 burner furnaces and stacks for one of the blast furnaces to the right. The burner furnaces produced the hot blast air that was fed into the bottom of the blast furnace to create the 3000 degree blast needed to produce molten iron.

A shot of the top of a blast furnace. Seen here is the upcomer and downcomer piping that moved the hot gas from the top of the blast furnace. The hot gas was basically cleaned and then recycled back through the burner furnaces. Also seen here is the top of the skip hoist that fed raw materials (coke, ore, limestone) into the top of the blast furnace.

View down the high line showing the large pipes that carried the hot blast air from the burner furnaces to the blast furnace.

A view of the remaining mill complex from the Hoover Mason Trestle.

Steam powered blower engines that provided the cold blast air to the furnaces which in turn supplied the hot blast air to the blast furnace.

The high line viewed from the side opposite the blast furnaces. Iron ore, limestone, and coke were dumped into the bins below for distribution to each of the five blast furnaces.

Blast Furnace scratchbuild

Unfortunately, Walthers has discontinued their latest run of their blast furnace for the Ashland Iron & Steel series, 933-2973. It had an MSRP of $263.98 in the 2016 catalog. The ones on Ebay have been going for at least that much and usually more, assuming you can find one. Walthers had an initial run of this kit back in the 1990's when they did their USS series, as far as I can tell there is no difference between the two kits. Those are still floating around and are also fetching close to $300 on Ebay.

Looks like I'm going to have to scratchbuild one. Fortunately there is a group on Yahoo Groups that is dedicated to the modeling of steel mills. There is a great deal of information available there to assist in building steel mill facilities.

Today I made a trip to Rob's Trains in Alliance, OH to raid his Plastruct and Evergreen styrene stock. $120 worth of I-beams, tubing, railings, stairways, and corrugated sheet should give me a good start on the project. Unfortunately he didn't have a lot of what I was looking for, so I will have to get the rest online.

Here is the best photo I can find of the blast furnace that was part of the Republic Steel bolt & nut factory. There is very little information available on this facility. Really all I know is it was built sometime around the late 1800's and it was torn down around 1935.

Blast furnace technology in the late 1800's to early 1900's didn't evolve much other than they kept getting bigger to allow for more production. Some blast furnaces had different features than others but the basic technology was the same.

The #1 blast furnace at Monessen Works near Pittsburgh was constructed in 1913. That will be my model to base my scratchbuilding project on. Thanks to HAER, there are scale drawings available on the internet.

Fortunately since I am basically freelancing my blast furnace on a real world structure that was torn down about 80 years ago, I will have a lot of discretion to exactly how it will be laid out. I think using the Monessen structure as a guide will get me pretty darn close.

Steel Mill Modeling

Recently I purchased The Model Railroader's Guide to Steel Mills by Bernard Kempinski (c. 2010, Kalmbach Publishing).

Before purchasing this wonderfully detailed book, I was "kind of interested" in modeling steel mill operations. Now I'm very interested. Based on what I've seen in this book, it would be very easy to construct an entire layout centered on one steel mill.

One of the references the author refers to heavily is a HAER (Historic American Engineering Record, available at the Library of Congress website, loc.gov) survey completed in 1995 on the Pittsburgh Steel Company's Monessen Works in Monessen, PA which was along the Monongahela River just south of Pittsburgh. The Monessen Works was a very large steel mill that by 1920 occupied a 2.3 mile, 160 acre stretch of riverbank along the Monongahela River. The complex consisted of three blast furnaces, a 12-furnace open hearth steel making facility, a coke plant, rod mills, wire-drawing mills, a barbed wire mill, three galvanizing plants, a nail plant, and a wire fabric mill. Of course, all that is left of it today is the coke & coke by-product plant.

The HAER on Monessen Works includes several excellent engineering drawings of key facilities of the steel mill, in particular the blast furnaces and open hearth mill. Most steel mills in the early 1900's were constructed using the same methods used at Monessen, and the Republic Steel plant in Cleveland was no exception. Armed with the HAER drawings and Kempinski's explanation of the iron & steel making process examined through a model railroader's lens, I think I can now create an accurate and operationally sound version of the Republic Steel Bolt & Nut plant on my layout.

Here are a couple samples of the HAER engineering drawings on Monessen Works. These are for Blast Furnace #1 which was completed in 1913. There are similar drawings for the open hearth.

These drawings will really come in handy for modeling purposes. The blast furnace at Republic would have been of similar construction since most blast furnaces during that time period were constructed the same way.

Unfortunately, the Walthers HO scale blast furnace kit is discontinued and out of stock.

Unless I can find one at a reasonable price on Ebay, this baby will have to be scratchbuilt with Plastruct components.