MTH Coil Cars

Roo,how's the steel mill coming along any photos available?

The steel car looks great!

Al Hummel

Everything from our neighbor in Perth is terrific.   John

Al. The steel mill is going along fine the photo attached does not show much the rolling mill is out of the photo on the left side the other large building on the right is the foundry everything is under construction the brown 'dirt" ballast will eventually be grey or black in colour.

All the track work and wiring is finished and tested.

The next stage we are up to is to work out an operating plan steel mills are busy places.

Tomorrow it is Friday our normal operating day we are going to run the complete layout including the steel mill we have a plan for tomorrow and we will put it into practice we have been working on this for a while having "dummy" runs for the last two Fridays to try and ascertain what problems we would encounter when we bring the steel mill traffic in with the common carrier railroad.

I will be a way all of August to visit my son and family in England so I haven't started on the blast furnace that is set aside till I get back if I started now then left it for a month I would not remember what I was doing!

John thanks mate you do some very good things yourself I read all your posts. Regards. Nev.

The easiest way to lower these cars is to swap the trucks from MTH style to Atlas O trucks. Lowers them perfect. Also, these cars should be riding on roller bearing trucks. Your conversions look great- need to see more pics of all your fleet of coil cars. 

Roo:

Thank you much for the photos,they are always an inspiration to me.

I'm still working on a 3foot shelf with the yard. I have it planned out,but don't want to overemphasize the yardage or undersize it either. Since that 3 feet is a clear 40+ foot straight run of tracks,I'm trying to figure what industries would be a good fit on the ends of the yard & connected to it.

Have a great time on vacation with your son. Every moment in this life is precious as we never know when,or if, we'll see that next second.

Take care.

Al Hummel

JEFF78RR:

I've been wondering why not replace trucks on MTH equipment & Lionel,with Atlas roller bearing trucks instead of the new 2rail replacement trucks from MTH-is this as easy with other MTH equipment as the coil cars? How do you do this?

I have MTH Hi Cube paper boxcars I'm trying to convert the trucks as well as couplers on. I'm waiting for the hoped "shelf couplers," for modern freight,but have enough Protocraft couplers for 10 cars at present so am working on converting these cars over to the Protocraft as they come only with 3rail couplers.

Don't understand why MTH made a nice replacement truck without rotating bearing caps?

Thank you.

Al Hummel

Al, the trucks from Atlas O include the screws and end sockets. Simply remove the MTH trucks and replace with the Atlas units, using the screw and end socket, which goes directly in the hole in the frame of the car. Instantly lowers the car significantly and the trucks look much more accurate. The newer cars from MTH also have the Kadee coupler mounting pads in place. 

Jeff78rr posted:

Al, the trucks from Atlas O include the screws and end sockets. Simply remove the MTH trucks and replace with the Atlas units, using the screw and end socket, which goes directly in the hole in the frame of the car. Instantly lowers the car significantly and the trucks look much more accurate. The newer cars from MTH also have the Kadee coupler mounting pads in place. 

MTH trucks have the screw threads in the truck bolster, since the attaching machine screw comes through the car floor from INSIDE the car. I am not aware that Atlas trucks have threaded holes in the bolster, since their mounting screw threads into the car underframe. What modifications do you perform to adapt Atlas trucks to an MTH car?

No mods needed- first, remove the MTH truck, and to mount the Atlas O truck, the screw for the Atlas O truck goes through the bottom of the truck, thru the hole in the MTH car frame, and attaches to the end socket supplied with the Atlas O trucks. The truck is held in place by the screw and end socket. It does not attach directly to anything on the truck -- the screw goes through the truck.

Roo,

Hello, I am very interested in seeing your steel mill progress.  What materials do you plan on using for your blast furnace?

Thanks,

Dave

ROO

I would love to know more about how you lowered the car. I went out and got a MTH UP coil car and had the same first impression. Ugly. Given your success I would like to do the same!

S

Jeff78rr posted:

No mods needed- first, remove the MTH truck, and to mount the Atlas O truck, the screw for the Atlas O truck goes through the bottom of the truck, thru the hole in the MTH car frame, and attaches to the end socket supplied with the Atlas O trucks. The truck is held in place by the screw and end socket. It does not attach directly to anything on the truck -- the screw goes through the truck.

There was a thread on this topic a while back... Convert MTH 50' High Cube to 2R

Dave.

I typed out a long reply to your question pressed the wrong button and lost the lot! I am better working on the Railroad than on a computer. In answer to your question about what materials I am using for the blast furnace is I don't know yet. I started planning this project 3 years ago trying to find an industry that had a lot of internal moves I found the steel mill was perfect for me. The actual work started in January this year it is a large project as I had to demolish half the layout before I started. So far I have built the benchwork laid the track and finished the electrical done some scenery and started on all the buildings except the blast furnace which I have left to last. I hope to start this in September and any advice is most welcome especially on how to form the furnace stack.

I have studied your photos of your wonderful blast furnace I have also gathered as much information I can off the internet and in books about the Steel industry. The photo I am posting today shows the Stockyard the hot metal tracks and the slag tracks I worked out the space through walthers furnace plan by scaling it up to 1/48 scale.

I will post some photos on I convert the Coil cars soon.

Thanks everybody.

Roo.

Roo,

I had the dimensions of the furnace in Sparrows point for reference.  It gave me the key diameters at various heights.  I started with a dowel rod and discs cut to those diameters.  I then filled in between the discs with wooden slats.  Any gaps were filled with spray foam and trimmed.  The final coating is fibreglass and body filler.   I would be happy to help with any questions.  I also have some great, up close photos of the Carrie furnace in Pittsburgh that I would be happy to share.  After seeing the internal workings up close, I realized I got quite a few things wrong.

I am really looking forward to seeing your progress!

Dave

Dave.

Thanks for posting those photos a very novel approach to a rather difficult thing to model.

I had thoughts of all kinds of things like coffee pots, anything, that resembles the shape but I like your idea which I might have to steal from you if you don't mind.

The Sparrow Point furnace was a fairly large furnace going by Bernard Kempinski's graph on page 85 of his Steel Mills book  I was going to work on the Walthers HO scale kit for size and scale it up to 1/48 any comments on that?

Thanks for the help.

Roo.

Roo,

If I had to do it again, I would have chosen a smaller furnace.  I really had to compress everything else to fit into the scene.  I think you will find the disc/dowel rod construction easy to get the right shapes.

Just my .02.  I think the HO kit is way too small for O scale.  It is also more gratifying if you scratch build

Just let me know if you would like any more photos.

Dave

Dave.

Before we go further with this very interesting discussion. What I meant about the using the HO kit I really meant using the size on the plans to scale them up to O scale not kitbash the kit to try and get it to O scale size. When I start building this furnace it will be completely scratch built I hope that is clear, I hate emails! LOL. With your advice and photos I am sure we will get there, I have to, I need to fill the space!

Roo.

Roo:

What you plan to do with the Walthers steel mill kit,is what I plan to do with their Superior Paper mill to try to get ideas and shapes for a decent size paper mill. I have also found that the Pikestuff "Shop" is an excellent source for plans for different types of buildings. It can be a three stall shop for car or loco repairs,a Distribution Center,or a lumber facility to name a few possibilities. My kit has drawings for kitbashing ideas. I simply doubled the dimensions to get it close to O scale,I know that's a bit crude,but was all the ol' nerves would tolerate.Lol

Al Hummel

Roo posted:

 I have to, I need to fill the space!

Now there's a comment you don't here very often in O scale.  

Yeh, thanks Max.

And here is a plan in 1/48 scale of how the Furnace fits into the layout.

Match it with the photo.

Roo.

Friends.

Back again haven't forgotten about the Coil Car conversions to three rail just waiting for the last two cars to arrive then I will do the last five in one go instead of one car here and one car there better a production line and while I'm talking about conversions keep in mind I do things on the cheap that is not sacrifice reliability just keep the costs down shipping to West Australia from the USA is not cheap so I have to save a few bucks somewhere!

So if you want a super professional job like Mike Deberg does, who he wouldn't realise, I have a lot of respect for, go with Mike. Anyway that is not the reason for the post today. I just finished fitting the controls for the Rolling Mill made by a good friend of mine a nice Sunday mornings work then in the afternoon it was time to run a train or two nothing like it on a wet cold Sunday afternoon I ran the common carrier railroad between two yards which means the train goes right around the room and ends up a couple of feet away from me. The steel mill is very tricky for one person but the common carrier no problem just means making up a train in one yard and sending it to another yard great fun! So join in and enjoy the photos. Roo.