Skip to main content

I need some real railroad advice here. I have built a four stall Altoona roundhouse with each stall having extensions to accommodate a Big Boy. Why? Another story. I am now building the Altoona power house which will contain two steam boilers. What structures/appliances would be used to transfer the steam power to generators (which, I assume, was done) for electric power to the roundhouse and turntable?

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone finds photos of the electric generation for the roundhouse/table. I can find photos of boilers and photos of electric generators but I am not certain the generators in the photos are steam powered generators. Would there be a separate building? I assume, yes? If so, would the steam be piped into a generator building, and then the electricity fed from there to the roundhouse? Once again, I assume so, but I am a know nothing. It is my goal to make the power (boiler) house and electric generation as realistic as possible.

Many thanks, in advance, as I expect there are experts here who have this knowledge. Included below are Bob Spaulding's Altoona Model Works power house and round house. The boiler kits now have control pipe and steam pipe fittings.

power5UP_Round 2

Eliot "Scrapiron" Scher

Attachments

Images (2)
  • power5
  • UP_Round 2
Last edited by Scrapiron Scher
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Jan posted:

Elliot,

Norm Charbonneau built one of these in this thread.

https://ogrforum.com/...-steam-heating-plant

Jan

I must admit that Norm's structure looks more like a "power house", what with that big smoke stack, than the structure pictured in Mr. Scher's post, above. One thing I really remember about that Altoona Power House was, the tall metal "stack" at one end of the building, which was the exhaust from the massive steam driven air compressor. That steam driven air compressor was reportedly from the late 1800s, and must have been 30 feet long, with a huge flywheel with half the wheel deep into the floor, while the other half was about 7 or 8 feet above the floor level. The steam engine portion even had those big fly-balls for the governor/throttle control. We asked the supervisor on duty if he wouldn't mind loading the air compressor, as the thing was just sitting there idling nice and slow & quiet. He stated that since it was Sunday, there wasn't much air demand throughout the shops, but he would shutdown the two motor driven air compressors.

When the main compressed air supply began to slowly drop, he "loaded" the huge steam driven one, and it was truly astounding! My old friend, who had grown up in Altoona and served his Machinist apprenticeship on the PRR at the Altoona Shops, in the late 1930s, grabbed me by the arm, and quickly took me outside so we could listen to the exhaust from that tall metal stack. What a beautiful sound. Bill told me that back in the good old days, when the shop was working at full capacity, you could hear that loud steam exhaust "crack" all over the city. As we stood listening, suddenly the exhaust became quiet and muffled again. Upon going back inside the supervisor was on the phone apologizing to someone for running the compressed air supply too high. It was only 10 or 15 minutes of loading that huge steam driven beauty, and the manifold air for the entire Altoona Shops was "too high"! Thus, back to idle for the "Big Guy".

Hot Water posted:
Jan posted:

Elliot,

Norm Charbonneau built one of these in this thread.

https://ogrforum.com/...-steam-heating-plant

Jan

I must admit that Norm's structure looks more like a "power house", what with that big smoke stack, than the structure pictured in Mr. Scher's post, above. One thing I really remember about that Altoona Power House was, the tall metal "stack" at one end of the building, which was the exhaust from the massive steam driven air compressor. That steam driven air compressor was reportedly from the late 1800s, and must have been 30 feet long, with a huge flywheel with half the wheel deep into the floor, while the other half was about 7 or 8 feet above the floor level. The steam engine portion even had those big fly-balls for the governor/throttle control. We asked the supervisor on duty if he wouldn't mind loading the air compressor, as the thing was just sitting there idling nice and slow & quiet. He stated that since it was Sunday, there wasn't much air demand throughout the shops, but he would shutdown the two motor driven air compressors.

When the main compressed air supply began to slowly drop, he "loaded" the huge steam driven one, and it was truly astounding! My old friend, who had grown up in Altoona and served his Machinist apprenticeship on the PRR at the Altoona Shops, in the late 1930s, grabbed me by the arm, and quickly took me outside so we could listen to the exhaust from that tall metal stack. What a beautiful sound. Bill told me that back in the good old days, when the shop was working at full capacity, you could hear that loud steam exhaust "crack" all over the city. As we stood listening, suddenly the exhaust became quiet and muffled again. Upon going back inside the supervisor was on the phone apologizing to someone for running the compressed air supply too high. It was only 10 or 15 minutes of loading that huge steam driven beauty, and the manifold air for the entire Altoona Shops was "too high"! Thus, back to idle for the "Big Guy".

Well I am a bit confused. Is the "powerhouse" stated above is the Juniata shop powerhouse or the powerhouse for the East Altoona Roundhouse? 

Here is a link I found to photos of the Juniata shops both steam and diesel era. I cannot say these photos show much that will help me with the steam boiler/powerhouse electricity generation, but they are excellent photos.  

http://www.altoonaworks.info/pics/insideshop.html

The following information comes from one of the captions beneath a photo of what may be part of a power plant. (See photo below)

The site selected would come to be known as the Juniata Shops, located in Juniata, a suburb of the city of Altoona. This site, comprised of approximately 62 acres, would consist of numerous buildings (shops) and each shop would be assigned specific components to fabricate new or repair, for the then, steam driven locomotives.

Construction began on September 15, 1888 and most of the construction was completed by 1890. The boiler house, as it was referred to then, supplied steam and compressed air to all of the shops including many steam driven presses and auxiliary equipment, for example: 5,000 lb steam hammers and iron shears capable of cutting through cold steel 3" thick within seconds. The cabinet shop used steam to bend and mold wood into various sizes and shapes.

Because of ever-increasing changes of technology and increasing demands, in 1945 a manager named Grimshaw suggested that the Juniata Shops would need to construct a new boiler plant. Therefore, in the early years of the 1950's, construction began on a new Juniata power plant building. This new power plant was built inside the shell of the existing boiler house to avoid any interruptions of all the other shops producing and repairing locomotive components. This new plant housed three new coal-fired, stoker-fed, 600 lb Riley boilers capable of producing 4.32 million lbs of steam each 24 hour period, two Westinghouse 1875kw steam turbines capable of producing 90,000kw of electricity each 24 hour period, as well as exhausting low pressure steam to heat the entire complex and operate auxiliary equipment.

One Ingersoll-Rand and three Chicago Pneumatic electrically-operated, reciprocating air compressors were installed to supply compressed air throughout the shops. Five packaged gas boilers were also installed as backup to the Riley coal boilers. Later in 1970, a baghouse filtration system was installed to control exit gasses and fly ash emissions from the Riley boilers as per EPA requirements. Again in August 2010, another improvement in emissions was cut in. A new scrubber system and smoke stack were tied into the existing bag house and Riley boilers at that time. In this case, "smoke stack" is a misnomer due to the fact that most of the white stuff exiting the stack is steam.

In conclusion, this power plant is operated with numerous employees who must communicate constantly to maintain an efficient and safe work environment. The majority of the employees are comprised of stationary engineers, firemen, water treatment operators, and coal and ash personnel (represented by the National Conference of Firemen and Oilers).

Juniata also employs a minute maintenance repair force made up of machinists and pipefitters, all supervised by the United Railway Supervisors Association.

This power plant continues to serve the Juniata Shops to this day for all intended purposes, but there have been some changes to the equipment housed inside.

jbs-powerplant_1988

Perhaps something like this !!!

1200px-Mulhouse,_Electropolis

Attachments

Images (2)
  • jbs-powerplant_1988
  • 1200px-Mulhouse,_Electropolis
Last edited by Scrapiron Scher

scrapiron,

Let me know if you come to the York train show.  I work at a coal fired steam power plant just north of there.  I don't have time to go through your pictures right now but I could get you access for a tour if you are in the area.  As far as a brief note, you will want turbines themselves which as usually enclosed with an overhead crane.  Most of the pipes run up from under the floor and back down for easier maintenance.  You will have compressors, condensers, water supply, coal silo(s), fuel processing , and ash handling equipment.  Additionally fans, ductwork, transformers, equipment doors, toolboxes, lockers, welding carts etc for small stuff.

Stoker fed boilers are short and squat so that's how they fit into the existing building. You should be able to find some good images of those.  The equipment I have is several generations newer and will not look the same.

I built a freelance steam plant to provide steam for the distillery next door. I included feed water pumps, feed water tank, condensing tanks and main steam lines to and from the plant. 

Boilers Installed 1

The boilers were taken from a packaged boiler picture I found on the Internet. Some of the round shapes were Plastruct, but all the vessels were various sizes of PVC or CPVC piping. Some parts were turned on a Taig Lathe. Small pipes and fittings are all Plastruct.

I did a full detailed discussion on this part of the Bernheim project here starting on page 32: https://ogrforum.com/...e-pandampprr?page=32

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I did not include any generating capacity since the distillery is on city power. I would need a separate building since this one is chock full.

Attachments

Images (1)
  • Boilers Installed 1

Add Reply

Post
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×