Steel Mill Layout idea but need help in making it fit a small room

Are you particularly interested in steel mill modeling, or are you just looking for a switching-intense industry.  A different industrial complex might offer more variety for car types and switching spots.

In particular, I'm thinking of something like the Coors brewery plant in Golden, Colorado.  It's a big complex, with enough trackage and work to support the use of multiple early EMD switchers. Car types include covered hoppers, open hoppers for coal for the power plant, tank cars for chemicals, corn syrup, and beer wort, insulated box cars for outbound beer shipments, and regular box cars for paper and aluminum container service.

Building types include warehousing, elevators, tank storage, power plant, and the brewery itself.  Plus a truss bridge over Clear Creek right in the middle of it all.  There is an engine house of sorts, although it's really just a bay inside one of the big precast concrete tilt-up warehouses.  But outside they have an area with jacks where they do truck swaps and other maintenance.

This is all just food for thought.  Obviously, the IHB or EJE go hand in hand with a steel mill.  But it seems (I'm no expert on steel mills) to me that steel mill rolling stock is limited to a few very specific types of cars.

And having said all that, I wonder if any sort of plant operation will make sense in your space.  Especially from the perspective of turnouts, which take a lot of real estate.  It might make more sense to have just a few industries, perhaps one per wall, with some room in between each one.  But that's a totally different feel from your initial suggestion.

Good luck!  It will be a challenge to fit everything in, no matter which direction you go in.

I'm not good at giving advice on building layouts but a Steel mill in that space 8X9 could possibly be done but you would have to use sharp curves and #4 Turnouts which suits a Steel Mill anyway. Steel Mills do have endless rolling stock, OK, not in Boxcars and reefers but I know I was surprised the amount of rolling stock that can build up to run such an operation. I started researching the possibility of a Steel mill three years ago and I am still building new cars take for instant the MTH Side Dump cars in another thread they only happened in the last couple of months other cars, we (I say we because I have three mates that operate the layout with me) use in a typical operating session the following. Slag cars two types, Hot metal cars two types, Gondolas 40 foot drop bottom for limestone, 52 foot for scrap metal, Hoppers for coke and coal traffic, small flatcars for in plant slab traffic small gondolas for in plant scrap These are Lionel toy train Gons and flats modified with Kadees and two rail trucks and heavily weathered, Coil cars and covered Gondolas for Coil traffic and now side Dump cars for maybe In plant cold slag or skull. Of course you can always make up a breakdown train you can have the occasional boxcar for supplies you are only limited to your imagination. My layout is big enough for all this plus a common carrier railroad that runs around the outskirts of the steel mill so I have the best of both worlds but then it's been nearly 40 years to get this far and I am 73 years old. Running a Steel mill around the walls would be a lot easier as you can use flats as you say and just run tracks into them maybe even just have tracks with an interchange yard for the steel mill and use backdrops to represent the Mill itself. As I said I am not good at giving advice to people about layouts as to me a layout is a personal thing which is why I work on mine by myself apart from the electrical. what I have related to you is just my own personal experiences and they work for me but I ain't  a professional Model Railroader and no where near an expert that's for sure. Hopefully some of this makes sense. I could post some photos of the above but have to go it's early morning and I walk for an hour so no time at the moment.  Thanks Roo.

Your hitting on my thoughts, flats along the walls with tracks going either into them or in front of them.  My 2 F units like 48" curves which for continious running is bascilly a big circle in this small room.  I think the little AN NW2 switchers will handle tighter radius track work giving me more potential in a small space.  If I do not trade off the F units, I can always pose them on a short section of main line at one part of the layout.  A beer distributor is an idea, but living in northern Indiana, I have railfanned both the IHB and The J many times.  Never thought about taking inexpensive Lionel gons and retrucking them to 2 rail and putting Kaydees on them.  Lionel did do long and short mill gons.   Mike

And it doesn't have to be The J or IHB, can just be the internal railway so many mills had.  I am thumbing thru D. Freytag's book on steel mill railroads.   I also like to run in the twilight/semi darkness, so lots of room for putting the external building lights, amber bulbs inside the buildings to simulate the glow of liquid metal ect.  Mike

Model Railroad Planning 2014 contains an interesting article on the Post Cereal plant...lots of photos and two track plans.  There was a great thread on another forum with additional photos and map but a quick search returns a broken link.  Also, consider S scale.

Mike. I run my Railroad like I want and if I have to be unconventional then so be it,these are the Lionel "Toy Train" cars for in plant movement the slab loads have got screws glued underneath and fit into holes so they don't   fall off and operators don't get frustrated we are a happy crew! Roo.

Looks good Roo!  I have no problem using the Lionel gondolas retrucked for 2 rail on a operating layout.  Less fine details to break off when handling to unload.  Also much cheaper to build up the needed fleet of cars for much less $$.   Probably have more $$ in trucks and couplers than the cars themselves.  The weathering helps hide the heritage of the gondolas and they just blend right in.   Mike

Artful,

Many years ago I built a small O scale layout on a 4'x8' sheet of Homasote and the AN NW2 operated on the slightly less than 24" radius curves and 40' scale cars with Kadees would also go around that little test layout so you should be able to build a workable O scale switching railroad in your space.

Joe

Small layout and a big industry equals a mirror!  Only build half the industry and let the mirror(s) do the rest of it.  Just a thought.  Russ

How about a smaller machine shop or fabricating plant?

Back in the early 70s I was a draftsman at Industrial Design &a Machine.  We had a big contract with NASA Langley plus other work that came thru the door.

There was a track (Original Norfolk Southern or just Southern) just in front of the building with a spur running behind the shop and to other businesses beside us.  I recall flatcars and Gondola dropping off huge sheets of material and picking up fabricated assemblies too big for trucks.

When I say small, the building I worked in was approx 100'x300', if you google curlew drive in Norfolk va you can see the building that's still there, if you use the satellite imagery.  The old single main is now a double track light rail system.

I don't want to put anyone off their dreams and I'm building a Steel Mill myself and finding it not a five minute job but it's getting there and really enjoying it, so if you think that the steel mill project might be a little large for the size you have what about a common carrier Railroad that feeds an industry of say a modest size but also stops along the way for other smaller industries something like a industrial short line.

If you decided on that idea I would base the era around the late forties early fifties and just use all 40 foot cars no 50 footers except maybe the occasional 52 foot gondola if you went this way and started this project and your short of dollars (and that's nothing to be ashamed of) I could help you with some cars I have plenty of all kinds of kits and boxcars, a lot of the boxcars don't have kadees or trucks I have used them myself so if you finally decide on something I will post a photo of what I can give you of course it would not be till the New Year now, postal services are Kaos for Christmas let me know through this forum there is always a way on the other hand if you dead set on a Steel mill your on your own I need everything I have! Roo.

What time period are you thinking of building. There is a big difference in the mills from the 40s & 50s and those today. If it is an earlier mill with the blast furnace and all that, your best bet would be a nice backdrop showing those. A lot of the latter mills had an electric furnace and just melted scrap so the buildings are not as involved.  With space & funds limited use the back drop and concentrate on the shipping end of the process.  Mills would cast ingots and move them to another mill, ship the molten metal in big bottle cars  and  continous cast slabs and ship them to their rolling mills which in turn ship coils or sheets of steel. Plus they would roll I beams, rails and rounds or tubing. Lots of options but they all had a loading yard for the rail cars. Wheeling-Pgh Steel had about 6 or 7 mills in the Ohio valley and shipped a lot.  you have to decide what you want to have first. At one time J&L  shipped some rail cars by river barge from one mill to another. That would really be cool !!

I was thinking more of the 50's era, pre roller bearing trucks.  yes the bulk of the mill would be a back drop to keep costs down and the need to model some complicated piping set ups.  Buildings would be shallow up against the back drop where cars can be spotted, either inside the building or alongside a loading dock.  Operation would be the simulation of the movement of various steel from one building to the next or to the set out track for the local to pick up.  The big question is can it be squeezed into my little room with enough switching to keep one operator busy for awhile.   No fun to be able to switch out the whole set up in just a few min.  I belonged to a big HO scale club that was operation based with switch lists, then car cards and a 12:1 fast clock.  I would probably try to keep the mill in the south Chicago/Gary/Hammond area as to be served by the Harbor Belt or EJ&E.  Seen a nice pic of an EJ&E NW2 with brown carbody sides, yellow ends, beacon on the roof and silver trucks.  Looked quite sharp!   Mike

Mike.

There are lots of great photos on the internet showing how a lot of guys in mostly HO have put the mill against the wall. I can't do that on my layout without ripping the whole lot out and starting again which I won't do so I am forced to have everything in the open including (when I build it) the blast furnace.

There is a hobby shop that sells Steel Mill backdrops called Model train Stuff they have them on their website I bought the whole set of backdrops from them as they ship to Australia can't remember who actually makes them but they are very good. The MTH bottle cars sell on eBay very cheap they are easy to convert to 2-Rail but they use two sets of Intermountain wheelsets the good news is you can use the original trucks so their is some saving there. Roo.

Those look good Roo, I had planned on using some of the MTH steel cars and retrucking or rewheeling them as necessary.  If I had the room, I might have attempted some of the neater buildings out in the open.  My friend used a bunch of basic plastic shapes, pieces of tubing, dowel rods ect to build up his HO scale steel mill area.  Looks really good from about 3 foot away.  Wouldn't take much to detail it even better if someone wanted to.  I will stick with my flats on the wall.   I was looking at what will be the completed benchwork, and for running the F units, it would a basic circle using 48" radius curves.  The F7 with the CLW drive will go down to 36" but thats about the minimum it will run without putting the drive shafts to the trucks in a bind.  Beautifully done model that I got from a late modeler's widow.  I might just put it in the display case for awhile.  I should have my first NW2 in a week or so hopefully.   Other ideas I kicked around was a large grain elevator complex, some of the basic local industries that used to be rail served where I live and we had a local switch crew that used an ex-IHB NW2(see my thread on roller bearing side frames for a pic of the NW2 #819), or my original plan of a run down branch line with a small elevator and feed mill using the 2 F units and the NW2 for power.  That original plan would probably been the cheapest as all I need is the feed mill(coming soon from Atlas O) and a small grain elevator.  Rest would be farm land.  Mike