"Further investigation

Yeah, The cement plant here had about as many hopper loads of coal coming in as cement hoppers going out. The additives were just occasional loads .......DaveB

I feel your pain I spent

I feel your pain I spent years research the track layout of Cass West Virginia.  I lay the track and a few months later a new book comes out with photos that had not been published before so I had to take up the track and rework the layout...

And covered hoppers to carry

Finding out what was where when

G'day Nick and all,

When an industrial site is in action for 50 to 100 years plus, expect buildings and processes to change. When your only reference is a few (mostly undated) photos and with over 50 years since the place last operated, you can expect some pain in the research area, especially when the photos show conflicting images of the same area.

The real trick is to do enough research so that YOU are comfortable with what was on the site, when it was happening and how stuff was being done at your chosen "instant in time" . Now given that buildings and other industrial infrastructure don't change overnight. your "instant in time" can blow out to be a period of 10 years or more. 

Good Luck with your research, but remember that you can decide when "enough" is "enough for you to be happy" that you have a enough of a grasp of what you are trying to acheive,

Thanks

Mike, thanks for the tip on the fly ash...I completely forgot about that.

John, that's always the trick.  How much is enough?

Douglas, that's painful.  Luckily, I haven't laid any track yet.

Dave, thanks for that info!

Rejiggering Things

The new cement operation plan, required the rejiggering of my coal operations as well.  Again, as no benchwork yet exists, this is a paper exercise.  

By relocating the cement mill, and associated gravel operation, I was able to split the coal mines off onto a separate area, adding a much more realistic geographical separation, then existed before.  So whereas previously, the cement and coal operations shared the same subdivision, I now have two separate subdivisions, which don't interact with each other.