Plastruct corrugated material

I used large scale Plastruct corrugated plastic to represent steel pilings for a wall. It may work in this instance too.

Plastruct

Is it still available?

How tall is it available in? ( I was looking for it to be tall enough to hide double stacks, etc)

And how deep/thick is it? (I'm pretty restrained with its thickness, as the rear of the one corner of the electric furnace structure is already set due to the trackplan in front, .....then the clearance of long cars making the radius turns in the rear.)

Might be appropriate for a steel mill barrier.

I've been working on

I've been working on 'rehabilitating' my used electric arc furnace. It fits in where the box outline is here.

Just behind it is the 2 mainlines I was trying to hide from the steel scene. I may have to do a little adjusting to those curves once I get better access to them and the other trackage back in that corner.

You can see I will need a fairly 'thin' fence/barrier so I can maintain decent mainline radi.

That long box car in the background is for testing that it (and other long cars) will clear whatever barrier I put up.

Red brick wall

Brian,

It seems when I was young,  My family traveled as Military families do,  And saw very high walls around St. Louis and have been told it had something to do with the local brick available.

Many companies had signs on them,  such as "KEEP OUT" and post no bills.

I believe that even (The King Of Beer ) brewery/ factory. even had high  red brick walls!

Just a memory.

Boudreaux

I do love my MRC TECH II in my switching yard...D.C. simple!

Textures

Many 3D game designers and modelers use various textures; there's a site where you can get free ones here:  https://www.textures.com/library

I've used them in the past to texture some of my 3D designs; they don't have a watermark, and often are seamless between lines.

Plus

Think of all the vines and :You name it:,  To break up the wall.  Even use a little of a metal wall or service doors.

I have a 3 ring binder full of stuff from many Vendors to break up walls.

Hope this peaks your interests.

Boudreaux   B.C.E.  R.R.

@Brian

Yes they still make it. In 7” x11” sheets. The one you’d want is the 1:12 scale corrugated siding. I use .040 x .060 strip styrene as the bracing strap.

Cheap and Dirty Corrugated Metal Siding

Ran across this site while surfing around,...

http://www.girr.org/girr/tips/tips4/cheap_siding.html

I kind of like the looks of

I kind of like the looks of this, but maybe too sophisticated for a steel mill barrier

https://www.enoisecontrol.com/railroad-and-hump-yard-sound-barrier-wall/

Wall

My ideas... Steel Mills are notoriously frugal, as are the railroads that serve them. Aside from them both being diehard about safety they are going to use something cheap, rugged, and reliable. Although retaining walls are great scenic dividers and are interesting there’s not enough of an elevation change (at least from what I can see from the photo) to pull it off for the scene. Soldier/Sailor Pile walls whether they’re solid sheet piling, H beams with timber, concrete, or combination are used to both make a base in poor load bearing soils and too hold back a grade with a surcharge load on it. 

Here’s a thought... concrete “Jersey” barriers with chain link fence attached to them. You could dump a thin layer of slag and have a bunch of weeds and brush growing through it. You could also make the fence (framing) with remnants of old I beams/H beams, pipes/tubes/bollards, etc. The brand name Cyclone Fence is a trademark of US Steel and it’s competitor was Beth Fence. 

Hope this helps.

Kory

Sheet Pile fencing

I'm thinking just good old sheet pile fencing makes the most sense,....and steel from the steel mill.

Because I am using this fence as a site barrier to the trains running behind it, I had sort of struck 'open grid fencing' off the list.

And the sheet pile fencing can be made to look pretty innocuous, which I would prefer to not 'compete' with the steel mill structures.

Plus I think the sheet pile fencing would require even less obtrusive extra support posts,...good for the thin profile I need.

(not that it would ever be seen, but the train side of that wall might invite the graffiti artist.....ha...ha)

Metal fence

Brian,

This is a sample of what my industrial fencing looks like.  

Hiding

I would put a building to the left of the furnace building, made of corrugated metal, even with teh end of the furnace that went to the backdrop.  To the right of the furnace, over the track,  I would put a lean to structure also made of metal and and extending behind the furnace.  I would then put a barrier where you have the "fence" and paint it black, then maybe put a picture of a pile of steel or machinery on it.  The to the right of that lean to I would put another building.

The dreaded "mix" and "shorts" for piling fences

Hi Brian,

In the mid-1970's I used to work in the last steam-powered rolling mill in the southern hemisphere. Besides rolling rails of all sizes (including tram rail) the mill also rolled I-beams, channels and sheet piling. Rarely (but it did happen) either an ingot of a different heat and different steel grade was was rolled to the wrong product or (even rarer) a whole heat could fail on mechanical or chemical properties. The chemical "fails" we knew about before rolling, The mechanical property "fails" (too hard/too soft/too brittle) we usually found out about after rolling.

The wrong ingot rolled to the wrong product was usually a "mix" and it was cause for an investigation to find out how it happened and where the other ingot it was swapped with had gone, so that the products rolled from both ingots could be caught and quarantined before they left our plant.  One of the causes of a "mix" was two of the same sized ingot from different heats and grades being in the same soaking pit at the same time before rolling. The soaking pits on site fed two different mills, the rail mill and the billet mill. 

So where is this going? If we had a "fail" on sheet piling the the sheet piling would be quarantined and downgraded for "internal use only" rather than being scrapped outright. There were plenty of places around the plant where it could be used for fences or structural reinforcement. Similarly "off-specification" rails, channels or billets could and did also end up as internal fences or barriers.    

If we had whole heat (300+ tons) that failed on chemistry, then the scramble would be on to find "something else" we could do with it that met the chemistry and could be "sold" before we rolled it. The sheet piling specification was a whole lot broader than the chemical specifications for a lot of other end uses. So it was just possible that we could roll and sell most of a heat to sheet piling rather than scrapping the whole heat. This outcome at least made some money for the plant. 

One thing we couldn't sell much of was "short length" sheet piling. "Shorts" occurred when rolling problems caused losses that left the last length of piling bar rolled from an ingot shorter than was needed for the specified rolled length. Often the sales contract would specify a maximum % of "short length" sheet piling or rails. So again any "shorts" that couldn't be sold could find themselves being relegated to "internal use only" fencing.     

The steelworks also owned its own coal mines, so "internal use only" also covered some of their fencing and reinforcement requirements at almost $0 cost for the mines. I know of at least 1 sheet piling fence along a road close to where I live that marks where the mine property starts. 

Fencing vs Extra Buildings

Thanks for that sheet piling observation John.

The extra buildings suggested by Dave was not so appealing as I already have a surplus of buildings over there.

My sheet piling fence can scenic block my dual track mainlines,...and it can provide a backdrop for my metal scrap yard that is providing fuel for my EAF. Then I might even break that metal scrap yard up into several 'bins' with some sheet piling as well.

scrap "bays" not "bins"

Hi Brian,

scarp yard parlance for partitioned off sections of scrap yard was "scrap bays" . A scrap bin was what you used to tip scrap into the bays (small ones on trucks) or to charge the BOS furnace (BIG ONES with up to 100 ton of scrap on board).  And yes I've seen sheet piling used as dividing fences in parts of the scrapyard. 

When #5 blast furnace was built in the mid-1960's, old ingot moulds were used as the fence around the slag pit (Waste not, want not  )  But I'll bet that when the newer #6 blast furnace was built (almost 20 years after we made our last ingots), that the slag pits were contained by sheet piling that had to come from Whyalla over 1000 miles away. That's were sheet pile and rails are made in Australia these days. 

Mirror & Fence Backdrop for Steel Mill

Here is the latest on the fencing,...and the mirror view blocks

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/steel-mill-scene-in-a-corner-now-coke-plant-power-plant-12209837

Make your own corrugated

Make your own corrugated fence with aluminum foil and a computer ribbon cable. Emboss the foil and glue it to the barrier you used to test the idea.

Don't know that I understand

Don't know that I understand that WaltP ? Got any pics, etc??