Measurements of the base

Main deck is 35' deep by 31' wide

Rear deck 17'x18'

14' high from the bottom of the wheels

The leveling bar superstructure is 51/2' wide by 15' high

The leveling bar is a ram that goes in a little door at the top of an oven door. The ram is run by a cable and hoist drum affair. There are rollers and guides for the ram to go back and forth in the oven. The reason for the leveling bar is to smooth out the coal piles that have been dropped into the oven.

Picture Nine  leveling bar super structure.

Picture Ten  Sheeve wheel arrangement

Side view of leveling bar

Hoist drum

I found the hoist drum in my parts box. I built a support to hold the drum and for the motor to attach to it. I made all the subassemblies mount on .010 styrene to be glued in place. Trying to get everything to fit on the base has not been fun. I have had to create and build all the mechanisms. The hoist fits under the leveling bar superstructure.

Picture twelve Hoist mechanism/ OOPS I will have to adjust the coupling. You will never see it on the model it is buried in the middle.

Ram for Coke Pusher

The reason I decided to do this project is that when I worked in the coke plant I used to walk next to the pusher and the ram was really long and stuck out over the road. When other models came out the ram just did not look long enough to go from a stationary position on the pusher go across the pusher side bench thru the battery and push the coke out past the coke side bench into the Quench car. I think this Ram looks good like the prototype in length. The ram length is 78' long. The ram is made of Evergreen Tubing 2' wide by 2 3/4' high. Angle is on all four corners for the ram to slide thru the transfer case. The gear transfer case is made up of .020 styrene . The ram support gear case is .020 styrene with angles and nut bolt washer casting. I don't have any pictures of this so it is my imagination

Picture 13 Completed ram with motor and gear case

Picture 14 Close up of motor and gear transfer case

Picture 15 Close up of idler gear support structure tower

 .

Control Cab

The control cab sits up in the air and the coke door extractor mechanism slides on rollers under the cab. There are walk way going all over the machine. The first walkway I had to put in was for the leveling bar . I had to adjust the width to make every thing fit. The cab walkways had to be fabricated with the cab and supports. The walkways will be Scale Scenics Micro Mesh 652-3501. The handrails are in the  Central Valley Fence and railing 1601 with Evergreen 292 angle glued to the bottom.

Picture 16 Cab top view 

Picture 17 Cab side view

Picture 18 Coke bench end view 

Picture 19 Back view of cab   Status as where I am at. Placement of subassembly on the deck. These subassemblies will be painted separately and final details added. 

Excellent!

Truly inspiring work.  I am following it carefully.  Thanks for sharing!

Inspiring

Very, very , very nice work Tom.  Thanks for taking us along the build. 

Steve

Thank You

Thank You, as progress comes along I will post. I was originaly going to do this a an article but it is just too much trial by error to make it work as an article. I thought I wood share as I go. The painting stage is coming soon. The model was going to be Grimy Black like the ones I used to see. But the detail was all lost. It will now be Coach Green, motors and drive train blue and handrails safety yellow I still have to build the motor drive and the door extractor.  I got it rough out I will show it  soon.

Tom 

Update, more handrails and other details addes

I have been working slowly on the pusher. More handrails have been added, the motor to run the pusher has been added. In the pictures the subassembly still have not been glued down. Next step is to mask of certain areas for good glue joints and then to the paint shop. I still have to put the cross over walkway from the leveler to the cab in and work on the door extractor.   

Beautiful!

Keep em' coming!

Allmost Finished.!!! Progress pictures

Progress pictures of the coke pusher. Now the small details have to be added, Lights, air compressor, drums ,ect

Really cool

Killer structure!

Looks great

Tom,

Looks great. Have you posted pictures on any of the Steel Group websites?

Stogie

What are you using for the railings?

Tom:

What are you using for the railings?

Railings

Thanks for the kind words, Central Valley The railings are in with the fence package, I have a lot of fence sections left. I also used them on the coke battery

Awesome!

That is an impressive amount of styrene construction.  Truly awesome looking piece of machinery!  Looking forward to seeing that in its place on your layout!

Greg

Pusher on the layout.

Now for all of you where does this coke pusher thing goes. Here is the picture. It is located on the front of the Walthers Coke Oven Batteries. It gets its power from the rails located below the bench. I will now get to finish the scenery and the gas piping. Mike Brocks Cocoa Beach Prototype Rails is coming soon and operators will be coming to operate the railroad. I want to have this scene finished.

Back to work,

Tom   

That's one hot model!

This has been a really great thread, and seeing it installed is a really great treat.  Thanks for sharing!

Michael 's Coal Pusher

Michael 

Did you ever publish plans or and how to article on the details of building this pusher?

Thanks

Plans

I used Mike Rabbitts plans.  Right now they are not available. There is a group that Mike gave them to . Hopefully soon they will be available. The Steel mill SIG knows more about that. The nice part the plans are in HO scale.

Plans

I used Mike Rabbitts plans.  Right now they are not available. There is a group that Mike gave them to . Hopefully soon they will be available. 

The V-dub motor..

Hi Tom,

Congratulations, that is one of the most realistic coke pusher or ram models I've seen. Does you ram have a V-dub motor or similar??

Why a V/W motor?? If you lost power to the ram and the ram beam was in the oven doing a push, then you needed a way of extracting the ram beam before it got too hot and started to bend. On the 2 rams attached to the coke ovens at Port Kembla that I worked in in the early 70's this capability was performed by a V/W motor and gearbox mounted beside the ram beam under the ram cabin. This drove a pinion that engaged with the rack on the ram beam. This had enough torque to pull the ram beam back out of the oven.  

The side of the battery with the rams was always "Pusher Side" as opposed to "Coke Side" (with the Door Extractor and Hot Car), but the individual machines were always "# Ram" on the intra-battery radio. Sometimes on higher production rates, we had 2 rams in action, one pushing ovens and the other one doing the levelling after the oven was charged after pushing.  

It was one of my jobs as the battery trainee to check and start these V/W motors on each ram once a week. In the 6 months I was on the battery we never had to push an oven with the V/W motor, or pull the ram beam back using the V/W motor. That includes the day I accidentally chopped all power to the battery, but that's another "war story" that has nothing to do with rams or pushers.    

great model

That looks fantastic Tom well done model.

Pusher Side vs Coke Side

Which side of the Walthers kit is which?

Battery placement

When I worked at Clairton we had two series of standpipes on the larry level. Walthers has one I placed mine . If you are just building one I would sand down the lids. They are flush with the top  of the brickwork .I placed  the collector main on the pusher side. My batteries are about 3 feet long. I am going to add one more with double collecting main and a new scratch built bunker. It will be based on Thomas Al. Republic Steel. It will connect to the end of the existing battery., It will have two larry cars.