Steel Mill

Don: One of the best steel mill scenes I have seen! Great Work! I love your arrangement of the buildings.

        Yours, Elvin Howland/E. St.Louis Rail Group Layout

Looks great lot of detail

Looks great lot of detail

Wonderful

Looks very busy and believable. Will take the time to visit your Photobucket albums to see much more.

A little confused with track arrangements by blast furnace

It looks like the Huelet (Sp?)  unloader empties into hoppers but wouldn't it unload directly into the blast furnace behind it?  I have 3 of these kits that I plant to include in the Steel Mill, but I have no clue how to incorporate them into it yet.  Does the ore get unloaded into hoppers and then hoppers taken over someplace else to be dumped into holding areas for the Blast Furnace?  Any clarification and explanation would be very much appreciated.  Thanks. 

Ken L

Wow!

Love all the trackwork and the complexity of the structures. I imagine you could add details forever on this size of structure. Looking good Don!

Blast Furnace operations.

The way I plan on running the operations around the Hullet unloader and ore crane is, Iron ore will unload into the ore yard for storage by the ore cranes and when the iron ore is needed it will be load onto material cars then dumped into the blast furnace by these cars. The hullet unloader will unload coal from ships or barges into the wait hopper cars and then these cars will be shipped to the coke ovens and other parts of the plant that is powered by coal burning power plants.

Hope this helps to understand the operations.

Love it!

...and as someone with a steel mill in his own future: immensely valuable to see how other modellers are fitting together these massive structures and the tracks that serve them.

I like it, it really captures

I like it, it really captures the prototype look of track going everywhere at different levels.

Mike

Thank you all for the

Thank you all for the compliments on the layout.

Donald Dunn

Hullett operations

Most Huletts were used to unload ships, except for a few that were used to unload barges (Republic Steel Calumet River Coke Plant, Chicago). The scoop or bucket is able to extend out over the hold of an ore boat (laker) get a "bite" and then slide back toward land, depositing the payload into a lorry care that hung under the platform. The lorry car could either deposit the load into waiting hoppers on the tracks running under the Hulett or go all the way to the end and place the payload into the ore yard. Typically there was a concrete wall keeping the stock pile in the ore yard from flowing onto the tracks the hulett ran on. They can move parallel to the dock and are not stationary. The ore yard bridge cranes would move it away from were the Huletts deposited it to the center of the stock pile to later be deposited in a transfer car for the trip to the furnaces.  Ore, coke and limestone had different areas in the stock yard. Here is a link to a YouTube of the huletts in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJfnk2S330

Hullett operations

Most Huletts were used to unload ships, except for a few that were used to unload barges (Republic Steel Calumet River Coke Plant, Chicago). The scoop or bucket is able to extend out over the hold of an ore boat (laker) get a "bite" and then slide back toward land, depositing the payload into a lorry care that hung under the platform. The lorry car could either deposit the load into waiting hoppers on the tracks running under the Hulett or go all the way to the end and place the payload into the ore yard. Typically there was a concrete wall keeping the stock pile in the ore yard from flowing onto the tracks the hulett ran on. They can move parallel to the dock and are not stationary. The ore yard bridge cranes would move it away from were the Huletts deposited it to the center of the stock pile to later be deposited in a transfer car for the trip to the furnaces.  Ore, coke and limestone had different areas in the stock yard. Here is a link to a YouTube of the huletts in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJfnk2S330

The youtube link

For some reason the link did not post, so I'll try again.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJfnk2S330

Impressive!

Reminiscent of Dean Freytag's South Ridge Lines!

Nice modeling.

George

Working Model

Who will be the first to do a working model of the Hulett?

Here's a start: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-2966

Bernd

Hulett unloading

The Huletts would generally unload into the stock pile or into cars that transport the ore to the stock pile. Steel furnaces don't like to shut down...once brought up to temperature, they would be kept going year round. Unfortunately, rivers and lakes in the north have a tendency to freeze up in the winter. So during warmer months of the year, the Huletts will be unloading ore faster than the mill can use it. Then in the winter, when the boats can't get in to deliver the ore, the mill will use ore out of it's stock pile.

Paint costs

Must be awfully high at the mill. keeping the paint up on all that equipment and buildings. I like the mill and wish I could do half as good, but having lived and worked on the starting line of ore shipping I know that rust, dirt and wear quickly make a new piece of equipment look as is they have been there since opening up. The buildings are the same, where I worked they gave up the fight, sort of, and painted the buildings rust color and called a truce with the environmental issues.

The company that bought and restarted the plant began painting the inside of the buildings WHITE! I think somebody wised them up and they switched to gray or just left it alone. The iron mining and blast furnace business is dirty, dirty, dirty. Did I mention it's dirty?

If your ill uses red ore then rust is a good color. If it's taconite then black and gray are the main colors to go with.

Again I think you have done a bang-up job of conveying the look and feel of ore processing. Keep up the good work!

Map?

Don,

It might be useful to some if you had a map of the buildings. While I have been following your posts on other sites like the steel groups, some viewers may see just a bunch of kick butt buildings.

Bing,

Taconite turns rust colored in a short amount of time when left out. You also have black from coal and coke not to mention gray or white from limestone used as flux.

All,

For those unfamiliar with a steel mill, Don has put together a heck of a great mill. Mills are like a living creature. Ore, limestone and coal or coke (a type of cooked coal) will come in via boat or rail. Coal is baked into coke if not received as such. These raw materials then feed the blast furnace then a steel making furnace (Don built a basic oxygen furnace building) then rolled. If Don is able to add a map and numbers for a sequence you will be able to see how much work is done at one of these mills. And in most cases, material travels by rail from one stage to the next.  It's like having a model railroad within a model railroad.

Thanks Stogie and thanks to

Thanks Stogie and thanks to the everyone else also. Yes Dean was a really big influence on my steel mill, The weathering was pretty easy to do. I use Walnut Brown, Gray primer and red primer from spray can. All are Walmart brand. A little weathering goes a long way. Since these pictures I have add a few more small structures around the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF). Also added a Walthers Rotary dumper to the end of the track of my Hulett unloader. I still have another 32 feet x 2 feet of bench work that I have saved for my mill just don't know how to arrange the buildings and trackage yet. That section will have a small yard, coke ovens, Electric Furnace, slag dump and Rolling mills. Building this mill has been a great joy and I really learned a lot in the operation of mills.  

Someone asked about making the Hulett operational. Some one did a year or so after it came out. Here is a link to the video

I can come up with a map of the mill Stogie, That would be a good Ideal, also thought about maybe a Power Point presentation on some for the moves that would go into working this mill. 

great job

great job

animation

In N scale we have a guy that was working on the animated hulett. I believe his name was Rick Spano, but I am not great with names.

Don,

Let me know if you need a hand on the map/presentation etc. I think that is a great idea and may get others interested in modeling steel mills.

All,

I should mention that the integrated mill Don has made is not necessary if you want to model a mill. Blast furnaces have been known to operate independantly of coke ovens. A notable one was in Jackson Ohio and received coke, ore and limestone by rail and shipped pig iron. Coke ovens that have no on-site users include Erie Coke and Tonawanda Coke. Then there are mini-mills that have an electric arc furnace for re-melting scrap and a small rolling mill to produce new steel raw material.

Stogie

    Just to let you know taconite DOES NOT turn red after a while. I worked over 36 years at a taconite plant and there were stockpiled pellets that sat years and did not turn red. I worked in quality control and we ran tests on some of these pellets to see if weathering affected them (it didn't) after all that time. These pellets went through several freeze thaw cycles and all the temperature swings northern Minnesota can throw at them. We sampled from the piles and from control samples and they both stayed grey. This was when the steel industry was in one of it's slumps and gave us time to work on things we normally didn't get a chance to do. If the stockpiles down the lakes are red it may be because of dust from the furnace stacks settling on them.

    Pellets are about 65% to 67% non-magnetic iron. You may have noticed limestone piles at the mills are probably not as large as they used to be. That's because limestone or dolomite is being put into the pellets at the plants up here as well as other customer desired additives. Sounds like we're blending gasoline. The days of here they are, like them or lump it are long gone. The company that can supply the mills with the best pellet are the ones that get the sales. Price isn't as big a thing now because what we add cuts the mills cost and actually saves them money and time in the long run,

    It may have been some of the nuggets we turned out of the pilot plant here. These are 90% to 97% iron, and they do rust. I don't think it would have been them because the amounts produced are small yet. The full scale production plant has had it's ups and downs and going through changes. Most of these nuggets are being sold to direct reduction or mini-mill plants and are turned into steel ingots.

Sorry I got so carried away but I just saw a correction was needed and wanted to give you my background in this matter.

God bless, Bing

BIng

On my machine, it looks like the pellets have oxidized to red: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TaconitePellet.JPG An image search on Bing shows pellets with the same reddish coloring, likely caused from oxidation in a damp/wet environment. Unsure of where these are from, but I think it is from normal oxidation as most mills use a dust collection system of some sort. Blast furnaces have been using some form of dust collection for most of the last century and other furnaces will have been switched to using something 40-50 years ago due to the EPA and other legislation. Back to your final paragraph, you did note a color change on some from a pilot plant. If two plants had that much variation, what's to say that one of your competitor's blends will not rust also?

I am not sure where you picked up magnetics but that is a good topic side line. Taconite is weakly magnetic, but is magnetic. A scrap magnet would not be able to pick up pellets, but a wet drum separator like I used to design, would be used to increase the ferrous concentration in a slurry. Here is a good PDF on the process: http://www.epa.gov/ttnecas1/regdata/IPs/Taconite_IP.pdf Page 13 shows a wet drum. Here is a good example of one: http://en-us.eriez.com/Markets/Index/Wetdrumseparatorcdamineralsprocessing

Rusty nuggets

   The rusty NUGGETS I referred to are NOT pellets. As you will note the difference in iron content (iron units) between the two is roughly 30%. The pellets with the lower iron content do not show oxidation, meanwhile the high iron content nuggets will rust, usually in a day's time. This reaction presented a problem in shipping as the rapid oxidation in an enclosed ship had, in tests, generated enough heat to compromise the integrity of the hull in one test. I retired before the answer was disclosed and the nuggets from the pilot plant were shipped by rail or open top truck. I know one answer is that mini-mills are going to be located near the plant and will be shipped by conveyor belt to the mill. I believe this has (is) being done in a down lake location.

   As I stated before the pellets from North Shore Mining do not show oxidation. The previous operator of this site, Reserve Mining, produced a pellet of far worse quality. That was in the days of the mills, Armco and Republic, owning the plant and taking anything they made. When self unloaders came along it subjected the pellets to much more pressure causing them to break up. The typical break strength was 100-200 lbs, In fact you could crush them with your fingers. This produced a lot of dust, read surface area, and would most likely oxidize at a faster rate, The pellets produced now break at 600-800 lbs plus. As a matter of fact for a while we produced a pellet that was too hard and messed up the blast furnaces. For a while we produced a sinter in order to help out with our too good pellet. This too would cause oxidation, but as far as the "new' pellets, they did not show oxidation in the tests I mentioned in the previous post.

   Yes, some of the other plants have produced a pellet of lower quality than North Shore. North Shore was the try it out plant and these processes have been implemented by them over time. So it may be theirs you have seen. There was a time we were blamed for bad pellet shipments until chemical testing proved they were not ours. So without testing, knowing who made the pellets in question there could be some poorer pellets still being made.

   I can only state what our pellet quality has been. I had few chances to test the other plants product, I hope this clears up "our disagreement".  What a strange place to discuss this but I think we both want a accurate model scene. Thanks for the exchange.