The traveling crane and craneway

The traveling crane part of this project at first appeared to be quite daunting, especially the canopy. As many of the parts were repetitive sizes, valuable use was made of my NWSL Chopper for cutting these. Making gussets for instance, I counted up a certain size for one trestle, multiplied it by the number of trestles, and cut all of them at one time. A very great help when it came to assembly was the use of jigs I made of wood strips attached to pieces of matboard with the needed layout.

The one on the left is for the craneway trestles and the right for the canopy trusses.

When assembling the canopy, I laid it out on graph paper and used my steel blocks to hold everything in place as I cemented parts together:

The crane beams and trolley are fabricated of a multitude of shapes and strips:

The traveling crane and trolley are moveable but not motorized.

[attach:fileid=196974_29_O1NMzZc4/ur+VUB//9k=]

Behind crane access ladder one can view the scrap metal receiving bins from which the material is conveyed into the building:

Plastruct cage ladders, motors, and guard railings were used throughout this project.

The canopy trusses and bracing construction was a complex task to say the least:

[attach:fileid=196974_29_EIGR9aCRG+V+PSmM/9k=]

The back buildings

The buildings themselves are fabricated of Evergreen corrugated siding, lavishly braced inside. As they are not intended as 360 degree viewed buildings, they are open back, the same as  built in the articles.

The blower, intake, and ductwork on the prototype supplied the large amounts of air to the tuyeres ( twē-ˈer ), nozzles that injected air into the coke bed furnace for the melt. From what I understand, the air went to an encircling manifold that then supplied the tuyeres.

Large amounts of cooling water were also necessary and supplied from the water reservoir and associated piping represented here:

The furnace house rooftop depicts the cupola furnace stack and cover, exhaust stack, and dust collector duct. The sand preparation building is in the background here:

The dust collector bin received and stored dust in this hopper for trucking away:

Final assembly

The buildings were assembled and laid out first and cemented to a 16” by 24” sheet of styrene. After they were satisfactorily placed, the craneway and canopy was installed. The rail trackage was cemented down and the ground cover, using Woodland Scenics products was placed. The buildings are painted a light primer grey.  Railbox yellow was used for the railings, ladders, cages, and crane. Weathering was accomplished with oil washes, Mountain Modelcraft washes, AIM and Doc O'Brien powders.

A Yahoo group with a Freytag Foundry thread, modeling materials list and some prototype info can be found here:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/STEEL/conversations/topics/47408

A Model Railroad Forums Freytag Foundry thread with materials list can be seen here:

http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/showthread.php?24516-Freytag-s-Foundry

I have the place for this project on the layout, but have not yet installed it. I'm still contemplating the completed scene.

Wow...

looks very good!

John

Industrial Scratch

I am a sucker for gritty industrial modeling. Your 1,300 pieces of styrene sheet, strip, and structural shapes resulted in a fine looking structure. Well done.

Simply

Amazing work.  Love the attention to detail and the subtle weathering.

I remember avidly reading the

I remember avidly reading the article and thinking what a great model it would make, still do. Your model looks fantastic and I suspect Dean would sure be smiling if he was here to see it. Great job Bob. I was planning a slight variation on it when I get to it. I thought the smaller size compared to some large structures that could be built out of foam core would allow this to be used as an interior visible from out side the structure, and would imply much more to the inside of the structure.

Nice build

Bob,

That is a real nice build. I still have the article stashed away waiting to built ... "one day." My nephew (in his 20s) was talking about getting in to the hobby (never happened) when the article was printed and I was really excited to share it with him. After reading the article I started looking for all the Freytag articles (print and internet) I could find.

Question, how big is your final build? edit - NM 16 x 24. I missed it reading through your text the first time.

Joe "jatravia" Travia <> <

That is amazing I love the

That is amazing I love the detail

Thanks everyone...

For all the comments.  I honestly appreciate them.

Joe, I'm glad I happened to find your post with the link to the historical view of the facility.  Zooming in to see all the details in context gave a real understanding of the structure.

Rob, sounds like a neat idea!  I hope you can achieve that concept.

It was and is a lot of fun working on the details especially when everything starts to come together.  The "drawback" if one can really call it that, is the amount of time assets invested in building something like this might be taking away from other work on the layout.  This is certainly not a negative for me, or for everyone else that enjoys the modeling aspect of the hobby. 

Joe Travia, eh. Dude sounds

Joe Travia, eh. Dude sounds familiar.

Wow

I'm simply blown away by you skills . This is exactly the kind of structures i hope to have on my future layout and hopefully have the skills to build. 

Thanks!

Travelling crane

That crane looks like the charging crane I ran along time ago, memories give me shivers just thinking about it!!!

This foundry is now demolished.

Dang, this is yet another building on my "To-Do" list - great job! This foundry is now demolished. Briggs and Stratton sold it off (I think the new company was Metal Technologies) and it operated for a few more years, was finally shuttered, and now demo'ed. But, it lives on in Dean's model, and yours, and possibly others.

Joe Walsh

Thanks Joe.

Always sad news when an industry closes down.  We can be glad for Mr. Freytag's article on this and a his writings on the steel industry also.