I'm trying to make some sense in putting a steel mill complex on my layout. I've paged through the Walthers book by Dean Freytag for info but what I really need to know is what order and what
types of cars are received for certain parts of the mill, and where they come from and go to.
More specifically, I have a Coke Oven, Quenching Tower , an Electric Furnace and the Blast Furnace. I know the Coke ovens receive coal from coal hoppers and burn the coal into coke--which then goes
through the quenching tower but where does that go? And what do the other buildings do???
The way US Steel did it at least at Fairless Works in Morrisville, PA, was the coal was dumped into the charging holes at the top of the coke oven batteries, where it was baked at 2800 deg. F (IIRC).
After the requisite baking time (~16 hrs), it was pushed out of the ovens into the waiting hot car, which was a specially constructed hopper car that carried the hot coke down to the quenching tower,
where it was soaked with water. After that was done, the hot car was then bought back down the rails to dump the load of coke onto what was called the wharf. This was an area constructed of concrete
that sloped down to a conveyor belt. The coke went from there, via a series of conveyor belts, down to the blast furnaces. This was then loaded into the blast furnace along with other raw materials
where the beginning stages stages of making steel are started.
The process from here I can't comment on, as I don't know enough about that to help. I do know that the open hearth was somewheres along in this part of the processing.
An electric furnace is/was basically a re-heating furnace to heat up the steel ingots for further shaping into various shapes (billets and bars, for example).
For the most part, everything moved by rail in Fairless Works. Other steel plants may well have done things different.
How do I know the above? 4 years spent there myself, and my dad had over 30 years at The Mill.
Jack
A steel mill doesn't have to contain all the elements that Walthers produces. Many mills were "merchant" iron producers and had nothing but a blast furnace. Their iron was cast into pigs and sold
to steel producers. Sloss Furnaces, in Birmingham, Alabama is a historic landmark and is open four tours on a daily basis and is an excellent example of a merchant mill. They had two blast furnaces
and a pig caster.
Coke plants were often located many miles away from the blast furnace and would be brought in to mill by rail car and stockpiled.
The Electric Furnace can also be a stand alone mill. Scrap and some pig iron are brought in by rail and steel is shipped out in bottle cars, usually to a nearby rolling mill but I have heard of
shipments as far a 30 miles away.
The rolling mill can also be stand alone, receiving ingots from a distant steel supplier. Here you would need a soaking pit to reheat the ingots in preparation for rolling into strip, bar, billets,
etc.
If small size is what you're after, try one of the modern style mini mills, usually scrap in, a small rolling mill, and rebar out. If you choose the blast furnace route you need ore, coke, and
limestone. A coking plant uses coal, of course, and a lot of water. Quenching releases a lot of steam, if you're into effects. Secondary furnaces are required to convert the pig iron from a blast
furnace into steel. These can be electric, open hearth, or bessemer process, usually an oxygen furnace, perhaps with an on site oxygen plant. The steel ingots are then rolled into sheet, bars or
whatever. A full on steel mill is a big operation, but it will require a lot of rail traffic.
The coke is dumped into a long storage building which also houses iron ore and limestone which are dumped from this storage area onto a conveyor which puts it into an electric self propelled
"lary" car ,it's weighed, then transfered into the skip hoist which carries it to the top of the blast furnace and dumps it in. The "electric furnace" building can be used for a reheat to prepare
ingots for the rolling mill or a type of steel producing furnace which uses huge (36 in.) electrodes to provide the heat.