Ashton Steel Mill series by Cornerstone by Walters "Rolling Mill"

[Brian1975]

Hi everyone: I have another question about a building I want to build & install onto my layout

Building is from Walters Cornerstone series collection "Ashton Steel Mill"
It's a Steel Rolling Mill size is 32" long x 11 1/8" wide  x 10" tall

I have the room & space in one corner of my layout... A Friend that is helping me with building scenery & building's made a comment that the building is " WAY TO BIG " for my layout witch is 16ft long x 6ft wide... He told me it will take away from all the other building's & scenery I am putting in... I WANT THIS ROLLING MILL ON MY LAYOUT FOR SENTAMENTAL REASONS MY FATHER IS A RETIRED STEEL WORKER OUT OF NOW DEFUNCT "BETHLEHEM STEEL" I dont think size of building's or scenery should matter "After all it's my layout "& HOW I FEEL" Whats your guys thoughts on this subject.......                     Thanks Brian1975

[WoundedBear]

It's your railroad and your money. Do whatever turns you on.

Sid.

[Jerrys HO]

Brian

If you plan on building the complete set then you may not have enough room for all of it.
Check the link I provided and you can see the "rest of the story". Sorry I'm a big Paul Harvey fan.

http://www.walthers.com/exec/page/press/1996/works

Hope his helps As Sid said it is YOUR RAILROAD do what makes you happy. That's what it's all about anyway and I am sure our dad will love the thought of you adding something that  was a part of his life also.

Jerry

[Doneldon]

Brian-

While Jerry is right that there's a whole lot more to a steel plant than just a roller mill, I
can't see any reason that would prevent you from including any part of that for your facility.
It's still a pretty massive installation and a worthy tribute to your dad.

                                                                                                             -- D

[electrical whiz kid]

A good source would be the book by the late Dean Fretag on steel mill construction.  There is a lot of good resource in it.  It is the book with the orange covers.  There are other soueves, but that one is pretty good.
Rich C.

[RAM]

If it is in the corner of you layout, I say go for it.  You can put up a backdope and paint the blast furnace and coal pile back off the layout.  There are many tricks that can be used to make it looks like you have more than one building.  tracks that run off the layout like they are going to some other location.  What ever you do just have fun doing it.

[Brian1975]

Hi everyone & thanks for the TIP's... I was busy all day on my railroad from 11am - 7PM laying track on my layout.. Well in the cornor I was planing on putting the Rolling Mill it would indeed be a very big building & pretty much take up the hole corner of the layout.. & I would barely have enough room for track as it is now i'd have to run the track on the edge of my roadbed & I dont want to do that.. So I can see now why my friend said it would be too big "BECAUSE OF THE SIZE OF BUILDING WOULD TAKE UP FOR THE SPACE AVAILABLE ON LAYOUT"... I am now thinking of building a smaller rolling mill building... My dad came up with an idiea of putting in the BEAM YARD's  where the Steel was stacked to awate loading onto Rail Car's & install 2 cranes & have Rail Car's back under cranes for loading of Beams.. & the Beam yard was in the same area of my dad's Rolling Mill Shop & he said he'ed like to see the Beam Yard.. I told him thats not a bad idiea because I can run a few sideing tracks the way I wanted to...

[J3a-614]

Brian, you may want to check out this hobby supplier (and former (?) Bachmann distributor), who is also a hobbyist and a fan of steel mill modeling:

http://www.peachcreekshops.com/

Some sample pages:

http://www.peachcreekshops.com/steel.php?UID=20130225075739184.19.140.231

http://www.peachcreekshops.com/steelarticles.php?UID=20130225075739184.19.140.231

http://www.peachcreekshops.com/othermills.php?UID=20130225075739184.19.140.231

[rbryce1]

I sympathize with you, but I have also found out the difference in constructing a single building and a plant.

I am building a Tropicana plant.  I have built several buildings and installed the decals and created the siding spurs to operate it with.  I have many Tropicana refer cars, Tropicana trucks, and the like.  But I have really found out why the real Tropicana plant which makes the orange juice occupies 30-40 thousand square feet of space, while the overall facility covers a bazillion acres!

Putting a building or two there was one thing, but the buildings need accesses, trucks need to be able to maneover, park, load, unload and turn around, rail sidings to load refer cars need to be accessible from the buildings, etc.  (Tons more of the etc's.)  Do you know how much room it takes just to turn a tractor & trailer around so it can unload oranges!  500,000 gallons of OJ a day needs to get from the packaging structure to the refer car loading docks, and it isn't packaged railside!

To do it was one thing, but to do it right was a whole different matter, and even if it didn't look exactly like the real Tropicana plant, it still needed to look like it could function.

[Doneldon]

rb-

Aha! You have discovered the meaning of selective compression -- reducing the
prototype in a way that leaves a credible representation of that prototype. It's an
art. What's more, you seem to be on to both aspects of selective compression,
leaving some parts out all together and reducing what's left to a size which fits
your layout while still appearing realistic.

                                                                    -- D

[Brian1975]

Update : Well after carefull consideration & figuring in the space I have available. The Rolling Mill is in deed to big for the space " I can fit the entire Building into the space " but then I will have no room for siding tracks or able to do any type of switching. So I have decided to make a Junk Yard with auto recycling & build a car crusher & some sort of crane to load up the Scrap cars into gondola car's.... I thought about running 2 tracks down the center of the junk yard so I can load the scrap car's from each end of the yard.. & have 2-3 track's on the side for empties or loaded gondolas waiting for unload... "What do you guy's think"... & on my opposite side cornor of my layout I am going to go with a Saw Mill Operation That will give me 2 big industries on my layout.. & lastly I was going to install a Auto Rack Unloading / Loading Terminal "mainly because I have 10 Auto Rack rolling stock car's & have a building with the Chevy bow tie emblem or Chevrolet on the building..  I think these 3 industries will go good on my layout... I am also planning a small passenger station down in the future...