Steel Mills

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Gloriousnse
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Steel Mills

Post by Gloriousnse »

Steel mills have this reputation for being unmodelleably large, and I guess for good reason, but from the 70s on new smaller Electric Arc Furnace mills which effectively use steel scrap for the basis of the process were opened up in several parts of the country, bringing the industry away from it's traditional heartlands...

Here's an example of a fairly compact EAF mill, Nucor Steel in Seattle, crammed in between residential streets and a bit of urban motorway, a surprisingly public venue for something like a steelworks! One interesting feature of this one in particular is that the lines to access the yard from it's supporting yard actually run through one of the structures, so you could present it as a standalone layout almost - and whilst it's still a large industry, it's not so large that it couldn't be modelled...

On Bing: http://binged.it/13Iv5gn

Lots of images come up if you do an google image search on 'Nucor Seattle' - and Youtube has some shots of their fleet of GE's.

These were shot in the exchange yard the other side of the motorway viaduct (parrallel to Harbor Ave SW) but give an idea of current car types - check the overhang on the flatcar on the second vid! Long cars and 'trainset' curves combined! :)


Martyn Read
geofftiller
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Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 7:05 pm

Re: Steel Mills

Post by geofftiller »

Thats a lot more model and module friendly then I thought it might be, being squeezed in on all sides makes for a very interesting plant. one of our members is collection steel industry related cars and has expressed an interest in a steel mill module so I'll point this thread out to him.
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Gloriousnse
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Re: Steel Mills

Post by Gloriousnse »

Another compact EAF plant - Kingman AZ - http://binged.it/YoWLCB
(I think the overheads were taken while the plant was shut down)

Maybe one of the downsides is you lose the ability to use some of those funky specialist freightcars as they aren't 'steelmaking' but rather 're-making'.
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Gloriousnse
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Re: Steel Mills

Post by Gloriousnse »

A more traditional steel mill, with blast furnaces, coking plant etc at Granite City, just into IL from St Louis - this isn't the largest by any means (look at Gary IN where steelmaking takes over literal miles of lakefront!) but it's still getting on for a couple of miles across...

http://binged.it/XR2VaY
Martyn Read
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