As the EAF has been moved from the other room I wanted to lay down the tape measure to show the size of the designed Open Hearth as compared to the EAF. The tape measure here at 8'(2.4 M) shows the length and the drawing below shows the designed widths.

As per the original layout drawing plan the Open Hearth is to be located to the left of the EAF in the picture. I guess now the way things are situated I can actually build the entire thing if I wanted.





( click_to_see_Hi_Res_EAF_with_tape_measure )

Over the next few months I am going to build the first 12" wide x 16" length of the OPEN HEARTH furnace which is designed to be 8+ feet long. The 12" width does not include the lean to furnace area where the stacks are to be located. I'm going to use the ones at Gary Indiana as a prototype:

Over the past few months I have been slowly whipping this bad boy into shape. The more recent changes include a separate teeming building with stack, a flux raw material bunker/conveyor, and some panel changes.



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Been working on re-arranging the EAF quite a bit in the last week or so. I wanted this building to have more contrast to the brick Blowing Engine House so I nixed all the red brick facade in favor of all steel construction. i mixed and matched a whole bunch of stuff to get the complexity I was looking for that is not available in the walthers kits.



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Last night (11pm-ish) I started packing up my most recent ebaY auction sales and was looking at my building shelf where all the neglected structures reside. "Neglected" meaing either buildings I want to use but have no space for right now OR stuff I'm going to sell. So I stood there, staring at the now un-used Tri State Power kit. I had originally built this for the Boiler House #1 building but 2 thoughts came to mind.

1. Do I try to convert this back to HO and try to sell it? What a pain, it took me a while to get it to N.

2. This building is so big to fit into my layout it really has to be next to something huge though so the scale doesn't seem that off. For a boiler house the scale is too big but what about...hmm my EAF is HUGE

Bingo. Why not add this to my EAF and make it even longer. So I pulled apart a section of the EAF down and inserted the Tri State Building to see how it would look. After a few configurations I arrived at something I was pleased with that I thought had potential. I then went online to look at Indiana Harbor to find something similar because I know I have seen something like that before.

OK so we have this image then from Indiana Harbor:



To highlight some features i liked Architecturally:

1. Varied heights of sloped roofing in some parts
2. Square box like geometry mixed in with more traditional sloped roof type. In fact this building mimics the Tri state Power Authority structure with a lower roof and stack coming out of it.
3. Smokestacks...can't have enough
4. Gap between main structure which helps break up monotony of building and potentially helps add detail.
5. Vertical cylinder type structures connected to horizonal piping up high.

But now what about the scrap yard building and all those arched brick windows. I dunno it seems out of place and I think the building calls for an all steel skinning now with some recent changes I made last night. I'm going to remove all the brick facades and replace it with the rolling mill kit provided sheets. However I'm going to use this opportunity to experiment a little and add in some grandt line windows. That is a process I was thinking of using for my Open Hearth Furnace building which does not yet exist.

Pix to come....

I finally decided on a building arrangement for this area near the end of the EAF and it is to be the storehouse made from Walthers Vulcan Manufacturing kits.



I also cleaned up the EAF end as well.



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Or actually now I'm thinking this for the area previously mentioned. All that is required is 1 more Vulcan Manufacturing kit.

So the first building over at the Steel making Dept to receive the weathering treatment is the small brick office. I finished it off with the railings for the stairs, some decals, and a nice clock face that comes with those Greenmax factory decal sheets.



( click_to_see_some_BIG_images )

The time has come to start planning ahead on my Open Hearth structure while I continue to work on current items. I first settled on a prototype structure which is the Open Hearth design at Gary Indiana:



The next phase is to then attain the necessary kits to build this structure. I am not buying them all at once and am pacing to get the best deals since I can't build it right away anyways. I am deeply entreanched online searching for deals and going to Train Shows when I can. That's how I got the HO Walthers Tri-State Power Authority kit for under $40 sealed 3 months ago.

To build what you see in the picture above is quite simple actually. It requires (6) HO Cornerstone Rolling Mill kits, (1) Walthers N scale Electric Furnace kit, and perhaps some N scale Rolling mill kits for the stack lean to's.

The HO rolling mill kits make up the main body that is to be 96"+/- long or 1,280 scale feet +/-. Ths builds a (12) furnace structure. The kit supplied "modern" vents will be used but more vertical like you see in the image with some roof modification all the way at the top. The building will then be lowered to proper proportions (9" at top of fink truss below monitor". At the end of that is then the N scale Electric Arc furnace kit which serves as the mixer building. That's built kit sized or slightly narrower by one truss brace row. The left over Electric Furnace Interior pieces from that kit are then to be used as the 5th missing EAF within the currently constructed EAF structure. It will be modeled tilted.

The smokestacks (12) will be grey butyrate plastic tubes from Plastruct which have been on sale for practically free recently. They come in 15" lengths or 200' in scale height plus the base piece to bring them in line roughly to the 225' prototype height. Items like the scrap yard or mold yard I have yet to figure out.

Since I stole the last power house from this module to accompnay the machine shop #2 structure I took this one off the shelf and re-applied it at the stripper end of the EAF.

On the left you see a bottle car being pushed by a VO into the EAF to deliver some hot metal on schedule.