Coke Ovens

New Powerhouse

2008-06-16T22:41:30Z

So I had (2) Walthers Northern Power and Light kits left over and decided to scrap the previous iteration of the powerhouse in favor of this one which in my opinion is a stronger building and detailed much better. Now for a cokeworks I thought the building should be dumbed down a little and not as pretty as the kit form suggests. The windows were the key to fix this issue. I took the left over boiler room wall panels and used them to brick in most of the large windows on the sides except the top portion. This is an idea that came to me a year ago but at that time I had no way of acting on it. In so doing the building looks a little more plant like and less stand alone town like.

The boiler portion at the end is a left over construction of Walthers Cornerstone Modulars and a stack from the Walthers Blast Furnace kit.

This building takes way better view shots than the other one which was based on a Heljan Kit.

Ok there ya go.

2008-06-05T01:28:02Z

I have a habit of building a magillion little buildings and losing sight of scale sometimes. The cluster of buildings which were the welfare and laboratory neededm to change. I had too many little buildings clustered and it needed a bigger building to even things out. I pulled this big one off the shelf, added a small addition to it, swapped out the benzol building, and made a little yard to park trucks. The laboratory and welfare will be placed on the module that will eventually be built beside this one.

The building in the background (benzol building) just said cokeworks to me as it was originally mis placed over by the blast furnaces:

An overall shot showing the scale of the larger building at the far left end of the module.

Had to re-organize

2008-05-30T19:11:00Z

In leaving the stacks to the sides of the coke ovens I realized I had a problem on one of them with coke dump trucks and the loading facility as far as access goes. In order to fix this I simply placed the stacks in a more traditional position which is at the end of the coke oven batteries.

I think it actually looks a little more realistic...

2nd Smokestack

2008-05-21T22:30:13Z

The original 250' smokestack I have on the cokeworks module was from the Walthers HO Tri-State Power Authority kit and desperately needed a friend. Well, it finally got one along with a built Tri-State Power Authority structure and a storage structure from the Walthers HO Concrete plant that's be part of my Sinter Plant. All for $22 due to the rather odd (and thick) fleck stone paint job on the Tri State Power building. That's currently in the stripper bin btw.

Here is an original image from the mid 50's at Sparrows Point showing the scale of the stacks in relation to the coal bins on top of the coke ovens.

They're huge!

and so are mine!

Weathering: Light Oil By-Products plant

2008-05-12T22:56:58Z

I had added a bunch fo details but not going too overboard I tend to think. The weathering treatment is the typical rust and grime as elsewhere in the cokeworks. Those fins on the right of the image is a heat sink piece from an old graphics card I had lying around. Kinda a cool piece.

Light oil By-products plant

2008-05-08T01:58:07Z

So I had to build a base for a large portion of the by-products plant in order for ease in transportation and practicality. It's hard to take images of this part close and I figured I'd save that for after weathering. I added a bunch of detailing like railings, tanks, stacks etc.

Welfare switch

2008-05-04T01:45:32Z

Not only did the Welfare building swap with the main office but the rear addition was also revised. The addition now comes from the Walthers Vulcan Manufacturing kit and fits perfectly onto the building as the roof already accomodates the pilaster bump out. I custom built a water tower in the rear of the struicture to act as the water supply for the Welfare building.

Weathering: Gas Holding Tanks

2008-04-27T14:20:49Z

Today I weathered the gas holding tanks and while doing so tried to vary the degree of rust from one to the next. But that didn't exactly work out as well as I thought it would. In order to get in all the nooks and crannies at the supports I had to go pretty heavy on the color which makes them almost appear reddish. Since prototypes get this discolored anyway it didn't bother me as much. Overall it came out pretty good. One thing I learned on this one was it's much easier to dirty up railings by smudging a very dirty finger over them. Also, I liberally applied the black powder in places and left it un-brushed and only spray dullcoat over it. That allowed for som extra detail normally difficult to attain on smooth surfaces when doing powder weathering.

I found it a little difficult getting behind the lattice work but didn't really worry about the look so much there....

Also, I did add safety caged ladders by Gold Medal Models prior to doing the weathering to snap up the detail a little. Otherwise the structures are kit built.

Below is the beginning of construction on the stairs that take personel over the retaining wall.

Weathering: Booster House

2008-03-06T01:29:04Z

I applied the weathering treatment to the booster house and used the same methods as the previous brick buildings. The part that really makes it pop is the sanding with metal sanding sand paper. Nice and rough. I've also completed all the conveyors at the cokeworks.

Weathering: Office and Laboratory

2008-03-05T01:15:21Z

I gave the office and lab some basic weathering. Not too heavy but enough to portray years of use.

The main goal here is to complete as many cokeworks buildings as possible and then move onto the blast furnace dept area. Some I will have to put off till later until I am confident they are "done" but I estimate I have about a dozen more to do before I swithc to the blast furnace area.

Weathering: Small Parts Storage

2008-02-29T01:15:02Z

Done in the same vein as the other brick structures. That's it till Monday. I updated all these buildings in the gallery of structures pages on the main website as well.

Weathering: Benzene Light Oil House

2008-02-29T01:13:27Z

Dirt Dirty

Weathering: Welfare House #1

2008-02-29T01:11:19Z

This structure went like the others in which I powdered, then sanded, then sealed with dull coat. I was able to get a nice stippling effect for variation in brick by spraying the dull coat from really far away.

I figured the side of welfare house being near the entry to the cokeworks and across from the office/lab made for a nice place to put the safety sign. That sign indicates how long it has been since the last injury.

Weathering: Coal Crusher

2008-02-27T01:31:02Z

Worked on the Coal Crusher today along with some out buildings nearby. I decided to rust this one out slightly more than the mixer for some contrast.

Based on a recent comment I wanted to further clarify on the process. After the weathering is done with powders (from bar maills mainly), I spray the structures with Testor's Model Master dullcoat but in a very light manner. This accomplishes 3 things:

1. Creates a slight uneven stippling effect over smooth rusted surfaces that adds lots of little inconsistencies to the powdered detail.
2. Seals the building up and keeps the hands clean when handling
3. Slightly mutes the weathering effect in some areas but it's hard to notice unless you really study it. For lack of better terms if one feels the weathering got slightly out of hand the dullcoat can bring it back in line depending on how thick you spray it. This however involves a delicate balance between spray and powder I tend to think so caution must be used.

and a large version of the first image:

Weathering: Coal Mixer

2008-02-26T03:38:57Z

I will be weathering as many structures as I can in the next 2 months before the hell heat comes. I have a total of about 100 to do and can probably do it in less time than 2 months but we'll see. I had set up shop in my workroom and was wearing a respirator due to the powders and thought everything was honkey dorey. Well it wasn't and if I ran my fingers against the computer table on the other side of the room there was a fine layer of black dust on it. This meant it probably wasn't a good idea to do it in the workroom so I moved operations to the garage. This project is the first time I had used powders to weather so it was a learning experience.

Today I worked on a few coal conveyors and the mixer over at the cokeworks:

ebAy Auctions

2008-02-12T19:03:42Z

ITEMS FOR SALE

During the next few weeks I will be focusing primarily on preparing for ebAy auctions to thin out some inventory of extra things lying around. I am weathering some of these extra buildings and fixing them up quite a bit to get them ready for sale on ebAy. These are mostly smaller buildings that are warehouse like and based off kits such as the Heljan 2 stall engine shed kits but with a lot of customization such as custom signs, weathering, filled in windows with brick, custom roofs, custom cut door openings, custom cut truck loading openings, custom loading docks etc.

Items include:
N scale:
Custom made storage depot from Heljan Slaughterhouse accessory out bldg -- built weathered
Heljan Bakery customized and converted to small business --built weathered
Heljan Appliance Warehouse customized and converted to small business-- built weathered
Heljan 2 Stall Engine House customized and converted to an engine/railcar wash facility-- built weathered
Walthers Machine Shop, built in basic kit form-- built weathered
Walthers built up steel water tank without separate spikits-- weathered
Walthers Co Op storage shed with custom work-- built weathered
Large custom Store House building made from Cornerstone Modulars-- built weathered

HO scale:
Coke oven extension kit #1
Coke oven extension kit #2
Customized Walthers Cornerstone HO Gas tank. Built Weathered.

(HO scale items are complete sprue parts from Walthers HO Coke Retort kits which will allow one to extend their HO scale Coke Ovens by 18 more ovens each). I am keeping the overhead metal sheds and coal bins for a planned sintering plant.

ebAy auctions will be listed under user name johnnysky0 and will begin approximately March 4th.

Among the structures to be sold:

Weathering: Coke Loading

2008-02-05T04:10:55Z

Today I started one of the first weathering jobs of many to come. I want to start off by saying the cokeloading facility is intended to be a red painted steel color. For this one I sprayed it with a basecoat of buffing gunmetal laquer first and then painted the red rusty metal primer on top of that. This allows for a nice effect once I start sanding the entire building.

But back to the process once it's painted, I powder it with some rust colors in key areas and then go over the entire building with a large fan brush with black soot on it. Then I sand it down. The sanding is what really gives you the small deviations in the paint that make it look more real. That is the gunmetal is subtly exposed as if the red paint in real life came off...

Amonia whoops and thinking ahead

2008-01-31T02:51:27Z

Well this whole thing started when I needed a roof for the store house over by the steel making dept. The roof on the current amonia sulphate bldg was catching my eye and before I knew it the building was in all sorts of parts.

But all in all I think after staring at the amonia area for such a long time I wanted to program in more little spaces and occurances rather than just having one big building and a hodge podge of stuff coming off it. This change allowed some employee parking, some breathing room for the elevated storage tanks, a place to park a tanker car and make a scene with it. Slightly better scaling as the building is much smaller was also achieved in relation to the surrounding structures. The smaller building left in turn is now the laboratory with some possible office space as it's centrally located and right across from the welfare house. The thing that always bothered me the most about the former amonia bldg was the juxtaposition of the square steel sash windows to the clerstory type hip roof....bugged me.

Now the amonia sulphate bldg with its internal amonia stills will be made from the large brick building that comes with the Walthers N Superior Paper kit. It is intended to go on an expansion module next to this area and will allow for my by product functions to be separated out a little better rather than trying to cram everything in the 6 linear feet I currently have.

Coke loading facility tweaks

2008-01-30T00:05:40Z

I had decided that the Coke Loading or "Glacial Gravel" building looked a bit odd without windows. The kit only comes with square holes for openings and every prototype I had seen usually had some sort of windows provided. I searhced around and found several left over windows from my Valley Growers kits and decided to use those. I think this extra detail added to the effect.

Here we see my new Athearn Mack B dump truck with a fresh new coke load from Hays Bros pulling away:

Large stack

2007-12-23T02:42:39Z

Usually these draft stacks have a catwalk for I presume checking emissions about 1/3 the way up. Luckily the break point in the model for putting this thing together was 1/3 the way up so the construction seam acted as a convenient perpindicular guide to attach my catwalk.

Tri-State power stack

2007-12-18T02:11:57Z

So it seemed only natural to add the Tri-state smokestack to the cokeworks being as though it's HUGE. It's 18" tall and fits in quite nicely. My old stack was a little paultry in comparison and I decided to do a little quick research on the stack at the old Thomas works. Measuring off those HAER scaled drawings yields a 240 foot tall stack. At 18" N scale is 239.9 feet. That worked out well.

Coke Guide car and quencher

2007-12-08T17:55:17Z

Now that both Larry cars and Pushers are completed and painted it's time to start to think about the Coke guide cars and Quenchers. Basic prototypes are pictured below from HAER drawings:

I had purchased some Tomix forklifts a while back and found them to be way too huge and in fact the same width as N scale track. However, a blessing in disguise, the cab and body I thought may be good starting points for the Coke Guide cars and the Quench cars. The Coke Guide guide grills will be made with left over grill parts from the Heljan brewery kit. Both items pictured below.

Larry Car #1

2007-12-07T21:12:28Z

So today I built the first of two Larry cars for the display. The parts involved came from a set of N scale wheels, trucks from the HO Walthers Bridge Crane, and the Walther's N intermodal mi-jack crane. This particular build took about 6 hours total from start to finish and was quite the little brain teaser. All in all it came out well and considering it's just 2" x 1.25" I believe it has a sufficient amount of detail. I based mine off the prototype at Thomas which is pictured below from the HAER. The main difference being the Thomas one has 4 bins and mine has 3 due to the walthers top coke pocket hole layout on the battery.

and an image of the builtmodel:

In the image below you can see the eccentric chutes that go from the bins atop to the holes in the coke battery are yet to be installed. Those are the last remaining pieces.

So where's the other pusher?

2007-12-03T01:04:20Z

A day for questions and answers:

So where's the other pusher?
Well it's right here:

Minus the cab which isn't built yet...

Where's that building I have no idea what to call yet?
Right here:

So now where's that revised and detailed Crusher building?
Well it's in the background there.

Where's the 3rd gas Storage Tank?
Not there yet but the retention berm is already built.

So what's going on over at the benzol by-products area?
A truck is pulling up with machinery for some upgrades....

and that's me in the background somehow...

The last dozen or so entries show a dramatic shifting around of structures on this module and that is my process there. Not only seen from above but from a experiential perspective as well. I shoot things from the ground and above to see how the perspective looks and if it doesn't work I move things around again etc. I think the current iteration shall be the one I stick with. I'm pretty pleased with it now.

So where's the pusher?

2007-11-11T00:43:31Z

Well right here of course. I built this little guy this afternoon with only spare parts left around. The main contributing pieces were trucks from a Walthers HO Bridge Crane kit, a Faller N bridge kit, and Plastruct parts. Oh and the actual pushing Ram in the front is a slightly altered Remmington shaver blade holder....I knew that thing would come in handy one day.

So the best part was that after I built the Pusher I realized I didn't have enough clearance for the Ram on the rear side. As a result, I had to move the waste piping and supports back to the other side of the tracks that parallels the coke ovens. Fun stuff.