Modelling Heavy Industry E-Book

Arthur Ormrod

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Railway layouts often depict a branch line in a rural or urban setting, with the majority of locomotive models available representing passenger trains. However, increasingly, ready-to-run models of industrial locomotives are becoming available, providing a unique opportunity to place them into an industrial context. This highly illustrated book provides all the guidance and inspiration needed to begin placing these models in their natural, industrial environment. The book defines heavy industry and considers real-world examples from 'inside the fence', and describes the tools, materials, parts and fittings most suited to the construction of very large structures. It goes on to provide step-by-step descriptions of several build projects including a gas holder, a cooling tower and an open hearth melting shop, and shows how to make the most of resin buildings, kits and scratch-building. It also demonstrates the construction of industrial structure models in a variety of scales and explains the development of an industrial locomotove fleet, specialized rolling stock and road vehicles with which to populate an industry. Suitable for railway modellers of varying abilities and in any scale, and fully illustrated with 281 colour and 26 black & white photographs.

Leseprobe

MODELLING HEAVY INDUSTRY

A Guide for Railway Modellers

ARTHUR ORMROD

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Arthur J. Ormrod 2017

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 338 7

Disclaimer

The author and the publisher do not accept any responsibility in any manner whatsoever for any error or omission, or any loss, damage, injury, adverse outcome, or liability of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any of the information contained in this book, or reliance upon it. If in doubt about any aspect of railway modelling skills and techniques, readers are advised to seek professional advice.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER TWO: THE PROTOTYPE

CHAPTER THREE: TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT

CHAPTER FOUR: MATERIALS AND PAINTING

CHAPTER FIVE: COMMON FEATURES AND DETAILS

CHAPTER SIX: GAS-HOLDER OR GASOMETER

CHAPTER SEVEN: TANK FARM

CHAPTER EIGHT: OVERHEAD TRAVELLING CRANES

CHAPTER NINE: SMALL BUILDINGS

CHAPTER TEN: ROLL SHOP

CHAPTER ELEVEN: COOLING TOWERS

CHAPTER TWELVE: WATER TOWERS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: COAL-BLENDING PLANT

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: OPEN-HEARTH MELTING SHOP

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LOCOMOTIVES, ROLLING STOCK AND VEHICLES

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: HEAVY INDUSTRY IN SMALL SPACES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: CONCLUSION

RESOURCES FOR MODELLERS

INDEX

PREFACE

My involvement with railways and railway modelling follows a pattern similar to many. One of the Baby Boomer generation, I was brought up with the steam railway as an everyday experience. Living in the Manchester area, my friends and I were exposed to a busy and vibrant railway environment. If I say that Patricroft station and locomotive depot were just a mile away, that will give many an idea of the nature of the local railway with which I was familiar. Spare time was spent kicking a football, playing cricket with wickets drawn on a wall, building carts and dens, and observing the local railway scene. Not surprisingly, for some of us, that exposure turned into a lifelong fascination with railways and their operations. Soon, railway-themed presents at Christmas and birthdays translated into a train set, Hornby Dublo 3 rail, which initiated a parallel interest in model railways. That interest waxed and waned over the years, yet was always there, in the background, emerging more strongly than ever in later years.

Much of this railway interest was against a backdrop of industry, and industry was, as with the railways, everywhere. A hundred yards from my front door stood the factory of Gardner’s diesel engines; a mile to the south was the sprawling and bustling Trafford Park industrial estate complete with its own railway system; a couple of miles to the north lay the former Manchester Collieries’ network of railways and pits, then part of the NCB; to the west were the chimneys and furnaces of the Lancashire Steel Corporation. These complex and sprawling plants and operations always fascinated me, and working briefly at Lancashire Steel at Irlam near Manchester, and then at Shotton Steelwoks on Deeside, both by then part of the British Steel Corporation, sparked a particular interest in the iron and steel industry.

It was perhaps fate, then, that my modelling interests should have always included plans to incorporate some elements of these industries in my own layouts. Though my own plans are directed largely, though certainly not exclusively, towards the iron and steel industry, and are ambitious in size, the contents of this book are very much aimed at any modeller who might wish to incorporate representations of any industry into their layout, even in the smallest of spaces.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS HEAVY INDUSTRY?

Heavy industry and the railways are closely connected and usually adjacent, yet the great majority of the scenery included in railway models is non-industrial in nature beyond the actual railway infrastructure: houses, towns, villages and the rural landscape. This book seeks to redress the balance by showing how to build realistic models of the kind of heavy industry that appeared so often, and still does, alongside the railway network.

Archetypal heavy industry: a panoramic view across part of Port Talbot Steelworks sometime around 1960. Cavernous buildings, tall chimneys, towering structures, conveyor belts and internal railways all feature in this image. TATA STEEL EUROPE

A dictionary or online resource will define heavy industry in economic terms as an industry with a high capital investment, one with a high cost of entry. Your local bank manager is not going to lend you enough money to build a steelworks, a large engineering enterprise or an oil refinery, as you would need to raise several millions to build something that would justify the description of ‘heavy industry’. On the ground, and for the modeller, that translates to extensive plant, large buildings and structures, and at least a rail link if not an internal railway system.

I suspect, though, that when most people read the phrase ‘heavy industry’, it is not the economic definition that springs to mind but a vision of cavernous black sheds, tall chimneys and large structures silhouetted against the skyline.

An official photograph showing bogie ore hoppers being loaded at Port Talbot. Once loaded they would have been hauled 50 miles (80km) to Llanwern Steelworks, a service that at one time saw triple heading by three class 37s. Block movements of materials like ore and coal have been a staple of railway operations since their inception. TATA STEEL EUROPE

There are still examples of heavy industry scattered about the UK: engineering, vehicle manufacturers, oil and petrochemical plants and steelworks. They are, however, becoming increasingly difficult to find. In October 2015, over a hundred years of iron and steelmaking came to an end on Teesside with the closure of the Redcar works. During the period in which this book was being written, the fate of the steelworks at Port Talbot hung in the balance. As I was drawing the manuscript to a conclusion, news broke that indicated that, pending some negotiations over pension arrangements, the works might be saved, at least for a further five years, whilst receiving several billions in investment. It was a stark reminder of what we have and how quickly things can be lost.