Model Train Journal

All:

I am pleased to report that photos of my model of Weirton Steel's Open Hearth (too big / awkward to transport) won the photo category of the Dean Freytag Award at this year's SMMSIG (Steel Mill Modelers Special Interest Group) annual meeting. Some facts & figures:

• Dimensions: 72” long x 37” wide x 34” high
• Scratch-built – no kits or kit-bashing
• Over 2,200 individual parts
• 5 smoke units (all smoke shown in photos is real)
• Each of the 4 furnaces (Nos. 11-14) represents a different phase of the open hearth process
• Ingot mold flatcars and additive flatcars are scratch-built
• Ingot molds are cast from an original design

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0mGVfZ2vlqepr

George

Wow, WOW, George! It looks great! It covers an area as big as a door.

Spectacular model and photography. I can see how you won the photo award. How did you get such a sharp focus on the entire model? Usually, the focus gets fuzzy toward the rear of a model.

webenda wrote:Wow, WOW, George! It looks great! It covers an area as big as a door.

Spectacular model and photography. I can see how you won the photo award. How did you get such a sharp focus on the entire model? Usually, the focus gets fuzzy toward the rear of a model.

Thank you, Wayne.

As to how I got a great photo, truth is I have no idea.

I think running it through Auto-Correct in Microsoft Picture Editor probably helped.

George

Wow! What a well deserved award for your excellent build! I really like how you used LED lighting for effects. What is the main skeleton comprised of to re create steel beams? Plastiscruct of some sort? Congratulations George!

gregj410 wrote:Wow! What a well deserved award for your excellent build! I really like how you used LED lighting for effects. What is the main skeleton comprised of to re create steel beams? Plastiscruct of some sort? Congratulations George!

Thank you! The building reflects my attempt at a hostile takeover of Plastruct, one piece at a time.

There is a s***-ton of Plastruct and Evergreen in this building. The columns are made of H-16 (ABS 1/2" wide H columns) plus other components (about 26 pieces each). The full trusses are comprised of 38 pieces each - all Plastruct structural shapes. There are a few 3D printed items (ladles, bailers, furnace doors, pulleys) but the model well exceeds the NMRA definition of "scratch-built".

It was a long, complicated build.

George

George, do you mind if I post a cropped view of a couple of your photos in this thread?

webenda wrote:George, do you mind if I post a cropped view of a couple of your photos in this thread?

Not at all.

George

Thank you, George.

This detail I find fascinating. The men in the photo give a metric (or measure) of the scale of this model. And the glow from molten steel... I can feel the heat. How do those guys manage to work in there?

The wire rope looks exactly right.

A great model, George, with a lot of very interesting components and well-placed subtle lighting. I suspect one could learn quite a bit about this method of steel-making just looking around here (well, perhaps a bit of narrative required). Very nice presentation; perhaps even more dramatic in low-light.

Paul

Thank you Wayne and Paul.

I really did try to focus on the details. From what I have seen of HO models, they are very clean and simple. HO is blessed with tons of readily available buildings (the Walthers steel mill kits) and detail parts (roll stands, ingots, motors, cars, cranes, etc.) but they do all come across as relatively sterile and formulaic. Anything in O scale must be scratch-built. Fortunately, Plastruct and Evergreen do make structural shapes (walls, roofs, ladders, safety cages) in O. And a friend 3D printed the ladles and bailers (ladle hooks).

The basics of the lighting came from Evan Designs. The overhead lights (in the trusses) are attached to shades. I think they mimic my impressions of the interior lighting of these structures - bright in spots and darker corners in others.

I weathered the hell out of this model because of my own experience in the mill. Everything is filthy. I worked 3 summers at Weirton Steel ('72 - Tin Mill, '73 - Blooming Mill, '74 - Strip Steel). The Open Hearth was shut down in 1967, replaced by the Basic Oxygen Plant, but the sight of those smoke stacks belching multi-colored smoke was a childhood memory that stayed with me.

One of the things that really helped was my ability to consult with people who actually worked in an open hearth. I had several contacts who provided me with impressions and hard information that would otherwise be lost. Most of these people are in their late 70's or older; that information is going away and I was fortunate to capture some of it. The other thing that helped immensely was the Weirton Area Museum's digitization of Weirton Steel's monthly Bulletin magazine (1934-1989). The 1950-52 issues contained a lot of photos and information that assisted with the build.

George

Congratulations on the Dean Freytag Award. Well deserved. That is one fantastic model.

A while back you had a thread about working with Plastruct. Looks like you got it all figured out.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19721

How many hours do you have invested in this model ??

HONDO74 wrote:Congratulations on the Dean Freytag Award. Well deserved. That is one fantastic model.

A while back you had a thread about working with Plastruct. Looks like you got it all figured out.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19721

How many hours do you have invested in this model ??

Thank you very much!

The trick with the tubing was to use ABS, not styrene. Plastruct's ABS tubing offerings feature all the correctly fitting valves, elbows, etc. The styrene offering is just the tubing. Mating ABS to styrene (with the thickness differences) was problematic. Once I figured that out, things got a lot simpler.

Hours? Wow, great question. In terms of elapsed time, I have been working on this project since 2018. There have been lots of stops and interruptions (conventions, the bridge project, life, etc.). In the past year or so, I have been focused on this build. I would say and it is a complete SWAG, I probably have 2,000 hours into this effort. Since April, I have been sprinting (6-12 hours / day) trying to get it done for this meet. I grossly underestimated the effort. Even so, I didn't get the walls done and photography wrapped up on Thursday morning (day of entry). Still plenty to do (and re-do) on this model.

George

G3750 wrote:I would say and it is a complete SWAG, I probably have 2,000 hours into this effort.
George

Would you believe there is a paper on SWAGs?

Neuronal Computation Underlying Inferential Reasoning in Humans and Mice
Reference: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31077-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420310771%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Edit 1: Fixed the link

webenda wrote:

G3750 wrote:I would say and it is a complete SWAG, I probably have 2,000 hours into this effort.
George

Would you believe there is a paper on SWAGs?

Neuronal Computation Underlying Inferential Reasoning in Humans and Mice
Reference: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31077-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420310771%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

I am not surprised one bit.

George