February 4, 2006:
The past 7 days have had me adding a few of the less-interesting 'support' facilities to the Iron Belt from the previous layout: the
coke ovens and the
ingot-stripping facility. Each installation required some adaptive scratchbuilding for a proper fit.
First, a little blast-from-the-past - an
ancient (1998) photo of the standalone stripper crane as it appeared on the old layout:
As the photo shows, the rails had to be raised a scale 3 feet in order for it to be able to hoist the moulds completely over the stripped ingots - not big deal, when there were no paved surfaces to accommodate. Unfortunately this was not the case on the
new layout, and the rail slabs just didn't look "right"...
...so, in order to make the work area under the stripper crane seem more 'open', a crane support frame had to be constructed:
Since the crane would be elevated by the support frame, the legs were no longer needed so they had to be removed. The wheel housings were re-attached directly to each end of the crane itself:
Here is a preliminary "ground level" view of the modified stripper crane with a sample payload:
Another view, looking up up from underneath:
...and a top view looking downward:
In addition to the ingot stripper facility, I also restored the coke ovens to the layout. Since they now receive all of their coal via a rotary dumper, the conveyor configuration had to be modified to reflect the dumper's location. The conveyor would now need to enter the receiving bunker on a
perpendicular plane, not parallel as in the original Walthers kit. This required me to scratchbuild a small
junction house to be attached onto the bunker roof:
In order for trains on the spur below to clear the repositioned conveyor, a semi-underground loading house had to be built to support the bottom at an adequate height:
By now you've seen numerous images of the rotary coal dumper sitting oasis-like in front of the ore unloading area. Here is a view of it along with the facility it is supposed to serve:
At this point, it's probably time to start building some of those unassembled Walthers Cornerstone kits and place them on the layout in their planned locations. See you next week [hopefully]!