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I'm going to model a rock quarry but don't know anything about them so I was hopping someone here will be able to help. The quarry I was looking into as a base model that made me think of so many questions on how it operated and wanted help with this. Here is a image of a quarry and what I wanted to know if what are the buildings and basic operations that would help me model this properly. I'm going to build this as a free-mo module for a local group and thought this would be nice since I'll have about 2x5' area to model an HO scale.
some large mines focus on special hard to find or specific rocks. They take it right out of the ground with the help of huge trucks loaders, conveyors and explosives. they ship off the raw stone to diffrent companys that need the specific rocks or raw materials found in that pit. Most of these large pits use rail to transport the rock ore etc to ships on the grate lakes.
Med/Small quarrys dredge out the hillsides, river beds, lakes etc...they use drag lines or large excavators to scoop the earth out of the ground and then run it thru a sifting machine that will route the large rocks one way sand the other way and peagravel a third way. the stone might travel down a convayor to the diffrent points in the yard to stock pile the material. At this point trucks or rail cars will be loaded with the material to haul away.
the third kind of small quarry is more of a recycler of sorts. They take in broke up concrete via trucks from roadway jobs and crush it up to make gravel in diffrent sizes. they take the ribar out and sell it to scrap yards. this type of rock pit is basicly only used with trucks.
I think rail service to small rock pits is more used to bring in special loads of things like cement or specific materials that are used to mix up concrete roads etc.. of all the quarrys that I have been in I have only seen one rail line that used ore cars to import special material.
Quarrys are simple
you have a yard office, service aera for the mine equipment, conveyors,heavy machines to sort and crush stones, some may have a yard tower that the emplyoees overlook the operation of the pit. It all depends on the size of the pit and its functions.
I drew some info on your picture to help understand what you are looking at
red = yard office
green= service
black= crusher/sort center
blue= truck loading shutes?
purple= mine truck dump/crusher
yellow= pit where mine trucks are loaded with earth
brown= diffrent piles of stone
Guys,
Thanks for the insight this is a great start for me. I have ideas flowing and would like to keep a discussion going so I can be somewhat prototypical with my layout. So I hope you don't mind my silly questions and please let me know if I need to just move on with it and stop asking silly questions.
Trent - Thanks for the color coding of the photo I provided as it helps me know I wasn't far from what I was seeing. Since I've not really been in a quarry (other then once as a kid on a dragline but that's a different story) I'm not sure whats what here.
Questions:
What would be inside the building of the crusher sorter? Would rocks be sent through a grinder or how is it working? I picture just by size roks are sent off on different conveyor belts to other piles.
Would a train be used to haul off the large rock but what about loading up the gravel to take to a cement plant or such? If so, how would the train be loaded? Would the train be weighed there as well before it leaves the pit?
Would there be a narrow gauge train in the pit if it's a large quarry? How large would the quarry be for that?
Would you have a ore and gravel pit or anything like a mixed mineral quarry or just mine one type of product?
Would you find a we and dry quarry in one location?
Inside the crusher building would be the conveyors that bring the rocks to the crusher. In your pic it looks as if The converyor belts feed the crusher?. the crushers I have ran were all for broken concrete. we loaded the machine with a rubertire loader or track loader. The machine has a "V" shaped crusher body. At the bottom of the V it is open so that it can let the crushed rock out. One side of the V is fixed the other side pivots in and out and down untill it can pass thry the bottom. you can regulate the size of the stone that exits by how far the moving wall moves away from the fixed wall. I can put in chunks of concrete the size of a small pickup truck and it will chip away at in in about 45 secs and turn it into gravel. a screener or vibrator then lets the small stuff trickel down to conveyors and catches the med and larger stone. it also sorts the larger stuff to diffrent belts and carrys them to diffrent piles. Depending on the maching you can sort as many as 4-5 belts with diffrent size gravel. sand,peagrave on one belt, 1-2" chips(gravel) 3" rock for ballast or job site driveways etc... My experince is limited to the midwest (chicago) most of the rock quarrys have some sort of water. Many were small lakes that may have had streams that ran underground or rivers that passed near by. Some are so deep now that they just keep blowing out the walls as the water is too deep to mine material. I guess you could have both wet and dry if its a large quarry?
I guess you can use anything to haul the rock from the bottom of the quarry to the piles at the top. but depending on your model era some things are going to be more commonly used. I dont think rail would work well to haul to the top as the grades are extream. For example the rock pit in Mccook IL that I go into has to drop about 170 feet below grade the best my old mack ever pulled the haul road grades was is in 2nd or 3rd gear at about 20MPH. gross weight was 72,000lbs
to load the trucks they use rubber tire loaders some load me in one bucket wile most are 1-1/2 buckets. to load a train I would think that it would be similar to how they load caol trains but I have never seen it done.
cant say how they figure on what rocks are in the ground. i have just hauled the suff and dug it out of the ground.
Thanks Trent - you have been a real help. I'll be sure to post what I ever get build but till then don't be surprised if I come up with more questions.
