Ingots and Beyond

The scenes on this page illustrate steps of the steelmaking process beyond the smelting and refinement phases. My main focus is on the those processes in which the metal is glowing hot, whether liquid or solid; hence you will not find any rolling mills here (those would never fit within the 80-square-foot area of my layout!). I did, however, include a token 'shipping facility' to accommodate the cushioned coil cars on my roster.

[ Click on any thumbnail image to see it rendered full-size. ]

Ingot Teeming

I had to practice a bit of 'artistic license' for the teeming operation. Prototype BOF configurations usually have the ingots being poured in the same building as the furnace itself. For me this would be impossible, given the scant availability of layout real estate, so I chose to have a separate ancillary building dedicated exclusively to pouring ingots. I made use of a Walther's Works^TM Rolling Mill building for this purpose. Drilling a hole in the bottom of a Walther's teeming ladle (from their Electric Furnace kit), I positioned a grain-o-rice light bulb there and connected a 5K-ohm rheostat. This allowed me to vary the brightness and therefore simulate the pouring of liquid metal into ingot molds. (Kids love this one!)

The first of a series of ingot molds is filled with hot metal.

Ingot Stripping

The solidified steel ingots are stripped of their molds.

Finished Coil Shipment Preparation

A Walthers Works^TM Rolling Mill being used as a shipping facility for newly-rolled coils.