Two furnaces are kept busy at the American Steel plant. Located in the melt shop to the left of the transformer vault, the glow of molten steel is emitted from this furnace in the ready-to-tap mode
scribed here change that I made new operating floors from Plastruct sheet stock with the space for the tilting floors cut out. The electrode support mechanisms tip with the furnace and sit on the tilting floor. The original Walthers pieces were instead used to build walls below the transformer structure between the furnaces and on either side of the furnace spaces, a more typical installation. The rockers on the furnace bottoms were made from basswood sanded to conform to the shape of the Plastruct dome with their outer edges concentric with the radius of the Plastruct piece. The teeth on the rockers and the match- ing tracks on the tops of the supporting concrete walls were made from Plas- truct ribbed sheet cut into narrow strips across the ribs. The photos show this, as well as wires for a lamp inside the fur- nace; the light creates the impression that there is molten steel inside. Additional details are needed on the
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
(above left). Note the pre-heated ladle beneath the spout is ready to receive the refined heat of steel. The other furnace (above right) is modeled in melting mode with scrap visible just below the roof.
furnace to make it more realistic. Let’s start at the top where two arms reach out over the furnace roof. They are part of the machinery that lifts off the roof so the furnace can be charged. (The charg- ing, or scrap, bucket travels on a craneway along the top of the mill building’s walls.) The roof is connected to these arms by heavy-wall pipes, and the cables or chains which raise the fur- nace’s roof pass through them. I used chain and Plastruct tube on the model. The chains run along the length of the arms, then down to a hydraulic cylinder on one side of the furnace. I modeled the cylinder using plastic rod and tubing and attached the chain to what would be the piston rod on the prototype. There is a walkway along these arms, which I added along with the chains going to the roof. A walkway also goes between the arms so opera- tors can go out to the electrodes to as- sist in slipping them when needed as they burn off the tips in the furnace.
The furnace roofs on the model are modeled in a partially raised position supported by the pipes because I want- ed to show some of their interiors at the points in the cycle being modeled: tapping and melting. The furnace roofs also have a refrac- tory brick lining, including a ring of brick around each electrode opening. This was modeled by cutting a short piece of tubing with the inside diame- ter the same as the electrode opening and painted a suitable color. The elec- trodes are raised and lowered during the melting process by motors that drive winches controlling cables at- tached to the electrode arms. I added Plastruct motors to the electrode plat- forms to simulate this.
The furnace in tapping mode has a
clear plastic sheet coated with orange Gallery Glass Window Color placed at the bottom of the door. This coloring material is available from Plaid Enter- prises, of Norcross, Georgia, and pro-
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