west end of town where it is goes into the electric furnace plant to be made into steel. The electric furnaces also use scrap for their metallic charge and lime as a flux to remove impurities. This dual-charge system is unusual in that most electric furnaces use a sol- id scrap, solid pig iron, or other direct- reduced iron charge, but in 1960 Repub- lic Steel used liquid pig iron along with scrap in its Gadsden, Alabama, plant’s electric furnaces. The molten steel is poured into ingot molds and allowed to solidify prior to rolling, since continuous casting was in the pilot plant stage in 1960. From the pouring platform the in- gots are moved to the stripper building, where the molds are removed from the ingots. The ingots are then moved to “soaking pits” where their temperatures are evened out and brought to rolling temperature. When properly heated, the ingots are put through a scale breaker, and then a primary rolling mill, in this case a slabbing mill. After final rolling to shape the product is shipped out by rail or truck. On the layout an iron ore extra runs once as a turn per operating session, taking empty ore cars to the mines and returning with loads. During the oper- ating session the in-plant switcher moves loaded ore cars three at a time to the ore yard high line, keeping the ore bins full. While this is going on, the RCW delivers loaded coal and coke cars to the interchange track. The steel com- pany’s switcher moves the coal to the dump track at the coke plant and sets out empties for the RCW. Loaded coke cars are moved to the coke dump to feed the unscreened coke to the coke screen- ing tower. The screened coke is fed to a transfer coke car to fill the coke bins on the high line. Limestone, brought in by RCW trains, is likewise to the limestone storage area. The RCW switcher also delivers carloads of scrap, as well as covered hopper lime cars to the inter- change track for transfer to the electric furnace plant by ASC switchers. Since the blast furnace operates con- tinuously, it is tapped on a four-hour schedule. Hot metal (molten pig iron, iron with four percent carbon and one percent silicon) is tapped into the wait- ing bottle car or Pollock ladles via run- ners in the cast house floor. The slag, which floats on the iron, is skimmed off into other runners, then into slag cars. Tapping takes about 30 minutes each time. The hot metal is then ready to be transferred to the electric furnace shop, and the slag cars are moved to the slag dump to be emptied. Empty la- dles and slag cars must be then lined up for the next tap cycle. These moves are handled by ASC switchers. The move to the electric furnace
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
The blast furnace (above) is located at the east end of River City. Iron ore, coke and lime- stone are brought into the facility–note the loaded ore cars on the high line–and molten pig iron and slag are shipped out. The hot metal is moved to the steel making plant at the oppo- site end of town. This view of the coke oven complex (below) shows the chemical plant on the left, the coke battery in the center with the quench tower, and coal receiving and charg- ing towers on the right. The structure behind the coke car is the coke screening building.
shop from the blast furnace requires that the ASC switcher obtain clearance from the River City yardmaster to move through the yard and onto and across the mainline into the steel plant’s west yard. Having accom- plished this move, the ASC switcher
leaves the hot metal car and picks up empty ladles, scrap cars, and lime cars for return to the RCW interchange. (In the
real world, several companies
made moves like this over much longer distances. Interlake Steel moved hot metal from the blast furnace on the
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