The American Steel Co. rolling mill
The ingot stripper consists of a ram to push down on the hot steel inside the mold (there is an opening in the top) and a pair of jaws to pull the mold off. The molds are lined with refractory
brick and this must be done while the ingots are hot; otherwise, a jackhammer must be used on cold, solidified ingots. The puller moves back and forth on a crane which runs on rails (below).
the designer, the site constrictions, or other factors, the rolling line may be ele- vated with the “basement” at ground lev- el and the operating floor above ground. Given that building a basement is difficult on a model railroad, I chose to place my rolling mill on an elevated floor. This allowed me to model a scale pit runner under the rolling line. Refer to the photos, which show construction of the sub-mill floor and the pit. They also show the areas that are inclined downward to the lower rolls to accom- modate the drive shafts for those rolls. I placed the structure in the Walthers Rolling Mill Building so that the rolling line ran perpendicular to the track bringing ingots from the stripper into the building. I test fit the sub-structure inside the building, leaving room for the row of soaking pits that will go along the left side of the structure, and the rolling line, in reality, continues a long way away from the front of the building. I used my imagination because there wasn’t that much HO real estate on the layout.
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The Walthers Rolling Mill itself is designed to go in this building, but I found it to be too small to be an HO scale primary mill. However, the rolls, walkways, manipulators, and parts of the drive units can be used. For the mill stands, I turned again to Brandon Wehe, who provided the housing, top and rolls for a two-high (two roll) scale breaker and the housing and top for a four high (two work rolls and two back- up rolls) primary mill.
The scale breaker is used to remove oxide scale from the surface of the ingot. The scale is the result of the reheating operation and should not be rolled into the surface of the product. It takes a light “bite” on the surface to break the scale and high-pressure water and chains removes the scale off the top and bottom of the ingot as it moves through the stand on the rollers. Water is also piped into the scale pit runner under- neath to wash the scale downhill to a scale pit (not modeled) at the end of the rolling line. This is represented by the large pipe in the photo.
The drive shafts and motors for the
scale breaker are from the Walthers kit and are modified somewhat. Piping has been added as appropriate and vis- ible from the viewing distance. Beyond the scale breaker, the rolls continue to convey the ingot to the pri- mary mill stand. The work rolls for this mill are made from half-inch plastic pipe. Note that the housing is set well below the operating floor so that the roll line brings the ingot to the center of the opening of the work rolls. This is also the case with the scale breaker. Drive shafts for the primary mill are
scratchbuilt from Plastruct shapes and are much heavier than those for the scale breaker, as they have much more work to do. They also are longer, disap- pearing into a housing that comes out of the wall from the motor room, which is in a building attached to the side of the main mill building. This is not un- common, as it allows the motor room to be separated from the dirt, steam and grime of the mill building.
The operators pulpit is placed so the MAY 2013
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