little town

Wolfgang:
You asked for a small western town and a small industry, but I've drawn up a plan that might be more appropriate for a medium sized scrap yard that would have enough rail traffic coming and going daily to warrant having an engine of its own.


The mainline and the town's siding would run along the outside of the 4 major modules and the scrap yard would be modeled along the inside of the entire 90 degree curve plus on the appendix module.

I have shown a short industrial siding at one end of the town's siding that would serve a business that is not necessarily related to the scrap yard. All rail traffic to this business would be switched by a road switcher or local train...not by the scrap yard engine. The road switcher or local would pick up or spot cars on the scrap yard siding and the scrap yard engine would handle all switching movements within the scrap yard.

There are 5 types of activities modeled in this scrap yard:
1. weighing cars on the scale--every car, empty or loaded, must be weighed when it comes into and when it leaves the scrap yard.
2. shredding junk automobiles--stacks of flattened autos are brought in on flat cars and run through a shredder which reduces them to pieces of metal just a few inches across; then the shredded metal is loaded into gondolas and shipped to steel mills.
3. shearing pipes and long pieces of metal for transportation by gondolas--long pipes, rails, rods, etc are brought in by truck and sheared into 4 to 6 foot lengths; then the sheared metal is loaded into gons and shipped to steel mills.
4. compressing or bundling piles of loose scrap wire, borings, turnings, and cans brought in by trucks into denser cubes or bundles for transportation by gondolas to steel mills.
5. loading and unloading gondolas containing scrap metal of various grades (e.g., #2 scrap metal, cast iron, heavy plates, high carbon steel scrap).

The engineer running the Scrap Yard Job would have several responsibilities:
At the start of his shift and before the road switcher arrives:
1. pull all empty flats and loaded gons from the Automobile Shredder and spot them on the scrap yard siding.
2. pull loaded gons by the Shearer Building and in the Bundling Building and spot them on the scrap yard siding.
3. pull all gons--loaded or empty--from the various scrap pile sidings and spot them on the scrap yard siding. (There should always be at least one empty gon spotted next to the Shearer Building, one empty gon in the Bundler Building, and one by the Automobile Shredder before spotting any empty gons on the scrap yard siding for pick up by the road switcher.)

When the road switcher drops off cars on the scrap yard siding:
1. spot the flattened autos on flat cars by the Auto Shredder, loaded gons near piles of the same of scrap metal, and at least one empty gon by the Shearer Building, one by the Auto Shredder, one in the Bundler Building, and any remaining empty gons by the various scrap piles.

The track plan shows a 4 module long main and passing siding town with 1 industry and a scrap yard that is spread across 5 modules; but a much smaller scrap yard plan is possible. The long passing siding could be shortened to one or two modules long, and the town's one industry served by the railroad could be eliminated. Any or all of the shredder, shearer, and bundler areas of the scrap yard could be eliminated. This would to reduce the scrap yard from a medium-sized industry accommodating 8 cars to a small scrap yard with a single (1 or 2 car) siding contained on the appendix module and 1 or 2 or the mainline modules.

 

Wolfgang:
I wonder when manufacturers started making the modern (single track) scales...maybe other TBers know. I'd guess considering that bit of information and the era being modeled would lead to a fairly clear choice between one type or the other...:sad:unless there was a longer transition period, similar to the overlap of steam and diesel locos.

If the modern scales permit weighing cars without pausing, then RRs or businesses using such rail car scales would probably be relatively quick to make the conversion to save time and money.

Some additional information for anyone to consider when modeling a scrap yard--Automobile Shredders tend to be all one structure with several different elements. At one end (by the flat car siding), there is a crane that takes the flattened carcasses of junk cars off of the flat cars and places each car on a conveyor or sloping tray that moves the car into the jaws of the shredder. Some shredding companies also have their own mechanisms/buildings?/structures for stripping out engines, tires, upholstery, plastics, glass, etc, and then flattening junk cars so they may not need to ship in flattened cars on flat cars teeth:but they make really interesting loads to model). The buildings where workers strip out cars would probably be right next to the shredder (or even part of the same building complex).

I'm not certain, but I suspect some scrap companies had machines than both flattened and shredded cars in one step rather than separate steps in separate locations.

Shredders need to be powerful, so the shredding mechanism itself is usually right next to a large motor room. At the other end of the structure (by the gondola siding), the shredder spits out the smaller pieces from a smaller conveyor or shute directly into the gondolas. A friend who worked for a shredding company a number of years ago, told me that some conveyors could be repositioned, or there were multiple shutes, or the car was moved by a loco or a winch so the load would be evenly distributed in the car. He also said some shredders just dumped the pieces off a conveyor into a big pile, and then a crane with an electro-magnet loaded the pieces into the gondolas.

 

Wolfgang-

Am curious about what you mean by "west?" West of the Mississippi River? West of the Missouri River? West of the Rocky Mountains? West coast of the USA?

As I have lived all my life in the north-western US, I've seen many small town spurs in the region. Grain loading, and stock yards were usually done on a siding. So wanting a spur would eliminate many of these scenes.

For my memory, the most common small town spurs were fuel/heating oil distributors, small sawmilling/forest products operations, and team tracks.

You might also see warehouse/cold storage facilities in agricultural settings. Potatoes, or fruits such as apples and cherries.



Boxcab E50

 

Yes. For my memory, I don't remember anything close to what you see on that web page.

Boxcab E50

 

No, I don't think so. The specific model pictured might be more modern, but the basic concept has been around a long time.


Here are some more pics taken from googled scrap metal recycling sites.

http://dc2.uni-bielefeld.de/dc2/auto/images/shredder.jpg
Drawing of the how an Automobile Shredder works

http://www.gershowrecycling.com/images/Auto_Shredder_.jpg
Pic showing automobile shredder being loaded by mobile and stationary cranes. It is possible to see a red gondola (behind the stationary crane) and a blue gondola (in front of mobile crane cab and just barely visible under the conveyer belt) which will be loaded with the shredded metal.

http://www.budgetsteel.com/images/shredder_sm.gif
Drawing showing relative positions of a car crusher, car shredder, and the conveyors for moving the shredded metal to piles or to trucks or gondolas.

http://www.budgetsteel.com/04Update/aerial_1.jpg
Aerial view of a scrap metal shredder


Other equipment often seen in scrap metal yards.
http://www.gershowrecycling.com/images/High_Density_Baler_.jpg
High Density Baler for compacting cans into bales and bundles

http://www.gershowrecycling.com/images/Guillotine_Shear_.jpg
Guillotine Shear for cutting pipes, rods, and rails into shorter lengths.

http://www.hub-4.com/images/news/379.jpg
hydraulic shear

http://www.gershowrecycling.com/images/Mobile_Shear.jpg
Mobile Shear


Pics of scrap metal yard materials. Some pics are from the scrap metal recycling sites, and I took all of the Railimages pics when I toured the former Luria Brothers Scrap Metal Facility and the Keystone Steel and Wire Plant in Peoria with the KSW Plant manager (a fellow model railroader):
http://www.aceautosf.com/LST-RIDEsm.jpg
Cars on Truck flatbed to be crushed
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/shredded_scrap_pile.JPG
Shredded scrap metal pile at Keystone Steel and Wire
http://www.jenikeandjohanson.com/pages/experience/environ_ind/scrap_metal.jpg
shredded metal pile
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/borings_and_turnings_pile.JPG
A pile of turnings and borings (scrap metal byproducts from machining steel items) sitting in the Keystone materials yard waiting to be used in the steel making process.
http://www.tolmets.lv/uploaded_images/copy_copy_1.jpg
Loose scrap wire to be compacted into denser bales or bundles and subsequently used in the steel making process.
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/bundles_bales_.JPG
Bundles or bales of scrap metal compacted in the Luria Brothers’ Bundling-Baling Building and presently piled in the materials yard at Keystone. The bundles are used in the steel making process.
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/gons_of_scrap_wire_plates_at_luria.JPG
Gon loads of scrap wire and heavy plates in the Luria Brothers scrap yard. The blue building in the background is the Bundling-Baling Building where loose wire, cans, and other low density scrap metal will be compacted into higher density cubes (also referred to as bales or bundles) to be used in the steel making process at Keystone Steel and Wire.
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/gons_at_luria.JPG
Empty gons in foreground will be cut apart into heavy plate scrap metal. Loaded gons in background have various types of scrap metal (mostly #2 scrap) which will be sorted by type and/or sheared as needed, and then shipped in gons over to Keystone Steel and Wire (whose Electric Arc Furnace is visible in the background) where the sorted materials will be used to make steel billets, rods, and wire.

http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/scale_house_and_scale_at_Keystone_Wire_and_Steel.JPG
Pic of the Keystone Steel and Wire scale house and scale (modern single track type, not gauntlet track type scale)
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1108/pig_iron_pile.JPG
Pic of Keystone steel making materials, pig iron pile. Pig iron would NOT typically be seen in a scrap yard, since it is a lower grade metal made in steel mills as one step in the overall steel making process.

 

Ken and Wolfgang:
Sorry about the curt contradiction...it reads a lot more abruptly than it was intended.:embarassed:

Here's my thinking on this:
Some of the models pictured will appear to be too modern for 1960 because they will have precipitators to collect dust and other emissions occuring during the shredding process. Most of the big tubes and piping seen in any of the pictures are probably related to those Environmental Protection Agency guidelines developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

But, apart from variations in size, my guess it that the basic form of most shredders would be fairly standard without the precipitators: a tray/shute or conveyor to get the cars into the shredder, the big box with the shredding mechanism, the motor room to run the shredder and conveyors, and the conveyors to get the shredded materials to a pile, a truck, or a gon. There may be cranes at either or both ends of shredder, and they may be mobile or stationary.

Speaking of cranes...I'd guess in 1960 there were more Caterpillar type tractor treads on the mobile cranes than rubber wheels, and more cranes may have been mounted on rails. Do you think the cranes of 1960 may have tended to be smaller than those of the 1990s or 2000s?

 

Dave-

As a youth, I spent a good amount of time in the automotive trade. So we would be in junk, or scrap yards, off and on. These were around a decent sized metropolitan area.

The cranes I saw then, were well thrashed. A lot of old WWII stuff. I even recall steam versions. (I loved listening to those work.) And much smaller than those of today. Some were on old truck chassis. So rubber tired.

Cutting torches were the way it was done, when scrap needed to be chopped down.

And when cars were crushed, it was the old "slab" of steel which essentially smashed a car down. But not as neatly as today. A couple of the yards merely would drop an old bulldozer blade from a crane, to do the job. They didn't strip things as cleanly then, as they do today.

Things started changing a lot, by the late 1960's.

Boxcab E50

 

One summer in the late 1960s, I worked in a small (about 1 acre) scrap yard...too small for rail service (although it was located in an industrial area with lots of RR tracks nearby). They had 3 or 4 cranes ("well-thrashed" is a GREAT descriptor:teeth... one was on a truck frame with rubber tires, the others had steel treads. One was steam, but I never saw it in use.

Yep! I learned how to use a cutting torch, but most of my time was spent sorting non-ferrous metals (copper, brass, nickel, lead, other alloys).

About 2/3 of the business was devoted to sorting the various types of steel scrap and cast iron scrap outside in the yard, and about 1/3 was sorting the non-ferrous metals inside the only building on the property. The business was waaaay too small to accept junk cars for crushing and shredding, but they frequently took in auto parts (alternaters, starters, fenders, bumpers) and old engine blocks.

Modeling details from that small scrap yard:
The scrap yard had a (mostly) rectangular shape, deeper than it was wide. The only building was 1 story high with a low pitched roof and rusty/dirty white steel siding. It was located in the front corner of the property and was about 24 feet wide and about 3 times as long. A driveway next to the building cut through the center of the property from the street to the back scrap piles. There was a small office at the front of the building with a door onto the driveway and 2 large windows facing the street, and a large area in the back part of the building where the non-ferrous metals were sorted. There was a large garage door and a standard 3 foot door but no windows on the back wall.

The driveway had a chainlink gate and there was a chainlink fence parallel to the street beginning on the other side of the driveway. The chainlink fence had strips woven through it to prevent seeing into the yard. Employees parked outside the chain link fence. The other 3 sides of the property were fenced with 6 to 8 foot high corrugated steel panels--bluish-gray but heavily rusted and dented. No two panels looked alike.

The driveway ran along the length of the building. Between the driveway and the wall (about 6 feet), and from the chainlink fence to the middle of that side of the building (about 10 to 15 feet), there was a storage area for the acetylene cutting torches and for the (gray, red, and green? IIRC) gas tanks they used. The scale was in the driveway, next to the back half of the building, and was as wide as the driveway and long enough to weigh long trucks. There was a long window in the wall facing the scale.

Scrap piles were oddly shaped with serpentine alleys between them. Piles were roughly sorted into the different types of scrape metal commonly received by this small company (pipes/rods, sheet metal, beams/girders, engine blocks, cast iron). The company did not accept cans (those were sent to waste management companies), so there was no bundler/baler on the property. They did not accept entire cars, so there was not a crusher or shredder on the property. There was a hydraulic shear which was used to shorten long pipes or rods.

mg: Kewl! :shade: That would be another great detail to model!

 

I recall watching them load those squashed cars into gondolas. Sent off to foundries that way. Back then, they didn't shred. Nor did they strip like they do now. However, they did hold cars longer in their lot. And more parts were picked that way. Today, they only keep a few recent year cars out back. Especially hot sellers. Otherwise, they pull major mechinical parts for resale, and send them out fast.

Also, who can forget the massive old tire farms? Huge messes of breeding bugs. And frequent enormous fires. mg:

It's a good thing for having those older yards, and the very few specialty operations now. Otherwise, you'd have one heck of a difficult time, restoring a '54 Ford p/u. Or a '57 Chevy 210 DelRay. Some of that slack is nowadays taken up by aftermarket companies. But OUCH to your wallet!

Boxcab E50

 

Wolfgang:
It looks like your gate will be swinging over the RR ROW...I don't think they'll allow that. And if you reverse it so it swings inward, it will be swinging over some very complicated trackwork. Longer gates often had a wheel at the end to support the gate as it moved, and such a wheel would get caught by the rails fairly easily.
As an alternative, how about making the gate a sliding or rolling gate that moves along the scrap yard fence to the right or to the left. If you put a subtle curve in the gate that continued the curve of the scrap yard fence as it arcs across the modules, you would be able to roll/slide the gate to the side and keep it very close to the rest of the fence instead of going too far outside or inside the scrap yard property line.
Sliding gate, motorized
Cantilevered sliding gate
Cantilevered sliding gate 2
Drawing of a rolling gate
Hanging gate

Razor wire But this looks too sophisticated for a scrap yard...more like for a high-tech industry or a prison.

Barbed wire on top of a chainlink fence
Barbed wire on both sides at top of fence
Vertical instead of slanted to one side or the other This one reminds me of fences I saw around industries in the 1960s...not quite as tall as some fences today, and with 3 or 4 strands of barbed wire mounted vertically instead of slanted. Rusty and with strands broken or missing would be quite common around a scrap yard.

FWIW: In the 1960s, I think scrap yards located near the center of town, near a low income residential area, or along busy highways would be more likely to have a corrugated metal fence or some kind of fence that hides the scrap yard from sight. If the scrap yard is located near the edge of town, then chain link fences might be used, but trees, bushes, and shrubs would grow up along the fence and obscure everything in the scrap yard from sight.

 

Scrap yard 1969
Scrap piles, no fence, unspecified year
Scrap yard with rail service This may be more recently than 1960s, but does show how close to the rails, the scrap metal piles were. Also barbed wire fence and vines growing up to hide the yard from viewers.

And here's a car crusher!!