Arthur

Thanks Don, Pleased that It brought back some memories, yes, they are certainly noisy places. I spent two weeks working under the Irlam cogging mill on a job called 'scaling'. When they were rolling it was absolute bedlam. Hot steel 'plastic' enough to roll doesn't ring or clang, it 'clonks', sounding more like heavy timber. The rapid stopping and reversing of all that heavy rotating mass, flywheel and all, is impressive. I must visit Kelham Island sometime.

. Brian and Paul, Thanks for your input, it's all very interesting and helpful. There's a photo of a BR Roll WC, no. 901851 in Don Rowlands 'British Railways Wagons'. It's a works photo so it isn't loaded unfortunately. The reason I'm asking for photos of rolls loaded onto wagons is to decide how to finish the models; new and shiny or old and rusty. They are going to be wagon loads. Having manufactured and turned a roll to a high standard, would they just load it, unprotected, onto an open wagon? They soon develop a patina of rust if left unused and exposed. For life expired rolls, returning for melting down, it wouldn't matter, but for new rolls? Would they be sheeted, even crated, if so, should I model a crate and not a roll........? The photo of the Roll C shows 'cradles' at each end which would suggest that the rolls were not crated, maybe just covered? Thoughts?

Rolling Mills and Mill Rolls. Clearly this is an enormous subject so I’ll keep it to some basics. The principle is simple enough, heat steel until it is ‘plastic’ then squeeze and form it by forcing it through shaped rolls. This flowchart shows the various pathways ingots might take through the rolling mills though no single works had, or has, the plant, to roll all these possible products. Blooms and billets are referred to as semi-finished products as they have virtually no direct end use, they need further rolling, or forging, to make them usable. Missing from this chart, because they're not rolled as such, are tubes (made from billets or narrow strip) and wire (drawn from rod). Billets also went to the drop stamping and forging trades. Here’s the slabbing mill at John Summers Shotton works. It’s a 42” x 108”, reversing mill built by Davy United of Sheffield with a 7,000 hp drive and had an annual capacity of 1,250,000 ingot tons. The dimensions are the size of the rolls (diameter x length) and reversing means that the slab, or ingot, is passed back and forth, each pass further reducing its size, whilst increasing its length. On these large mills, 15 passes would be typical before the steel moved on. The cabin over the feed rollers is the ‘pulpit’ where the mill operators sit. A large slabbing mill can weigh in excess of 2000 tons. The cogging (or blooming mill) at Appleby Frodingham, Scunthorpe. The grooved rolls are clearly evident, the two blocks either side, with the holes in them, are the guides which slide the ingot across the mill to line up with right part of the roll, and the laminated arms to the right are the manipulators which are in the process of flipping it over. The dial indicates to the mill operators the position of the upper roll. Water is sprayed over the rolls to cool them and to wash off any scale or debris, anything stuck to them would be rolled into the steel. This is another reversing mill, It was John Ramsbottom of the LNWR who, by applying a steam locomotive type 'engine' to a rolling mill, developed the first proper such mill. The above are both large mills used to reduce slabs and ingots. As the steel moves down the mill the individual mills get smaller and start to shape the finished product but the principle is the same. They are sometimes continuous mills consisting of several stands in line and the steel passes through them one after the other. A diagram showing the two pairs of rolls involved in turning a billet into a channel. There are two cuts for the final pass, No 8. This is the finishing pass and needs to be accurate. As the roll wears, there’s more latitude acceptable in the shaping passes but less wear can be tolerated in the finishing pass which needs to be to the finished tolerance. Having two such cuts on the rolls allows the rolls to be in service longer before they are removed for dressing/re-turning so reducing mill down time. The rolls themselves, like ingot moulds, are consumables, and are also bought in from specialist roll founders. They are cast, and sometimes forged, in a variety of ferrous metals; chilled iron, grain cast iron, steel and steel alloy. Once cast, they are heat treated to relieve some of the internal stresses and to get them to the right hardness. They are then turned to provide bearing surfaces on the shoulders and to provide the roll profile required. There were once a large number of roll suppliers, rolling mill manufacturer Davy United had a roll foundry at Middlesborough and some large roll founders formed the British Rollmakers consortium, three of them were in the Black Country. Here’s one of their ads from 1975. Tennants of Coatbridge are well known to rail enthusiasts for their fleet of well kept 100 h.p. steam Sentinels. These rolls have been cast and are emerging from the heat treatment furnace, note the cruciform shape at the end, we'll return to that later. Plate Rolls being turned at Tennants A section roll, probably for rolling billets All rolling mills would have had a roll store where rolls of various sizes and types were kept awaiting their next turn of duty and would have a roll turning shop where rolls could be dressed (turned to recut the correct profile). In use, they have a hard life, battered by steel sections ramming into them, which are then squeezed between them, they're heated by the steel being rolled whilst being sprayed with cold water to cool them and wash bits of debris off them. Once beyond further turning they would be scrapped and would likely be returned to the roll foundries for recycling. A posting on model rolls in the next day or so but in the meantime, can anybody post a link to a photograph showing rolls loaded onto a wagon? I have a reason for asking.... Edited to add the location of the cogging mill.

. That's certainly interesting and I can see the logic in it. I've no doubt that Somers had the basic skills to make gun barrels, I'm still not sure that they actually did, at least not routinely. I've looked at a couple of other sources and they confirm that there were six large gun forges in the UK and Somers wasn't one of them. I doubt any 15" barrels were forged post 1944, in fact I suspect it was much earlier than that. The last British battleship, HMS Vanguard, was launched in 1944 and the admiralty already had sufficient 15" gun barrels in stock to equip it. They had a pool of around 170 barrels. What had changed by the 1980's was that most of the other large forges which previously had made large gun barrels had long closed. I can well believe that Somers were claiming to be one of the few forges who could still make them. So who would need a large naval barrel in the 1980's? I guess it's just possible that they could have made 16" barrels for the US battleships re-commissioned in 1984. However, I would have thought the US already had spares in stock and I think that the Bethlehem Steel Company in the US still had the capacity to forge them. The 'Super Gun' was nothing like a conventional artillery piece, it was 'merely' a long pipe formed by bolting together several shorter, flanged sections. These sections were very high quality forgings, machined to a high tolerances and specifications. As a product it was much more like Somers usual forgings than a gun barrel The proof testing site might have served the Coventry Ordnance Works, which was one of the six large gun forges. Somers had long been Admiralty approved suppliers and propellor shafts were one of their main products. Anyway, I'd never say never, it just seems odd that there's no mention in their own published history.

Cobble? Castle Works?...a search of my archives; Castle Rod and Bar Mill in the 1960's and, a very poor image, showing the aftermath of a cobble at Castle Works. As Brian said, the ribbon of high speed, incandescent steel, would wrap itself around anything in it's path and the recommended course of action was a sprint to the brown trousers store. Removal usually involved an overhead crane pulling it free whilst still 'plastic' and teams of burners cutting it up. Edit; Looks like the chap on the left favoured bicycle clips over brown trousers. The cobble above looks a bit tame, it could wrap itself around the roof girders in some cases.

Oxygen is used in the steel making process to burn out, or oxidise, carbon and other impurities from the melt. Hot metal from the blast furnaces contains 4% carbon and to make steel you need to reduce that to around 0.5% (more or less, depending on the steel specification). Bessemer patented the idea of using oxygen, for use in his convertor, around 1870 but at the time no one knew how to make oxygen in bulk. The tonnage oxygen process, developed in Germany in the 1920's and which became a commercial process in the 1950's, revolutionised steel making. Various methods were used at the time but the process which became the standard for bulk steel making from iron was the Basic Oxygen Process. In electric arc furnaces it performs the same role although there is much less carbon in the scrap which they melt. It helps to rapidly melt large items of scrap in the furnace and it's reactions with impurities like aluminium, phosphorous, silicon and manganese release heat which further helps the steel making process. Large amounts of oxygen are also used in oxyacetylene torches which are used in a variety of in-works applications and it was used, in oxygen lances, to tap open hearth furnaces.

Are you sure that Walter Somers forged naval gun barrels? There is no mention of it in their official history. In both World Wars they were tasked, along with other work, with forging naval shells up to 15" diameter.

Wayne, I'd recommend Brian's method of using sandpaper around the pipe to get the final fit, it's a generally useful technique for mating anything to a round object. It's not actually the method I used on those saddles. For what it's worth, I've got two jewellers disc punches (intended for punching out discs in thin metals) both of which can punch out a several diameters of discs/holes. I can always match a hole to any plastic pipe I'm using. These punches are not cheap and unless, like me, you are intending to do an awful lot of this kind of modelling, the cost isn't really justifiable. They just make the process very much quicker, from a single hole punched in plasticard, I can make 4 or 6 saddles.

Pipes are usually supported on a saddle, a bit of plate with a cut out to match the pipe diameter. This supports the pipe and itself will be mounted on a gantry or a steel support cantilevered off the building side. Other pipes can be suspended from a gantry or bracket via a steel bar and clamp encircling the pipe. This photo, taken whilst I was building the module for the RMWeb day in Taunton, should give some ideas.

We had a bit about Sundew on an earlier thread, I posted this photo, I'm not sure if it's actually Sundew but it is a W1400, Stewarts & Lloyds had three of them, plus a slighly larger W1800. And a few notes about it's epic walk, , "The most famous exploit was in 1974 when one of the W1400's, Sundew, walked 12 miles from the exhausted Exton Park quarry to Shotley quarry. Taking two months at one mile in ten hours, crossing roads, rivers and railway lines, it was cheaper and quicker than dismantling it and moving it in bits. At the half way point the six mile power cable was 'unplugged' at Exton Park, run ahead to Shotley, and 'plugged' back in. A shilling in the meter, and off they went!!"

It's the positioning of the upper end of the white diagonal which is being questioned. Yes, it does denote the end door and generally runs from the inner bottom corner of the end panel, up to the level of the end door hinge, which is a foot or so below the top of the wagon. However, though that was the standard positioning, I'm pretty sure I've read that some diagonals did run to the top corner as in Jason's models. I think it's been discussed on the forum more than once. As for creosote and related products, it's banned for domestic/amateur use and for sale to the general public it is, however, still used by professionals and industry. Prolonged skin contact has been associated with various cancers, as are many other coke oven by-products.

A handsome dog, Dave. We think Poppy has a bit of Jack Russell in her but nobody knows, she was a rescue dog from Ireland. Anyway, back to industrial railway modelling!

Ha, whippets!, dog or bitch Dave? Wonderful dogs, so long as you don't mind them on the furniture! Let's have a brief diversion, though if whippets belong on any thread, one about a northern colliery couldn't be more apt. Here's Poppy, our rescue whippet lurcher; And here with her friend Pippin, a pure bred who stays with us quite often; Watching these two race round the garden always puts a smile on my face. Back to the shed, yeah, that's the kind of stuff that's of interest. So a largely concrete base. A photo or two of the interior as you progress would be helpful too. Thanks Arthur

Good question Debs, as far as I'm aware there's nothing new that modellers are using so I'll be interested to see what else is suggested. One development, which has come from aircraft modellers, is to give any 'plastic' type glazing a thin coat of Johnson's Klear which much improves the look.

Well Dave, it's a path I might well be taking myself, perhaps next year. I've already fitted out a wooden outbuilding as a music (oh, alright, a bedlam) studio for my drum kits. I'd be interested, and I'm sure others will be, in how you approach things like the foundations/base, insulation, any damp barriers, any heating, fitting and finishing inner walls and floor, basically how you've made a wooden shed a suitable home for a model railway.

Landed in one piece I hope! A major step forward in the project, looking forward to seeing it develop Dave. Are you going to let us know how you prepare the shed, fit it out etc? I'm sure that will be of interest to many of us.

You're right Brian, I checked, and it was the 1955 strike. The works was consuming 6,000 tons of coking coal a week, bringing that from South Yorkshire to Irlam, over the Pennines via Snake or Woodhead, was no mean feat with the lorries of the day. That's the link, thanks for that. I'd found the site but couldn't find that page! Anyway, it gives an idea of old moulds loaded on wagons.

Thanks Mike, yes, no doubt the ingots being brought by road to Irlam would have arrived by rail ten years earlier. Many of the older works (and that was most of them up to the 1970s) had been laid out with a total reliance on rail transport both internally and externally and had rudimentary, if any, internal roadways. There was a national rail strike in the 1950s (or was it 60s?). Prior to it, the management at Irlam (then Lancashire Steel) were concerned at continuity of supply of coal for the coke ovens. Iron ore wasn't an issue as most came through their own wharf on the Manchester Ship Canal. Jack Hanson, the Yorkshire haulier, promised them that, in the evnt if a strike, he could organise sufficient lorries to bring enough coal over from South Yorkshire. There were no bulk lorry unloading facilities so a simple ramp was built so that the coal could be tipped into internal rail wagons which could then be tippled into the coal service bunker receiving hopper. For the duration of the strike delivery kept up with demand and though rail deliveries resumed when the strike finished, it demonstrated that there was a viable alternative. Brian, excellent information there. Building wagons isn't my department so to speak, but I'm sure that Mark and Andy will be very grateful to receive any information on appropriate wagons. I know that Mark has a fancy for those converted iron ore tipplers for ingot mould traffic. Do you still have that link, or know how to find it, which Brian R. provided with photographs of a train taking expired moulds back to Ifor works? I've searched here for it and via Google without success.

Some additional information on the ingots and moulds, which will be of use in using them as loads and in selecting appropriate wagons, is, what would they weigh? I measured up the resin castings, worked out an equivelant volume in scaled up cubic feet, and multiplied that by 470lbs for the moulds (a typical weight for cast iron, it does vary a bit) and 500lbs for the ingot. The ingots scale out to 3 tons, the small moulds to 6.5 tons and the large ones to 14 tons, all of which are very typical for their type. I'll post up some notes on the rolling mill rolls over the next few days.

Referring back to the photo of the Llanwern casting bay in the previous post, a shower of 'sparks' can be seen spraying down from the filled moulds to the right. In some grades of steel, gasses are released from solution in the steel whilst in the mould, giving rise to an effervescence at the top and a gentle spray of steel droplets. Occasionally, this reaction can be more vigorous, giving a very merry fountain of steel at the ingot mouth, known as a 'roman candle' in some works. Rarely, the gas generates explosively, throwing the liquid steel out far and wide, presenting considerable risk to anyone nearby. Anyway, on with the modelling. Here are two of Roberts resin castings, an ingot and a small mould. They just need a quick clean up with a scalpel and some emery board. I primed them with a grey car aerosol. Both moulds and ingots were then brush painted with Humbrol Metalcote 'polished steel' which, if left unpolished, gives a nice blue/grey metal effect. The moulds were given a very light dusting with weathering powders, black to highlight detail, and rust tones to give a bit of 'life' to the finish. Here are the two large and two small moulds which Robert provided. In 1975, the fictional Trafalgar Works was not making, nor casting steel, but the moulds will make an ideal passing traffic, Round Oak, Bilston and Patent Shaft would all have used them at the time. Mark has some ideas on providing suitable wagons. I also threw into the mix a couple of miscast moulds which I had acquired from Robert earlier in the year. I cracked the corner off one of them, prepared them as before but gave them a much heavier coating of rust powders. Some thick white emulsion was brushed on the tops and streaked down the sides, white weathering powder dusted on top and more rust tones worked in. They represent broken, life expired moulds, returning to the foundry, another passing traffic. The resin ingots are cast as a fit into the smaller moulds and are the same height. However moulds are never filled to the brim and as the steel solidifies it shrinks down into the mould, a depression forms in the top. This depression can develop into quite a deep, tapering, void known as a 'pipe'. There are methods of avoiding this but many ingots displayed it to some degree. I modelled this on the ingots by chopping a couple of mil. off the narrow end, and using drill bits and a burr in a mini drill, shaped a depression in the top. The iron stool on which the ingots are cast gradually develops a shallow, dished, depression as successive casts gradually erode it away. Subsequent ingots consequently have a convex base which can be seen in this photograph, easily replicated by filing around the base edge. I used this photo as inspiration for the earlier Guy lorry build, it's carrying ingots, probably out of Stocksbridge works. Also seen at the base is a short 'spigot'. This is the snapped off remnant of the feed on uphill teemed ingots (see diagram in previous post). These were simply added from bits of wire. Here are the finished ingots. Cold, stored, ingots soon develop traces of surface rust represented with weathering powders, a white gel pen was used to replicate painted on identification marks. Whilst working in the soaking pits at Irlam I was spent a couple of shifts working on the cold ingot bank. Painting identification marks on ingots going into storage and locating ingots required for reheating, and identifying them to the overhead crane driver. We had a regular traffic of cold ingots in from the Sheffield area, brought by BSC and British Road Services artics. They were unloaded by the soaking pit cranes and on one night shift an ingot slipped from the cranes grip and dropped back about twelve feet onto the BRS trailer, crashing through the deck and twisting the chassis rails. The driver, resting in the cab, nearly s**t himself. We managed to separate tractor and trailer, the soaking pit crane dragged the buckled trailer to one side and I waved the next wagon in.

Robert, of RT Models, kindly donated some of his resin steelworks items for use on the BCB project earlier in the year. Having used these items on my own projects, I volunteered to finish them for use on the layout and over the next few days I’ll post some notes on the items, what I did with them. They will feature as wagon loads on the BCB layout which is why they are being covered in this thread. We’ve got ingot moulds, ingots and rolling mill rolls to look at. Firstly some notes on prototype ingot moulds and ingots. Until the mid 1960s virtually all the steel produced in the UK was cast into ingots prior to rolling, there was no other option. In the 1950s and 60s there would have been tens of thousands of them in use at the various UK steelworks. Moulds, cast in high quality Haematite iron, typically had walls 5” thick and were made in a wide range of sizes, described by the weight of ingot cast, which might range from a ton up to 20 tons. Square section moulds, generally in the 3 to 4 ton range, were used where the end product was a section, rail or bar, rectangular section moulds, usually 10 to 20 tons were used to when plate or sheet was being rolled. For the forging of large items, special, polygonal moulds of capacities up to 300 tons were made. The development and adoption of continuous casting from the mid 1960s onwards has made the practise of casting of ingots, prior to rolling, virtually obsolete, though ingots are still cast for forging operations. In use, the moulds would be placed upright on a haematite pad or ‘stool’ sitting on a casting car and the steel teemed into the moulds. Steel was never just poured over the lip of the ladle, it was allowed to run out of a stopper controlled hole in the base. This ensured that the slag floating on top of the steel did not enter the mould. There were several teeming techniques in use and considerable skill was involved in the preparation of the moulds and the teeming itself to avoid poorly cast ingots and damage to the moulds. The ingot was allowed to cool until it had formed a thick enough, solid, outer ‘skin’, to allow the mould to be stripped off. A diagram showing two of the main teeming techniques, the choice depending on just what specification of steel was being cast. Downhill Teeming was often referred to a 'trumpet' teeming because of the shape of the feeder column. Ingots being teemed in the Llanwern casting bay, 1964. The moulds and stools, standing on the bogie casting car, are clearly seen. Once stripped, the mould would be set aside, ideally allowed to cool to ambient temperature, cleaned up, a tar wash applied to the inside and the mould was then ready for re-use. A mould would be expected to have a life of around 100 casts, but poor preparation or teeming technique could reduce that drastically. As a consumable, they were costed into the steel manufacturing costs adding, in the early 60’s, around 6 shillings per ton. Some works cast their own moulds but many bought them in. Major suppliers during BSC years were Ifor works near Merthyr Tidfil, the former RTB foundry at Landore and the former United Steels foundry at Distington in Cumbria. Due to the high value of the haematite iron used, once damaged or life expired, the moulds were generally returned to one of the mould foundries for breaking and re-melting. Being massively constructed they could take some breaking, commonly a heavy steel ball was dropped on them, or explosives could be used. New and life expired moulds were both regular rail traffic to and from the foundries. This page shows the handling of expired ingots, including the use of explosives, at Ifor works. http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/dowlaisworks_butters_crane.htm The stripped ingots, if required for rolling straight away, would be placed in soaking pits to equalise the heat. Ingots for stock or resale would be allowed to cool. They may appear to be just long blocks of steel but I'll show tomorrow how a few details can be added. I'll also show the finished ingot moulds.

Black Country Blues Earlier in the year Robert very kindly donated some of his resin steelworks items to the BCB project team, who were very pleased to receive them. As I'd already worked with these parts for my own projects, I volunteered to work them up ready for use on the layout. Over the next few days I'll be making a couple of postings, outlining the work done, plus some prototype notes, here on the BCB wagon building thread; http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/57246-black-country-blues-rolling-stock-workbench/page-15 Arthur

Yes, it's a considerably more salubrious area now than it was for many a year. In 1977 I had the 'pleasure' of taking a narrow boat up the Rochdale canal from it's junction with the Bridgewater canal up through to Piccadillly where it joined the Ashton (?) canal. Though the rest of the network was under British Waterways control, the Rochdale Canal Company still owned and operated that two or so miles. We were forced to spend the night moored up by a lock on Canal Street. In stark contrast to today, the area then represented the dark and seedy underbelly of the city, the canal virtually derelict, warehouses looming over it and the night time inhabitants were, er, strange to say the least.

Yep, we had both the panelled doors and the red cills (that was in Patricroft). I think TV DIY man Barry Bucknall generally gets the 'credit' for the hard boarding over panelled doors craze.

For sure ElTesha, in any large industrial area like the Black Country, you could justify pretty much any passing wagon or traffic and that's a good example, and photo, you've provided. My comments were exclusively about traffic in to, and out of, a fictional, but plausible, steelworks set in the Black Country. There were only a handful of works in the UK with plate mills big enough to roll plate which would require a trestle wagon. For obvious reasons these works tended to be close to the shipbuilding areas, Teesside and Scotland. Appleby Frodingham had one at Scunthorpe. Armour plate was rolled in Sheffield but I doubt it would have been wide enough to need a trestle (because it would have then been too heavy). A Black Country works was, typically, more likely to roll sections or possibly tube. Arthur