There is a branch line off of the LV mainline in the middle of the gorge at Penn Haven that has always been in my plans for my layout. This branch runs up to the rich anthracite coal deposits in Hazleton, where I spent two years of my life at Penn State's branch campus there. Hard coal mining and distribution were part and parcel of many great railroads that ran throughout northeast Pennsylvania, and certainly coal was a huge part of the reason that the LV ran through the gorge and headed right for coal rich Wilkes-Barre and Scranton before heading west to Buffalo and the rich distribution points on lake Erie for the midwest.
Hazleton in 1976 was changing with the times, but anthracite coal mining still played a dying but relavent role in the railroad industry of the city. I believe that most of the coal breakers in the areas around the city were still in existence, and the option to include one on my layout has a certain allure.
The section of my layout from Penn Haven Junction through Black Creek and toward Hazleton abruptly ends and heads through the backdrop and into the storage level of my layout. I always needed a way to hide this hole in my backdrop, and recently my thoughts have travelled to running my trains under a coal breaker and into the storage level.
The purpose of this blog is to try to make that a reality. If I finish it, this will also mean that I've finished the scenery in every area between the backdrop and the track, so there is motivation to get it done.
A coal breaker is massive, and if I wanted, I could have devoted this corner of the layout to nothing but the breaker. However, I have some other city-type buildings that I've always wanted to incorporate, so the breaker won't be the only thing in this corner. Therefore, I've decided to make the breaker a psuedo backdrop building - it will protrude from the backdrop, which curves pretty hard in this section.
First thing was to deal with the understory of the breaker, which is going to be concrete and steel. I needed piers large enough to support a substantial structure. Went to the well at Clever models and bought their overhead crane kit, which has some great piers, girders and vertical supports that will fit nicely as supports for the breaker. Here's a view of one type of girder suspended by two of the piers.
The clearance under the short girder was going to be a bit tight, so I opted to build a few of the trolley girders that came with the crane kit, rough fit the piers in the area that I'd selected for the building and I cut out a piece of foam board to serve as the first floor/understory ceiling.
I then painted the ceiling (black) and installed the front face of girder supports and rearranged the positioning until I thought it would work for operation under the breaker.
Installed a couple strips of two-sided adhesive foam on the backdrop to support the foam board in a level orientation and roughed in the pier locations. I'll then be doing some detail scenery over the pink foam board and hiding the blue backdrop at this location - I'm thinking some walls and other stuff (maybe a printed scene?). I'll also be generating the other support girders that will run between the piers on the left side of the structure.
And here's some pictures of the progress, most of which has been from ground level up to the 1st floor. In the one below, I've added a stub track for setting out loaded coal hoppers - I'll keep about 3 there permanently. I've also sited "Plant #2" in between the main and the stup track, primarily to break up the sight line between the edge of the layout and the tunnel in the backdrop. You'll also note that I've painted that backdrop in the area below the 1st floor, and there are bits of cardboard under each pier to make up for the "unlevelness" of the foamboard.
And here I've put down plaster cloth over the foamboard and the pier supports and added some photo backgrounds against the backdrop to obscure what's going on there. The photo backgrounds actually came from pictures of the interior of an abandoned coal breaker that I plucked from the internet.
Next, the obligatory add of Sculptamold over the plaster cloth, and paint on top of that, and then some balast used as gravel, and then some coal dust. I also took the opportunity to paint the track rails and ties, since it'll be tough to get at these areas once I build the structure above.
It was then time to balast the track - I used fine ballast since it's more prototypical and easier to get to lay in place.
I then test fit most of the piers and temporarily placed the first floor assembly and then spread some silicone adhesive on the edge of the assembly where it touches the backdrop, positioned a pier to hold it up and let it set up overnight. Added the rest of the piers once it was dry, added the hopper cars and positioned Plant #2.
I've also been steadily printing and cutting portions of the upper stories using sections of the "Small Steel Mill" kit from Clever. Turns out that three of these joined together run nicely over the width of the building. Probably have 4 across the left side. In the photo below, I've temporarily pinned the first story in place, and I've added a bit of structure on the ground floor - again to disguise the sight lines into the tunnel.
I added a second story right on top of the first, and then decided that the 3rd story was going to be a bit smaller. Used the corrogated roof printouts in the Small Steel Mill to devise a roof that sits on a 12/12 pitch over the 2nd story. I also reinforced the whole structure with foam board and some columns I built out of the leftover cardstock.
The columns also provide a nice gluing surface for the vertical sheets of foam board that'll be used to glue the upper stories, which will be the same sides used on the first two stories.
I generated the rest of the front face of the building, a series of ever-smaller floors rising up to a final sloped roof. The front face is a repeat of the first two floors in terms of pieces out of the small steel mill building set, I used a couple of different roof slopes as I went up the building. The photo below is of the full structure, with the top 4 floor held in place by a piece of tape.
...and here's the other side after building the individual stories and roofs. All of the lower roofs were built from the "Small Steel Mill" kit, with the larger, flatter roofs from the "Car barn" kit that's in the lower right of the picture above. Each of the stories was built in similar fashion to the bottom layer - cardstock spacers followed by cardstock glued to the front of foam board. The resulting structure is super sturdy and doesn't weigh much.
Next on the build were the conveyor(s) that brought the bulk coal to the top of the building, and the one to take the non-coal pieces out. I started with the higher conveyor - it was built with extra siding pieces out of the "Silver City Factory" Kit, windows (and eventually a roof) from the same kit. The "floor" were sections from the underside of the "Half Girder Bridge" kit. It goes from a two-dimensional flat up near the roof (not much thickness available there near the backdrop) and transitions to 3-d coming down toward earth. I reinforced the underside corners with some plastic I-beams. I need to figure out what I can use for supports at various points coming down the slope, and eventually I need to build some coal berms to hide the end of the conveyor.
. Here's a look at the underside of the conveyor.
Here's the roof installed...
Then came the task of supporting this conveyor. I did a bit of consulting with some old photos of the Hazleton Shaft Colliery.
As you can see, the conveyors are supported about halfway up by a truss structure. Thought I'd build something similar out of cardstock girders from the Half-Thru Girder Bridge kit from Clever. I grouped three strips together, folding two in 90-degree "angle iron" fashion and then gluing a third to the first two folded strips (as below):
I then joined thse girders together with a dab of glue at each joint and worked until I had a truss.
I built two of these (one smaller than the other for the downhill side of the tower) and joined the two together with more girders. I also make some concrete support piers to hold the bottom of the tower legs.
So, my next task was the interface between the end of the conveyor and ground level. Because this section of my layout is supported by foam board, that meant building a hill that the conveyor descends into. I thought I'd also incorporate some form of dump truck ramp to bring coal from the strip mine into the conveyor (the mine shaft was closed in the early 60's due to the arrival of rain from a hurricane). After that, any anthracite mining was from ground level via strip mining. I bought an off-road Euclid dump (I'll weather it soon).
I also figured to add some structural interest by putting in a steam plant to feed the breaker on those cold winter days. Used Clever's Turbine House as the basis for that. The steam lines are going to be pieces of plastic sprues from a plastic kit painted silver. They're going to come out the back of the structure and run up to the 2nd floor of the breaker once I get the building sighted. I also added a 70-ft chimney from Clever. I might want to try rebuilding it at some point to better hide the seams between segments.
Here's a look at the joined sections of sprue I'm using for the steam lines before painting:
And here's a look at the terrain built up over the cardboard supports and painted with a basecoat of gray. I also installed a tailings pile and coated it with a healthy covering of cinders, as well as installing a cardboard-backed picture of some current Google map pictures of areas near the old Hazleton Colliery. I'm in the process of putting in the puffball trees on the upper section of the tan hill in this picture. I think it's going to look pretty good once I have all of the elements in place.
I added puff-ball trees and some strategic polyfill to the areas nearest the backdrop which really did a lot to give the scene some depth. The conveyor and support truss were just laid in there for the shot to give a better idea of what I'm trying to accomplish. Ground covers, shrubs and trees next!
We'll do a little scenery time lapse....
The Euclid dump truck was picked up off of ebay. With the shaft closed in 1976, the only coal the breaker was processing was from the strip mine, so I figured they'd have had to truck it to the conveyor. The truck started out as a metal toy that I distressed and weathered. Photos follow:
The coal in the back of the dump is the real deal - anthracite! Thanks to Dave Speicher!
And here's some more scenery progress:
Details, details, details. The space between the dump truck ramp and the breaker needs some detail, and not much of that will be green stuff, although I am thinking of a couple of large trees in the transition area. Before I get back there, however, I thought I'd dig back into my box of model railroading stuff where I have a box of items I purchased last December. A friend of mine at bigbluetrains.com had mentioned that he was putting together a free kit from Inter Action Hobbies - a place I was not familiar. I liked the look of this freebie, so I took a look at some of the unique items they were selling an bought a kit of 3 telephone booths, a kit of 3 Coke machines, and a kit of 2 Ice machines. Thought I could use them eventually.
I figured the employees of the coal breaker should have some way to call home (this is pre-cell phones, folks!), and pop open a soda after a hot day at work.
These are really intricate kits, and required several hours of work with tiny, laser cut components which I'd already painted before assembly. For my limited dexterity these days, I thought they came out pretty well. Stuck them near the personnel door at the breaker....
I also decided to ballast the track between the front of the breaker and Black Run, so went ahead and did that will fine ballast in between the rails and just outside, and medium ballast from there out. Went really easy that way.
I still have to work on the steam pipe supports and scenic around the steam plant itself. You may also already see that I've extended my blue backdrop behind the breaker.
I finally got off my butt and decided to finish the area around the steam plant. Made a sign for it, built a couple of picnic tables and installed a couple of trees, figuring the area might make a good lunch break area for the workers. I also decided that the plant operator was going to have quite a bit of time on his hands for the warm summer months - he's a gardener at heart. I also did a permanent install of the steam lines from the plant to the breaker - you can see them going up next to the breaker on the right-hand side.
Here you can see the back side of the building and the steam lines and supports (leftover lattice beams from another Clever kit. I'm getting a tracked loader that will reside between the two buildings along with some miners that were ordered.
I also started thinking about the rest of Hazleton - I decided to supplement the backdrop with some actual pictures from around town. Found a couple of wide angle shots that should work and printed one of them out at 400% on my inkjet printer to get an idea of scale, angle and and size.
I was lucky enough to get some gift certificates for Christmas and I thought I'd spend some of that on some details to place around the breaker. I purchased a Woodland Scenics loader, some Woodland Scenics industrial junk, and some miners to place around the breaker. The loader had metal parts, and I found that it was just about impossible to get the parts to stay together with CA adhesive, so I mixed up some Double Bubble epoxy and used that to join the parts. Here are the primed items.
....and here they are painted and placed.
I still have to place the miners. I have a rough time because they are so small, and I needed to glue them in place. After a bit of thinking I decided to place two pushpins into the layout where I was putting each miner, use hobby glue on the miner's feet, and place them against the pushpins. Worked really well and I'll be using this technique in the future.