Scratch Built Rock Crusher Building

[Bernd]

This will be the start of the scratch built rock crusher building. I'm using the basic dimensions from this article for the build. The two part article was written up in Model Railroader in November and December 1957 and is based on a real stone crusher in Gate City, Va. on the Southern Ry.

The prototype.



The prototypes rock bunker.



The model rock crusher and bunker building.



The model rock crusher building.



As I said in my layout tour thread I was going to introduce a material I haven't seen being used in model railroading. It's a common stone use in the manufacture of wood stoves and kitchen sinks of early American kitchens, it's called soap stone. It's a soft smooth feeling stone when worked for the above mentioned items. I had owned a wood soap stone stove for many years. In the search for a wood stove I researched soap stone and found out where it was quarried and the many different colors that it has.

The prototype building was built using cast concrete for the construction. I figured since this was a limestone quarry I'd make a building out of limestone blocks. This lead to research on limestone color, plus I also had the quarry close by to determine the color of the local limestone.
The first thing was to find out where I could get soapstone. If you use a search engine you'll find all sorts of places that sell large quantities. I was looking for something smaller than what these places were selling. Soapstone is used in many crafts to make things due to its carve able nature so it was easy to find in an art supply store such as "Dick Blicks Art Supply". So I ordered some stone to see if it would work for an HO scale structure.

The stone I ordered came rough sawn into blocks approximately 3" X 3" X 4".



First thing I needed to do was square up the block and get rid of the rough sawn lines in the block. So I milled the sides parallel to each other in my Bridgeport milling machine. It creates quite a bit of dust.



Once I had two sides smooth and parallel they were cut into slabs about 1/4" thick.



Using a miter saw to cut the slabs.





Did I mention it leaves a lot of dust? The powder can be used for weathering possibly.



Next I set up my Grizzly mini-mill to mill the slabs parallel. This time I set up a vacuum system to contain the dust.



I had to resort to almost enclosing the vacuum with the air filter system I had built for wood work to keep the dust from flying all around the basement.



You could almost see through these filters when they were clean.



Once the slabs were perfectly flat and parallel I had to cut them in the proper size sticks. I started out by setting up the CNC mill. I glued some aircraft plywood onto a MDF base to hold the slab of soapstone from being pushed away. I used a climbing cut which also helped hold the slab down and push it against the stop. The mill got pretty dusty cutting 16 slots or pieces.





Here's a video of cutting the sticks. Some will probably have a fit watching this but I've been around machinery for over 60 years. No one was hurt or cut anything off.

https://youtu.be/wM23JSGwqfo

Here's a penny for comparison. The first bars of soapstone are roughly .160" square.



Here's a comparison of soapstone color. The one I cut next to a piece of soapstone that is used to mark out metal for cutting. The one on the right can be bought at any of the home supply stores or a welding shop.



I scribed lines one piece to see how it would look with larger size stone scribed lines. I know what you're thinking. Why don't you just scribe the blocks on larger pieces of soapstone and be done with it. One reason. Can anybody figure it out?



Note the variegation in the green circle? When laying blocks nobody is going pick through the big heavy blocks and match the variegation. The bigger the piece the more noticeable it would be.



I made a jig for cutting the sticks to length. It's a piece of aluminum with a .155" wide by .155" deep slot. A small cross milling at the closed end provides a stop for the sticks to butt against. A slot .022" thick was cut .230" from the blind end end to guide a razor saw.



The first cut blocks and the jig loaded to to cut more.



The first blocks laid up to see if this whole idea will work.





Once I found out how floppy the foam wall was going to be I use a piece of 1/4" Luan. I also place a strip of styrene under the blocks for a mortar line.



This is how far I got using the foam. Not going to work.



I ran out of blocks at this point and decided it was a large enough test wall to determine if this is the way I wanted to go.



This is what an HO scale person would see at 100 HO scale feet from the wall.



Next experiment was to fill the mortar lines. I used plaster of Paris and a fantail brushed.









Once it looked like the lines were all filled in it was time to wet the plaster.



I used my Iwata spray gun to mist water over the plaster. I didn't use a spray bottle because spray was too heavy and would bead up on the plaster. The spray also was strong enough to wash out the lines of mortar.



I wiped the excess water off with a paper towel. This helped to clean the film of plaster sitting on top of the the blocks.



After letting the whole wall and plaster dry over night I noticed some voids in the mortar lines.



I repeated the procedure of adding some plaster, rubbing it in, misting lightly with water and waiting until the next day to see the results.



Much better.

And the scale model view of about 100 HO scale feet from the building.



This short section is the explanation of using soapstone blocks, how to manufacture them in HO scale. Next will be the actual build of the rock crusher building using the technique just explained.

Until next time.

Bernd

[ACL1504]

Bernd,

That sure is a lot of work but well worth the end product. Looks fantastic.

Tom 

[Janbouli]

Impressed , flabbergasted , those words come to my mind, thanks for sharing.

[Keep It Rusty]

Very impressive, Bernd. A big investment that is already paying out.

[Bernd]

Bernd,

That sure is a lot of work but well worth the end product. Looks fantastic.

Tom 

Thanks Tom. Much appreciated.

Yes it is a lot of work if you are in a hurry to get a railroad running. There's nothing like have that individual block look.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Impressed , flabbergasted , those words come to my mind, thanks for sharing.

You're welcome.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Very impressive, Bernd. A big investment that is already paying out.

Thanks Rusty R.

The tooling was an investment over a long time period. One of my other hobbies was, notice I said "was", live steam engines. You needed metal working machines to do that kind of hobby. I was going to build a four truck 1 1/2" scale Shay. Still have the castings. They also come in handy for smaller scale work such as HO scale modeling. I think that's one thing that's slowly leaving the hobby is using such tooling to make parts. If you look in the older model magazines you'd find ads for Unimat lathes.

Bernd

[GPdemayo]

Neat looking structure Bernd.....great job with the sandstone. I'll be watching this one closely. 

[postalkarl]

Hey Bernd:

Ston wall looks just great. Keep the pic coming.

Karl

[Bernd]

Neat looking structure Bernd.....great job with the sandstone. I'll be watching this one closely. 

Thanks Gregory.

That's soapstone, not sandstone. Great material to work with, except for making a lot of dust.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Hey Bernd:

Ston wall looks just great. Keep the pic coming.

Karl

Thanks Karl. More pics on the way. Hopefully Sunday evening.

Bernd

[postalkarl]

Hey Bernd:

You are quite welcome. Looking forward to more pics./

Karl

[jerryrbeach]

Bernd,


Interesting approach to modeling the masonry portion of the rock crusher.  I'm following your progress closely as I an thinking about adding a gravel mining operation to my (still only benchwork) layout.   


As an aside, I wonder if you are aware of the Facebook group for "New York Railroads, Turnpikes, and Canals"?  One of the recently posted photos is of Rochester Junction.  Here's a link:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/460552970786042/

[Bernd]

This update is about constructing the bottom half of the crusher building. At first I didn't have an idea of what to use for a shell to glue the blocks to. My first attempt was to use 1/4" thick Luan flooring plywood. I glued everything together. The next morning all the walls had a slight bow in them. That's when I decided to get some Gator Board. So I ordered a package of 24" X 36" board. I used my 10" table saw to cut out the rectangular walls and then used an Axacto knife to cut out the small portions. I glued up the walls using 1/4" square strips for inside corner support.

The Gator board walls.



The multitude of scale blocks.



The wall shell where it will be permanently placed, finally.



I discovered from doing the experimental wall that I needed a better way to apply glue to the block with my right hand while holding onto the block with a pair of tweezers with my left hand and then remove the cap on the bottle of glue. Also I had to wait every time for the glue to get to the nozzle. A modeler on the other forum made a jig to hold his bottle of glue. Great idea, but you still needed to remove the nozzle with your third hand. So I made a sort of landing pad square to the nozzle to keep the glue from running out. I'm sure the picture will explain it better than I can in words.





By the way if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm using Aleene's Original Tacky Glue.

Next I laid out the doors and windows according to the drawing. I believe these are Tichy windows and doors.



Ready for the first row. I used .010" thick styrene strips between the blocks to simulate the mortar thickness. So the mortar line will be close to 1 scale inch thick.



The first row is done.



Third row.



And around the corner. One thing I should have done is build up the corner blocks first and then run the courses. It would have given a better looking corner. You'll see what I mean when the building is done.



I also laid a strip of .010" thick styrene between the rows of blocks to give me the horizontal mortar line.





Almost done. I lost track of how many weeks, yes weeks, it took to do just two sides. Reason? I got tired of laying blocks. It was sort of boring at times.



The end wall. Here you can see how uneven the corner blocks of the building are. I only did this wall and the front since you are not going to see the side at the tracks or what I call the back wall. It was hard to say the bottom was done at this point knowing the back and other end had no blocks glued to it.



The front with the window lintels installed.



And one the side wall. Not real happy with the outcome of this wall but I wasn't going to redo it at this point.



Next I needed to cover the window opening so I could spread plaster to fill in the mortar lines with out filling in the window and door openings. Some styrene pieces were glued up the size of the windows and doors and stuck in place.









Once closed off it was time to add the plaster.





It takes several coats to fill in all the crevices.





Then a light misting with the air brush.



A quick wipe with some paper towels to clean the dust that got wetted so it doesn't stick to the surface of the blocks.



On the side wall I decided to just use my fingers to spread the plaster. It actually worked better than the fan brush. These pictures turned out blurry because I held the building in my hands unsupported.





And again a light misting of water to wet the plaster and a wipe with the paper towel.





And there we have the bottom finished with 1,129 blocks, but whose counting?



Next will be the upper half of the building. I had a tough time figuring out what I wanted to use for the outside material. More in the next post.

Until then.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Bernd,


Interesting approach to modeling the masonry portion of the rock crusher.  I'm following your progress closely as I an thinking about adding a gravel mining operation to my (still only benchwork) layout.   


As an aside, I wonder if you are aware of the Facebook group for "New York Railroads, Turnpikes, and Canals"?  One of the recently posted photos is of Rochester Junction.  Here's a link:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/460552970786042/

Hey Jerry,

Glad to have you along for the show. You'll find I approach some subjects in interesting and complicated ways sometimes before I hit on an easy way of doing it. Just my nature I guess. It can be a fun show at times.

Sounds like you'll also need a crusher structure and rock bin. I have lots of pictures and video links to stone quarries if you are interested in how they function. Now you said gravel. We also have a gravel pit in the near area. They can supply what is known as bank run gravel of different sizes. The sizes can vary from 1" diameter stones up to 6" inch diameter stones. It depends on what screen sizes they run the gravel through. If you plan on limestone gravel then you would need to model how lime stone is quarried and crushed into stone.

I'm on Facebook and belong to a couple of modeling groups but don't post much. I mainly use them just for viewing pictures and occasionally find some pictures I could use. I'm not a fan of Facebook so much because it's hard to follow what somebody is posting. If they don't post frequently it's hard to try and find their post. I think many use Facebook due to the ease of posting pictures. They don't have to do any picture editing. Just up load and they're done.

I did take a quick surf through the site and saw some familiar areas. Thanks for the link. 

Bernd