Back to the birthplace of All Aboard railroading... Ohio! In fact it's just a little north of where Ohio Rails is located. This is another little route... lemme qualify that.... it's actually kind of sizeable only it's divided up in to long spurs and mainline and lots of nook & cranny stuff where I haven't the foggiest idea how long it is.

But it's in the works with most of the track laid at this point. There's plenty of industry on this route folks.. and unfortunately for me, they are steel mills. What was I thinking!? Not only steel mills but rolling mills. Sure be nice to pull the longhairwizard out of retirement about now, wouldn't it? He was always going on about steel mills and now we got a route full of them.

There's a little bit more information about the route here, but not much.

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopi...?f=13&t=689

I know very little about the route itself as it is today except an outfit called RJ Coreman or Coleman runs the route nowadays. In the old days I think it was a B&O route. The irony of this route is that not only does a whole different rail line intersects with this route but it runs up to a nearby city, Canton. And in Canton is another one of those Steel Mills. We're talking lots of expansion for this route like my own Canton had. While looking over this interesting area a couple of weeks ago I was even tempted to name the route New Canton. Kind of a play on words there... uh, never mind.

That's it, as they say, a WIP. Any input for the route will be deeply appreciated.

Rich

RJ Corman Click on "Cleveland Line"

Not sure why they call it the Cleveland Line, when it's 45 miles from Cleveland.

The prototype was the B&O "CL&W Sub", CSX sold it to RJ Corman, and the OVS can't wait to get it's hands on it. LOL

I'd love to see the screenshots Rich. But unfortunately the forum seems to require registration before this is possible. Would there be a chance you could post them elsewhere, or link directly to the image?

Let's see...

This is an overview of the route in this first pic. The left side is from the 2d screen of Railworks, the right side if from GoogleEarth. The RW view is zoomed out quite a bit so you won't see any industrial spurs.



The second pic is of the Steel Mill in Massilon, Oh; the north end of the route. The b&w imagery are decals you can lay very quickly for route building using RWDecal. The decals come from GoogleEarth and the reason they are b&w is because none of the recent views of the area in color showed the Steel Mill still standing. These decals are from 1994.



The mill and its surrounding area are pretty large so I can't show you the whole place at once. The top pic of the 2nd picture is looking south towards the mill. The actual furnaces appear to be the big glob in the middle. The tracks on the left side which run the perimeter of the yard I'm guessing are some kind of interchange point between the B&O and N&W which both ran in this area. I'm guessing this as there are plenty of yards within the facility down in the southern end.

The bottom portion of the picture shows the south end looking north. The track in the middle is the mainline whereas the track on the right comes from the mainline and feeds what I believe is an interchange point. The left side you can make out two yards. There's the real long one of about four tracks which connects to another yard of about twelve tracks. I think the lighter area nearby is a steek structure assembly point where finished steel is stored and then moved out. There's a single feed track which runs through the middle. I'm guessing though as steel mills isn't something I'm real familiar with. For referencing sake just a little above that structure area would be the trackage you see in the top portion of the picture.

This picture btw is a little dated as 99.9% of the track in the steel mill is now placed. I'm going to have to make my own steel mill models and have been researching what they look like. What confuses me is I can't find the ore yard. There appears, if you use GoogleEarth, some kind of ore piling across the small river but I don't see it connecting to this mainline directly. I'm kinda thinking this is not a full fledge steel mill because there's one just a little ways away in Canton. I have a diagram of the plant which does refer to an Open Hearth but it looks a little bit too simplistic for a blast furnace.

Working on it though, any input appreciated!

Rich

Thanks for posting the shots Rich. How'd you get that Google earth photo pasted on to the terrain? Is there some kind of trick available which allows you to import your own terrain textures now? I thought it couldn't be done in this sim.

RWDecal by Jim Knobbs makes this incredibly easy. http://www.rwdecal.co.uk/ - Rich

Just north of the mill the railroad crosses the busy PRR mainline from NY-Chicago. There's some interchange here. North of that is a gravel pit.

All three railroads had access to the mill, some of the yards would be for the big railroads coming in and interchanging, some would be for ore, scrap, limestone, coke, and coil gon storage until needed. And hoppers for cooled slag. Inside the plant would be hot metal cars and hot slag cars.

This was one of the primary mills for stainless steel during it's heyday. If that helps.

I remember seeing the blast furnace fires from US 21 about a half mile away. It made quite an impression.

Here's a simple site I found, I'll search out some more when I get home tomorrow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_mill

Thanks Mike. I ordered a couple of books and one is about Republic Steel which owned the mills in Canton, Cleveland and Massilon. I'm hoping to see a picture of the Massilon mill. This is quite confusing as even going through the mill with a magnifying glass didn't produce anything that looked like a blast furnance. Maybe they used Open Hearth?

I just finished laying track up the gravel pit, so I got the whole route done as far as track goes. I'll try and get a pic up soon of the last bit.



Rich

Here's a better shot of the mill:



Rich

Here's one of the first rolling mills for the Massilon Steel Mill. I started this building yesterday and it's coming along pretty quick. It measures 800' long and a little over 80' tall. Probably closer to 90' tall if I include the roof vents. It's based on a prototype found in Cleveland. - Rich

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This looks great. You know I'll be there "opening day"

Thanks Molly.

Here's the mill now with a few textures on it. - Rich

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And from the other side, WIP - Rich

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2nd mill building on deck. Still some detailing to do before texturing. - Rich

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Finished version.

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That looks terrific, Rich. I can hardly wait to see the final scene in RW.

Cheers!
Marc

Thanks Marc!

I've been dabbling with the Open Hearth Furnace somewhat and most of the big stuff is not complete. The little details like doors, windows and such come next. Here's the latest. It's hard to get a good picture of this building because it's 800' long.


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Work on the next mill, which I think is a Bloom mill (1100 ft. long), has already started. The basic shape is already set, time to add textures coming soon.

Rich

The next mill...

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Rich

Left side of mill nearly done, working on right side (picture coming soon).

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Aerial view of the same mill.

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Rich

Those look great, Rich! These structures are going to dwarf the trains.

Are you going to be creating interiors at any time for these?

Cheers!
Marc

Thanks Marc!

I'd like to do interiors eventually. For now I'm focused on building a library worth of mills to compliment the furnances. - Rich

Here's the next mill, nearly completed.

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And even closer to completion...

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Here's the mills in-game.

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A few more mills to build yet.

Rich

I admire your skill.

Well thanks James! I like to give God the credit for what I do as I came into all of this, some time ago now, not having done anything like this my whole life. Just kind of "fell" into this stuff actually at a moment of desperation. And that's the truth! - Rich

Latest mill on-deck for exporting to the steel mill. Still some tweaking and detailing to do yet.

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Rich

While the previous mill is still being detailed and textured, I took a couple of hours today to begin the next model which are individual smaller mills clustered together. I plan on a few variations with this one being the first.

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Rich

A progress shot with the most recent mill now in-game.

Rich

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The 2nd of the two cluster buildings I mentioned previously is ready for texturing and finer detailing. Between the two clustes the mills should make up an area of approximately 1100' x 220'.

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Rich

First of the cluster elements is just about finished.

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Rich

Those are some great looking structures, Rich.

Cheers!
Marc

Thanks Marc!

Here's the cluster taking a shape.

EDIT: Updated picture to include newest building within the cluster mix.

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Rich

More ingame shots (close-ups) and discussion of the steel mill here:

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopi...?f=19&t=689
(you'll need to register to see pics - goto the last pages 8-9)

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Rich

Rich, this month's Trains magazine has an article about steel mill railroading in your old neck of the woods. I didn't get a good look at it yet, but it might be worth a read.

I took a spin down along part of the route, very nice country setting. The way the foothills around Massillon build up to the mini mountains around Dover and New Philli. You can't beat Eastern railroading IMHO.

Thanks Mike, I need to check the article out, every bit helps.

Here's a couple of in-game shots with the newest mill included, RM#7. The mill is pretty long at 880' and about 220' wide. I still have work to do on the mill but not too much. The next building is the Structural Steel Facility. I can't make out from the pics on GoogleEarth just what the facility looks like but I have a couple of pics from other steel mills which I'll probably base mine off of them. The second pic below will give you a better idea of how the newer facilities fit into the whole mill itself.

Rich

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Looking from a Molton Iron Shed at Mill #7.

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Overall Steel Mill as it currently is. Note placement of Structural Steel Facility (to be built next).

Nice work, Rich. That's going to be a heck of a scene!

Hard for me to tell, but one thing I notice is that the smoothing groups on the red building in the top-center may need to be checked.

Cheers!
Marc

Thanks Marc!

Here's the most recent building. I'm having difficulty finding good pics of steel structural facilities so I'm working on some steam plants in the meantime. Here's one:

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This is an in-game shot near Mill #7.

Rich

Thanks to you Mr. Garber Rail Works is really starting to get there for me.

Okay Curtis, great seeing you again though. Holler sometime!

The next building is just about ready for showtime. This is a small building, I believe from Bethlehem Steel. I should have an in-game shot soon.

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Rich

And the newest building in-game...

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Rich

That little building has some great character, Rich! I especially like the small details such as the exterior conduit and the main doorway lamp.

Cheers!
Marc

Thanks Marc!

And here's the latest of creations for the steel mill, an engine/car repair shed. The bay the NS is peeping out of is actually the car repair bay which runs the whole length of the building and exits out the other side. This shed isn't pretty close to done just some detailing to do. - Rich

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Took a day off mostly from working on the route to add another mill. This is an in-game shot with an experimental texture I plan on tweaking a bit. This building is 96' x 500' and approximately 60' tall. This particular building in satellite view doesn't show any tracks heading to it though it stands as in the picture right beside tracks. Not sure what kind of mill it would be - Rich

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Nice work, Rich. The lower sides of the building have a copper plated look. Are they supposed to?

Cheers!
Marc

Thanks Marc, and that copper texture was an experiment I done, obviously bad. Looked fine when I was building the model but against all the other buildings in the mill and in-game, looked pretty bad. So first thing this morning was to redo the texture and fix the roof texture to match. Here's another look:

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rich

A couple more quick pics. Since removing the decals (so I could work on other parts of the route) you can make out the mill complex a little better.

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I just like this pic for its "busyness."

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Rich

This complex could finally convert me to Works...

Hi Mike,

If you take a look over at Railworks America, DickC has been doing steel mill rollingstock for the route. He's got several of the cars done already. Next pick I put up should have a few of the cars milling about the mill. - Rich