What locomotive would be normal in 1960s Pittsburgh Steel Mill?

I mention awhile back that I was building a diorama of Pittsburgh Steel Mill. I can’t get into it full swing because I have some dimension issues with the connection to main layouts. I am thinking about it all the time and I’ve been getting things ready in between time.


OK anyway, for my fictitious abandoned over grown steel mill on the Allegany River, I have some old abandoned tracks with an old rusted out Loco and coal cars. I would like to know what loco and cars one would find abandon there.


I have an old Conrail ALCO C-420 that I was going to use because it doesn’t run and it doesn’t need to for my diorama. Now that I think about it I’m not so sure it’s what you would see in an abandon steel mill.

Can anybody recommend something?


Here is a little history of my project to understand what I'm doing. I wish I would have combined them in the beginning, but since I can’t change the title I keep starting new threads.
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?130077-Need-dimensions-for-small-River-Barge-amp-Lock&highlight
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?130184-Looking-for-Tall-Bridge-Pier-Ideas

 

since it is going to be rusty and abandoned,i would go with an old atlas SW or any old atlas,bachmann model power ect... 0-6-0 they can be obtained cheaply in non running condition for your diorama purposes

 

Thanks I took your suggestion and just ran it through eBay, but they didn’t have any right now.

Do you think Conrail would be OK?

 

I recently read a fairly detailed article in either Trains Magazine or Classic Trains which described a short line train operation which shuttled (extremely) hot molten cargo between two nearby plants which were either in Pittsburgh or very close to it. It was written by someone who worked (engineer or fireman?) operating those trains, which I think he said lasted into the early 1970s. It included a picture of a freight car which had had its coupler melted into an unrecognizable shape by hot molten metal accidentally getting poured on it. I think the magazine came out during the last year or two, but I was not able to figure out which issue it was by searching the web for the table of contents of recent issues of Trains magazine and Classic Trains magazine. Maybe someone else recalls this article better than I do?

 

This is good information. I was not around when the steel mills closed so I don’t know exactly what year it was, but I remember a visit in the late 70s where everyone was out of work due to the mills closing.

I have a modern layout and the only reason for the Conrail is because I just happened to have one that I don’t have any plans for.

This is completely a fantasy layout because the tracks are moving from a small Mountain town then crossing over the Bessemer and Lake Erie Bridge over the Allegheny River and abandon Steel Mill to a South West Service Yard with UP, SP and ATSF trains.

I know its crazy, but what can I say.

My only problem is finding a short line diesel train from early Pittsburgh in N-Scale. I guess I could look for something in Penn Central maybe.

 

Even though steam was gone from the Class 1 roads by 1958-60 it still was active on a few shortlines and in the industrial settings well up into the late 60s. Therefore an old 0-6-0 or 0-8-0, either tender or tank type, could be appropriate. Alco RS1s and smaller SW and NW units were also becoming available. GP units like the GP7 or 9 were still new enough to not be on the used and surplus markets. Another candidate would be a 44 or 70 tonner and any of the Baldwin or Fairbanks Morse units. A lot of the earlier Baldwins were not that good, and a few roads referred to them as shop queens thus a number of them made it to shortline, logging, and industrial rails.

 

Well I do have a 2-8-0 New Haven that I could use. It doesn’t have a decoder and I wasn’t planning on using it anyway. I guess I could paint over the New Haven with enough weathering so you can’t read it and use it.

 

Drop the front truck off and make it an 0-8-0 and if it already has the switcher pilot with the footboards you are in business. Add the name of your mill to the tender, weather and grime it up so you can barely read the name and thats it. Enjoy.

 

I found a brand new Penn Central SW8. Maybe I could do some light weathering and just store it in the diorama. That way I could pull it out, clean it up and sell it if I had too.

I have to admit that I like your idea better. I was pretty narrow minded about having a diesel, but the more I think about it I think it would be pretty cool especially with the mill name.

Yes sir I like it, I think I got a winner here, that’s what I’m going to do Thanks. :thumbs_up: biggrin:

 

Well....

About 180 ex-Army Whitcomb 65-ton Centercabs were sold as military surplus right after WWII. Dirt cheap, they were the first 'new' diesels sold as military surplus and were snapped up by industrial railroads. Known as luggers, they became favorites of industrial operations.

Bethlehem Steel had a pretty big fleet - most went to 2-3 owners. You'll find lots of steel mill units in the rosters. And I was sent a picture of the grungiest, grimiest 65-tonner I've ever seen - abandoned at a steel plant. https://picasaweb.google.com/109206293832104065058/WhitcombSwitcherAtBenwood4142007#
http://www.northeast.railfan.net/diesel134.html shows many steel units.
The other great one I found was a 65-tonner on a little-known Pittsburgh shortline - the Allegheny & South Side. Gotta love those reporting marks. Found a great color picture and did my own model of it with my resin 65-tonner kit.

You can build my kit as a 'dummy' without a mechanism if you're just looking for a junker to use as scenery.

 

Wow, that’s realy interesting and I just took a look at you site. I love the “Allegheny & South Shore”. I don’t see handrails with your kits and I’m not much of painter or detailer.

This might be way over my head, but thanks for the info.

 

Okay I'm a Steelnation native otherwise known as a life time Pittsburgher. I also worked some really nasty jobs in the mills. Most steel mills were on the Monongahela river and Ohio Rivers not the Allegheny. The Allegheny had mills that produced specialty steel. These mills were very much smaller than the basic steel mills in the Mon Valley and did not produce steel from iron ore as did the basic mills. Most of the basic steel mills in the Mon Valley were owned by US Steel which also owned two railroads. The Union RR served all the mills while the Bessemer and Lake Erie connected Pittsburgh to the ports on Lake Erie. Other RR's connected to the Union RR at different points in the Mon valley. Jones and Laughlin Steel also had two large mills and each was served by its own railroad. The Pittsburgh works had the Monongahela Connecting RR while the Aliquippa works had the Aliquippa & Southern RR. These RR's were wholly owned subsidiaries of their parent steel company.

As for locomotives around 1960 you probably would see what were called 'dinkies'. These were basically steam engines of 0-4-0 configuration with no fire box. They would load up with steam from a stationary plant much like you would fill an air tank at a service station. They would then shuttle around the mill until the steam pressure dropped to where a refill was needed. You would also see small diesel switchers like SW 9,12, etc. But no mainline or road switchers. The B&LE did have mainline locomotives like GP9 or F7's but these were strictly road engines and not around the mills. If you are going to model a mill be sure to load up on small turnouts like #4's. Things were tight and curves were sharp in the mills.

 

For the most part (and it is up for debate), most steel industry historians would consider "Black Monday" to be the beginning of the end for the old era of the steel industry in America. This was Sep 19, 1977 and was the day that Youngstown Sheet & Tube (Youngstown, OH) announced the closure of the majority of its operation. Over the next decade, numerous steel operations throughout the U.S. closed, went bankrupt, and the industry as a whole was forever changed by the end of the 80's and early 90's. The Mon Valley outside of Pittsburgh was a very different place before all the steel mills closed and were torn down.

 

Yes, and each of those mills employed 8,000-11,000 people. Consider this, in it its heyday US Steel had mills in Donora, Clairton [coke works] Mckeesport [pipe & tube] West Mifflin [Irvin Works], Duquesne, Braddock [Edgar Thompson Works], Carrie Furnace and Homestead. J&L had Pittsburgh Works and Alliquippa. Other smaller companies had mills too. Today of th eUS Steel plants only Clairton, Edgar Thompson and Irvin Works are still operating but employ far less people than they once did. Over 100,000 good paying jobs vanished in about five years.

 

Oh yes I love to hear this stuff. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh along the Allegheny near the Verona Oakmont area and I left for California when I was 17 in 1966 so I missed a lot of that history of Pittsburgh.


I really wanted to model the Bessemer Bridge and Locks where I used to swim and boat with my grandfather who loved that river.


As far as the steel mill goes, I just happened to have a steel mill that BarstowRick gave me and I wanted to utilize it in my diorama. I don’t have any other place to put it so I decided to fit it in to my diorama. I know that there isn’t a steel mill in that section of river, but I’m looking at it as sort of a collage of things representing my early experiences in Pittsburgh.


It is not by any means a prototype of anything. I just have to fit things in the best I can as if I’m making a collage. There simply just isn’t enough room to put everything from my child hood into this tiny diorama. You have to think abstractly.


Years ago I wanted to do the three rivers and the point with all the bridges, but when I realized how big it would be I changed my mind and decide that I would have to be creative if I was to represent Pittsburgh.


Anyway as ridiculous as it is, I still want some things to be correctly represented. I do not want a junk UP AC4400CW sitting in an abandon Pittsburgh mill. I am interested in what Inkaneer said about specialty steel mills along the Allegheny. I know that my mill is not large enough to be a full steel producing mill, but do you think it could pass for a specialty mill?


This is what I got and I don’t necessarily have to use all the pieces as long it looks like some kind of mill.

 

Part of your logic has to be on 'how' a locomotive simply got abandoned. That means that a 'railroad' unit (PC, or CR, or really anybody) wouldn't be it. They may have been inept on keeping track of stuff but other than locomotive scrapyards, you wouldn't see a 'railroad' owned locomotive abandoned at a steel mill. Unless it was sold, secondhand, etc (think patch job) but you wouldn't see it otherwise.

You would see the mills locomotive abandoned. I can't read the steel company name on that beautiful model, but either a generic switcher or something lettered for the mill is appropriate.

You also have to figure out 'why' the locomotive gets abandoned rather than sold. Either it's a real piece of crap not worth fixing, or they kept it handy for reopening the site. The Whitcombs really fit the first category, and they have a reputation for getting just left out in the weeds. EMD's kept their value, usually got kept or resold. Old industrial units like Plymouths (think Bachmann MDT's), some older Alcos like S1's, and even the steam locomotive isn't a bad idea. I remember the lineup of retired Alcos at Copperweld steel in Warren, OH after the mill closed.

1970's Atlas had a Davenport side-rod switcher/critter that would also be ideal. Used the same mech as the 0-6-0 and the Plymouth, this is the kind of locomotive that would have been abandoned. And, in the N scale world, really isn't worth fixing either:
http://www.visi.com/~spookshow/davenport.html
Might find one on the auction sites, cheap.

Old GE industrial units also got that treatment. A 44-tonner is a little pricey to trash for this, and a little small, but the 65-tonners up to the 80-tonners were often used around industrial and steel mill properties. One of the survivors is a 65-tonner down at Bridgeville on the Ambridge property. There was/is an 80-ton GE abandoned in the weeds near Meadville, PA, and the legendary Atlas side-rod switcher in Titusville (Cyclops) was dragged out and 'preserved' on the OC&T:http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/oct_atlas.jpg

THAT'S the kind of stuff that just got left in the weeds to die!

I worked for National Forge in Irvine (specialty steel mill, electric remelt, still running today) and we had a 'fleet' of 3 25-ton Plymouths in grimy yellow. One survived to preservation at Lake Shore. The GE 25-tonner that replaced the Plymouths was replaced by a Trackmobile. One of the Plymouths was abandoned on a side track, minus the cab, for decades. Finally melted down. The red GE 25-tonner is the one I modeled, and got the deal put together to have it preserved as well. So there's lots of room in critterville for abandoned-on-the-doorstep industrial units.

 

You make a good point.. I’ve been avoiding the 44-ton because I have one coming to actually use in my yard. I don’t want to spend a lot of money that just use as fixture in my diorama.

I have a lot of time because I need to finish my yard first before I can do any more on my diorama. The yard has grown a little taking valuable space for my diorama. I already had to cut 2” off My Bessemer Bridge and I’m still jockeying around the diorama trying to fit it in. I’m just taking a little break from the yard.

Anyway I have the time to search for an old switcher on eBay. I bought a box of junk n-scale stuff on eBay for $7 a few years ago that had all kinds of stuff and I plan to use some of the cars from it in the mill as well. Unfortunately there weren’t any switchers. Maybe I’ll get luck and find a broken one cheap.

 

I guess I have an oddball view of what you are doing. It seems like you are trying to model a memory. The more you learn the farther away from your memory you get. You might be better off just ignoring prototype modelling and real steel mill practices.

Just place the structures get some track lines in place and start scenicing and weathering. Sometimes people get too obsessed with making it REAL and it gets farther away from what things felt like when you were a kid and you had no idea what those massive trains and buildings actually did.

As for what loco to use, I'd say use whatever you like. But keep in mind that you are always better off using a Atlas or a kato for switching. Maybe some of the newer good brands I haven't tried are also reliable, but a poor runner will ruin your train experience.

Here is another oddball idea- Since it's a switching layout you can probably get away with having a 7" radius oval on the layout or maybe test the loco on some track to see how it works. It would be kinda of cool to have a train running laps in, around, and through all those cool buildings.

It's worth just playing around and doing weird stuff. Besides, the railroad model police always have to get a search warrant before entering your premises. By then you can be on a plane to Bolivia with your prototype model violation tucked safely in the luggage compartment below.

 

Thanks, you really hit it right on the head. This is a diorama of my personal memories and I never intended to make a prototypical scene. And actually the only reason I brought up the 60’s was because it’s a modern layout with an abandon mill from the past. Whether it was the 60’s or 70s it really doesn’t matter.

As a kid I didn’t spend much time around the mills only drove by in the family car and it was always pointed out that someone we knew worked there. So while growing up, the steel mills were a big part of Pittsburgh and my child hood. Everybody talked about the mills and some of my childhood friends talked about working for the mills when they grew up.

I don’t know anything about the Monongahela River except that we crossed it on the way to Kenny Wood Park, but the Allegheny River was almost my back yard and I crossed it every day, I swam in it in the summers, and its where I spent time with my grandfather on his boat. So naturally I want the Allegheny river as my diorama.