Limestone

 Limestone is a key ingredient in a multitude of products. Where I live limestone products are a major source of car loading from Winchester, especially in the steam era.

Limestone itself, in dimensional form is made into blocks, tiles, shingles,  and slabs for building.

In powdered form it’s an ingredient in cement.

As aggregate it’s used in producing concrete.

It’s used in Steel making.

Glass making.

Paper and pulp

Plastics and paint

It’s heated to make quick-lime and hydrated lime for various industrial uses.

It’s used as a soil treatment

Animal feed

Water treatment

And various consumer products.

Plants processing limestone produce several different lime stone products,

 -SO-

On your layout one industry can generate multiple carloadings.

If you know John King, he models the B&O Shenandoah Valley Branch. His layout is set in 1949. On his layout Winchester, VA., is the major town on his layout. The lime stone industry is a major part of John's operation. I’m lucky enough to get a lot of opportunities to run on John’s layout.

This gives me the opportunity to steal a lot of good ideas from his layout. 

On John’s layout the town of Millville is on the north end of the layout. In Millville John has three separate Limestone industries. Two that produce limestone for the Steel industry and one that produces rock wool.

Now rock wool is generally produced in dedicated plants. Rock wool as insulation would be a major component of home construction in, say, the 1950’s. 

Rock wool insulation requires limestone, and steel slag, and a heat source . Generally the plants used gas to heat the limestone, but AGAIN, where’s the fun in that. My Rock wool kilns will be coal fired. 

So inbound hoppers of coal, steel mill slag. Boxcars of packaging. Limestone comes in by conveyor. Outbound loads are boxcars of rock wool, and hoppers of coke from the kilns.

The coke could be fed back into the kilns, but again, where’s the fun in that?

John’s lime stone plants are not very deep, just long, so long-thin areas on the benchwork would work. John’s plants are usually stepped, the upper most spurs are receiving and coal dumps. In front of this, and directly adjacent to the mill building are a series of numbered doors where boxcars are loaded. Stepping down, and forward is a track with an overhead loading structure that loads covered hoppers, then finally in front of that, and stepped down again, a track for loading gondolas of containers with processed limestone for steel mills.

So open hoppers, boxcars, covered hoppers, and gondolas. Finally adjacent to these mills is a scale track for weighing outbound loads.

John’s limestone industry is cleverly designed, loaded with operation and procedures. It is fun to switch without being a nuisance operation. And it utilizes areas on a layout that often go unused, or hard to fill with conventional industries.

Limestone industries compliment a coal hauling layout and its use in the steel industry. I forgot to mention that crushed limestone powder is used in coal mines to keep coal dust down and prevent coal dust explosions. It’s delivered to mines and tipples in covered hoppers. I modeled this on AIR1, but never knew about the production end of the limestone industrial process. Now I know.