The yard is I'm modeling is the just off to the East of the intersection between Harbor Ave, Admiral Way and the West Seattle Freeway, and yea the steel works is the Nucor one, thanks for letting me know what they do.
I'll probobly be bugging you a bit for your local knowladge as a courier you'll have a good idea of what raillinked industeries produce what, Google streetview is a good resorce but only if the line runs close to a road, I combine it with Google Earth tho so I can get an idea about land heights and measuring headings and distances and you can only get info on a sparce number of industeries although you can find every eating place.
Andy
OK, that's a Nucor Steel plant. Grew up just up the hill from them, could see the glow of the furnaces at night from our house. I've actually made deliveries there numerous times.
It was built in 1905 as Seattle Steel by Henry Piggot, founder of PACCAR (makers of railroad cars, Kenworth trucks, etc). Bought by Bethlehem Steel in 1930, sold in 1985. Gone through a couple of owners since then, currently Nucor.
They melt down scrap metal and make primarily rebar with some flat, round and angle stock as well. Trucks with rebar loads leaving and trucks with scrap metal coming in would add to the realism.
They do have some super tight radius track. Once or twice I've been delivering there where a loco was shoving cars past the guard shack. Looked the the gondola was gonna fall off the track, it was so tight!
They have two GE 44-tonners for motive power, painted green. Rolling stock is gondolas. All are old cars bought from a variety of owners, so they're in an array of different paint schemes and designs. No two are alike. All are seriously beaten up.
The 44-tonners work on the plant moving cars around, they also go off the property to get loaded cars and return empties.
They travel along the northern-most tracks (right next to the West Seattle Freeway) to the storage tracks north of the Freeway and west of the large container yard. You can see the gondolas lined up there in Google Earth.
They also travel to a storage yard on the Duwamish River to get scrap that has come in by barge or truck. Look directly east of Nucor, south a bit on E Marginal Way S where it intersects with S Idaho St. You'll see a small yard with mountains of scrap metal and some tracks. In fact, in Google Earth you can see one of the green 44-tonners there with gondolas ready to be loaded.
There get there on the BNSF tracks that wrap around the hill (called Pigeon Point). The BNSF tracks service the container yard and a couple of customers south of the E Marginal Way scrap yard.
In the plant itself, the north large building is where the melting furnaces are. South of that is the scrap storage area, it has a roof over part of it. Gantry cranes on elevated tracks move the scrap into the melting room. Hard see, but there are tracks on the north and south side of the scrap heaps, that's where loaded gons would go to be unloaded.
New steel comes out the west side of the melting room, the north-south oriented gantry moves it to the green-roofed building to the south.
Those buildings are where the steel is rolled, cut and processed. Gons or flatcars of new steel would come out of there headed out to a local classification yard. Trucks with new steel would also load up in those buildings.
Todd
) but I can't for the life of me remember what they were called. But I do know they are on there somewhere.