I used to work at one of the by-products plants here in Birmingham. The size is not the same as ballast. The lumps are generally between a softball and football in size. As for the color, it depends on coal it is coked from. Alabama coal leaves you with a darker coke than PA or KY coal. Generally though I would say to start with grimy black and lighten it just a bit. I do not have a color photo unfortunately.

I can tell you that black coke hoppers or gons should weather with a grayish black dust, ask anyone who has seen one of my trucks...My wife hated that place when I would come home with a nasty truck.

As for Bee-hive ovens, if you are modeling steel mills, iron furnaces, or coke ovens you will not be dealing with these unless you were modeling pre-1920 or so. This is the time period when the bee-hives were completely replaced by bee-hives. The "modern" ovens came about during that time.

If more information were available about the Mary Lee, Alabama Consolidated Co. and Sloss-Sheffield railroad equipment pre-diesel era, I would be tempted to model the Mary Lee instead of the Southern Rwy. Very interesting railroad.

Jason Greene
Birmingham, AL

If you can't fix it with a hammer, you've got an electrical problem


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Right, CCS is custom Intermountain tooling. DPH also has a
line of custom tooled S scale models. I believe it was DPH
who had the Viking roof made for the Red Caboose 1937 box cars.
I wish more retailers would take such a pro-active approach to
the hobby!

Tim O'Connor

Jerry,

AFAIK, Centrailia is still owned by Des Plaines Hobbies. See:

http://www.desplaineshobbies.com/store/

Jim Brewer
Glenwood MD

Richard's response is exactly correct. While the dies are at the manufacturer, they are still owned by Ron/CCC and they need their permission to run them.� It's a shame they are no longer available, since I would like to have a couple of them...

Bill Daniels

Tucson, AZ

I'd agree about the gray scale, and certainly it isn't metallic at
all, but to call the typical coke sheen "silvery" seems about right to
me. It is most certainly not a flat gray. Not sure how to model it
believably.

Tony Thompson

Actually I think it is just a case of allowing Intermountain to do the marketing. And I know for sure that some of the CCC tooling was NOT done by Intermountain since I've actually seen the tooling for their SOO line caboose at a highly regarded west coast manufacturer. I won't disclose the maker since I don't know if Ron would appreciate my disclosing who the maker was, even though their products are synonymous with high quality plastic components.

Bill Daniels

Actually I think it is just a case of allowing Intermountain to do the marketing. And I know for sure that some of the CCC tooling was NOT done by Intermountain since I've actually seen the tooling for their SOO line caboose at a highly regarded west coast manufacturer. I won't disclose the maker since I don't know if Ron would appreciate my disclosing who the maker was, even though their products are synonymous with high quality plastic components.

Bill Daniels

Tim, you wrote: Right, CCS is custom Intermountain tooling.

That's unclear to me. Do you mean CCS is selling cars made by

InterMountain or the other way around? InterMountain has CCS cars on its website.

Jerry Michels

So... you think a dark gray ballast (basalt rock) from AZ-Rock would do?
Is HO scale ballast about the right size for coke?

(I'm asking because I just finished my B&O O-27 gondola w/ coke containers
and I was wondering if I should just leave them empty...)

Tim O'Connor

Jerry:
Coke is usually a light grey, silvery color, at least from the old
beehive or the more modern non-recovery systems (you didn't specify era). I
am less sure about coke from a byproduct plant.

Eric Hiser
Phoenix, AZ

I wouldn't say silvery... it's not shiney at all, and nowhere near that light in color. I remember handling it for my neighbor's forge when I was a kid. If I had to match it for color, I'd say somewhere between Floquil Grimy Black and a photographer's 18% gray card (anyone still use those things?)

If I had to build a load, I'd use scale coal or ballast and spray paint it with a dead flat dark gray., maybe a dark gray automotive primer from a spray bomb.