Hi All

I am looking for historical material on shop layout for optimizing shop output. I remember a shop layout for the steps of rebuilding a steam driven air compressor with dedicated stations for doing work. If anyone has any leads for source material I would appreciate it.

Robby Peartree

Are you discussing a locomotive shop, a machine shop, fabrication shop or a maintenance shop? How big is the shop? How many overhead doors and where are they located? I have shop layout diagrams for locomotive shops from a 1947 Locomotive Cyclopedia which apply to very large buildings on the order of a major railroad facility.

Steve

Dear Steve

I will look at Google books for that reference. What I am after is something that explains to non shop people how machine placement in a shop can influence shop output and therefore should be considered in the design of said shop. But almost any shop plan will do as we can develop a text from there.

Robby Peartree

Here is google books:

http://books.google.com/books/about/194 ... WhZwEACAAJ

"No ebook available"

I can scan my own copy and post it here - but is a locomotive shop what you're wanting or machine shop, maintenance, fabrication . . . it makes a difference.

Here is a book that covers machine shop layout:

http://books.google.com/books?id=W2YEDW ... ut&f=false

Steve

Hi Robby:

I'd suggest Railroad Shop Practice, Methods, and Tools by Frank Stanley. It is available as a reprint from Lindsay technical books for under $20.00. The practices described within are from c.1910-1920.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks11/rrshop/index.html

There are a few others I have seen over the years that may be helpful, but I don't recall titles. Perhaps they are specific articles from the American Machinist, which is also a great source of material.

Hope this is helpful.

Ditto the ; Locomotive Cyclopedias

If you want the Lindsay book get it quick, he is shutting the company down.

Robby, I have worked in the shops of 5 railway museums. Some were just awful to work in. Others were much better. With more info at what you are aiming for, I may be able to give some pointers.

Hello everyone

Put yourself in a short line scenario. You are going to build a new shop for your railroad. You have to all of the different types of locomotive work to accomplish within it. Is there anything out there that gives the designer an idea of how much space is needed and proper machine layout for expedience on many types of work. It is easy to say we have space here or there let us put this here or there but in the end does having the machine there make us more efficient? In a nut shell is there a basic text book on shop layout and design?

An example I am thinking of is the woodworking shop on the NN. The doors on the shop are laid out with the machines in mind when large pieces need to be cut. You simply open doors and you can cut pieces that are larger than the interior space would allow. Someone laid out the building for efficient work and minimum foot print on the property.

I have seen copper smelter shops and the copper refinery shop in El Paso as well as worked in the shop at Grand Canyon Railway and the Nevada Northern. I am curious if there is a book describing how to set up a machine shop for the best efficiency.

Respectfully,

Robby Peartree

I'd look a lot more at how you are going to move big heavy stuff around and load it in and out of the machinery before worrying about what machine goes where. If all your machine tools are under the same craneway, anywhere under the craneway that allows for elbow room and rigging room combined will be as good as any other.

How are you going to get buried stuff out? Think about removing wheels or trucks from locomotives. Drop pit or jacks and cribbing or lift the engine off entirely? Drop pit is great, jack and crib not as good if the hulk can stay where it is until it gets wheels of some kind - repaired originals or shop trucks - under it again to make it mobile. If you can lift and move the hulk away with a crane....again, anywhere under the craneway is as good as any other.

So, a lot is entirely dependent on your rigging capabilities.

Things were very different in 1850 than they were in 1950. What era?

There's a lot to be considered, but a magical roadmap of what machine goes where in any shop at any time under all circumstances isn't available anywhere.

dave

That's just the beginning.

Precision machine tools can't be placed just anywhere they happen to fit and appear to help product flow.

Large machine tools must have solid beds - you can't slap them onto two different slabs of concrete just because the machines happen to fit there. You'll end up twisting the beds and losing the precision that they are capable of as the slabs float with changes in temperature and moisture.

Also, precision machine tools such as O.D. grinders are very sensitive to changes in air temperature. You can't even think of holding tight tolerances on a large O.D. grinder and have it near an open door in winter time. I've spent hours chasing dimensions in shops that had no temperature control as the grinders heated up and expanded and coolant came up to operating temperature. As soon as a door opens and cold winter air hits the grinder, your in trouble.

Unless you have an unlimited budget, you better seek advice.

Steve

The other thing is that shortline railroad shops don't need to worry about "product flow" since what they do is all custom work on an as needed basis to whatever dimension is necessary to match up with other worn components within a very broad tolerance relative to other kinds of precision machining......nothing like gearing up to produce a few hundred thousand of identical widgets.

dave

Where possible, it is good practice to keep precision machine tools in a separate part of a shop, away from processes such as welding, grinding, woodwork, and painting. The dirt and grit from those things aren't the best thing to expose precision machinery to.

Processes like woodwork, sandblasting, and spray painting should be in confined areas and may be covered by health and safety regulations.

Be sure your machine shop has clear crane or forklift access to all the bigger machines, that can take workpieces that are too heavy for one man to handle safely.

Of course, the space allocations, types of machines, and ideal arrangement will vary depending on how serious the work to be performed will be- a small shop for running maintenance will be very different from a back shop.

Here is an excellent article on railroad shop design from 1889:

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/rsshop.Html

Of course, modern machine tools differ, but the basic principles still apply.

A couple of years ago, an excellent series of articles appeared in Railroad Model Craftsman, which studied standardized diesel shop designs from General Motors. There are lessons for all of us in these designs, whether we are running modern diesels or ancient steamers and wooden cars.

Hope this helps a little!

Steve Hunter

Hi All

Perhaps there needs to be another approach to the question. Does someone have machine tool lists for a round house and a back shop? I want to work on the idea that a roundhouse and a backshop do completely different levels of work and therefore their layout and machine capabilities are different. I agree with the need for an overhead crane to reach all parts of a shop as it makes moving parts a lot easier. I understand that in the work on reading 2101 for the Freedom train they dewheeled the locomotive in a day due to the use of the overhead crane in the old Reading shops. It made quick work of this job.

On the subject of shop floors.

The best shop floor I ever saw was an end grain up wood floor in the Construction and repair department at the phelps dodge copper refinery in El Paso. Unfortunately the floor was filled with concrete as employees would not close the windows before they went home and the floor swelled.

More Latter

Robby Peartree

Don't know if this will help, but below are some links to a railfan site for the famous East Broad Top of Pennsylvania. This is a narrow gauge road that survived into 1956 and into preservation. Money issues and other things have kept it quiet this year, but for the time being, the buildings and their tools survive. Note that this is essentially a backshop for a shortline railroad, and other than size, would also be a secondary shop on a larger road. At that, the EBT actually built most of its freight cars there, so in some ways this is an unusual facility.

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/Shops/top.html

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/Shops/

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/Shops/info.html

General shop interior layouts; don't bother clicking on the diagram to view individual machines, for some reason the links don't work, all you get is a bunch of text gibberish. Almost all the tools are in their respective shops (machine, blacksmith, etc); the roundhouse itself in this case has very little if anything in the way of machine tools in it. On the other hand, such a building would normally be for "running" repairs, much like a garage; hand tools and things like cranes to lift parts would be the most that would be needed there. Actual part manufacture or repair would be done either in the adjacent machine shop or even with parts from another location entirely.

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/Shops/swings.html

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/Shops/newings.html

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/Shops/nwbldgs.html

General home page:

http://www.spikesys.com/EBT/