A lot of it would go by truck in recent years. In the eighties a friend of mine had a fairly regular run where he'd take big rolls of paper from Colorado or the Pacific NW to the New York Times in Manhattan.
I used to work for a printing firm. We never received or shipped anything directly by rail. Everything received came by truck or container on chassis. We always shipped things out by truck because they usually went less that 300 miles to their destination or to a large postal facility located 75 miles away.
The rolls of paper sometimes came by rail if we needed to fill a huge order. They would be unloaded a siding and we would bring the rolls by truck. It was something that wasn't done all of the time and took a lot of time.
Many people don't know there is different types of newsprint based on what the press requires. The heat set press (used primarly for magazines and other glossy publications) needs to be cut to size. There was a special machine that unrolled the rolls and cut them to size and rolled them to another rolls. It was neat to watch. Newspapers use regualar newsprint that does not need to be cut to a specific size.
Just my
Will
Today, the outbounds will either be in containers or trucks.
If you're doing a book publisher, up into the 1970's or early 80's, you'd ship out in boxcars.
It would have to be a pretty sizable printing operation, such as a newspaper or publisher, to be receiving paper by rail. Specialty commercial printers don't do the volume, and at most might receive paper by the pallet from a distributor.
In the early 1980's I worked in a large industrial loft building that housed several major printing companies, and even though we had a rail siding into the building (on a long-dormant downtown street line) everything was brought in by truck. At the same time, the local newspaper was getting rolls of news print from Canada in boxcars.
And ink would never ship in a tank car. It would be delivered in pots wrapped up on pallets. It would be impossible to clean the tank, and in bulk, ink can be some pretty nasty stuff. Newspapers would get theirs "by the barrel".
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
I work in a printing plant. We receive rolls of paper in box cars as well as trucks. As Andy pointed out, we also ship out scrap paper in box cars as well. We are at the end of a long spur and our paper receiving is actually behind where we load the scrap. So when paper comes in, the first move is to pull the box cars spotted for scrap move them to the other track (we also have a second track on the property). Then spot the cars with rolls of paper on them, then put the scrap cars back. Some of our veteran employees remember when that second track was used for shipping out books in box cars. They were loaded by hand . It would take an entire shift to load one car. But now, all of our freight ships out in trucks. Even our intermodal leaves here on a truck and is taken to the yard in Chicago before being put on a train.
High-volume printing plants also generate lots of scrap paper. A couple of printing plants I've visited load scrap paper for recycling into an empty boxcar at the same dock where they receive rolls of paper for the web presses. The scrap car goes farthest in on the spur, because usually several cars of new paper will have to be unloaded and replaced before the scrap car is filled.
Cars used for roll-paper loading have clean interiors with smooth, snag-free walls and floors, and water-tight roofs. Cars used for scrap loading don't have to be that good.
So long,
Andy
Andy Sperandeo MODEL RAILROADER Magazine
A shop printing high volume magazines might have pallets of bundled magazines leaving in box cars. Though as stated earlier, today it would mostly go on trucks out the other side of the shop.
Hal
Your answer would depend a lot on the era, the size of the operation, and what was being produced.
Mostly, though, you're talking boxcars -- bulk paper, binding materials (glue, cloth, metal strips, metal coils), equipment repair parts. It takes a lot of ink to fill a tank car. A smaller business probably wouldn't have that kind of volume.
Printed materials could leave by rail or truck; an interesting modeling opportunity or an operations challenge, depending on how you model it.
You might also occasionally have a flat car with a big piece of machinery on it -- a new printing press or binding machine (or the old one being hauled out),
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
Generally rolls of paper in boxcars. Maybe a tank car of ink. In the olden days, the printed material would ship out in express cars, but today it would be trucked.
My publishing plant, the building on the left gets paper in 50' plug door boxes:
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
What commodities would be shipped in or shipped out of a printing company? What kind of freight cars would deliver in or out those types of goods?