Operation Ideas (Industries)

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am in a armchair brooding about switching of various industries. I have in some cases have learned about a few industries. However more questions persist.

Such as, a Brewery... How many cars (Type, loads etc) will it need to produce? Or perhaps a factory that makes finished goods... or a bakery? I find myself looking over products in a attempt to figure out what it took to make that product and how best to model it in HO.

Perhaps others had the same lack of information. I would hate to shove a 50 foot boxcar up to the syrup plant and just load maple syrup. I would like to be able to run the needed materials for the product. Dont laugh but I find myself looking at labels as well as parts lists of different products.

Thanks in advance for any ideas

Lee

[dknelson]

Here in Milwaukee the breweries were obviously a major traffic source (I say were in the past tense since only Miller is really active now). On the south side of town, served by both the Milw Road and the C&NW where huge grain elevators for grain, malt, and perhaps hops. These were far from any brewery; this was for storage. There were similar grain elevators north of town, and the breweries also have grain elevators right on site as well.
The breweries themsleves got covered hoppers of grain (earlier they got 40 foot boxcars) and most had ways of unloading under cover to avoid contamination. They shipped bottled beer in insulted plug door boxcars - I think someone makes a Miller car actually. Presumably the empty bottles also came by rail, maybe in the same cars, which presumably had load restraining devices tailored to the purpose. Interestingly they also shipped broken glass by rail ion open gons (maybe also old hoppers?) to a place that separated it by color -- again that place was far from any brewery. The tracks sparkled going into that place from bits of glass that escaped the bottom of the gondola! A glass recycling center would make an interesting and colorful model.
I believe brewers received can stock my rail -- flat steel or flat aluminum for making cans. I do not know if it came pre printed or not but they print the can obviously while it is still flat. Can stock was shipped in clean boxcars.
Most breweries also shipped waste products, grain hulls and depleted hops and such by rail, The Schlitz brewery owned a huge duck farm south of Milwaukee and the ducks were fed with waste products from the brewing process. Then they would ship the duck manure to a place that received waste products from the cranberry growing process and combine them to make a highly effective fertilizer.
Milwaukee was also the home of many companies that made bottle washing equipment to service the beer industry, and some of those factories had rail service.
Presumably printed paper labels could also come by rail (truck more likely in recent times).
Back in the very early days breweries used horses for local deliveries and I suppose it is not impossible that they received hay and oats by rail. Again the Schlitz brewery owned a large farm on the north side of town where its horses were raised-- it is now a nature center. The biggest breweries therefore were sort of like Ford Motor -- they tried to be self contained industries.
Dave Nelson

[joseph2]

The grain elevator where I work used to have a large feed mill.Inbound covered hoppers and boxcars of feed ingredients,plus an occasional tank car of molasas.Outbound covered hoppers,boxcars,insulated boxcars and old reefers of feed.

[jrbarney]

Lee,
In the early 1960s, just down the road and tracks from the Colorado Railroad Museum, Coors was building their brewery in Golden Co. (No, the town wasn't named that because of the beer.) The building initially had open sides. As each glass lined tank was installed in its cell, the exterior wall was added. Obviously, you might want to show only one or two open cells. A (railroad mounted ?) crane would be required and one of the glass lined tanks would make a unique flat car load. (Making the glass lined tanks was how Coors got into the ceramics business, an industry you wouldn't necessarily associate with beer. They also made electronic substrates and missile nose cones.)
If I remember correctly, they combined the effluent from the bathrooms of a nearby amusement park with the effluent from their brewery, before dumping the mixture in the creek. Depending upon the legislative time period you're modeling, a waste treatment plant is another facility you might add.
Who knows, perhaps Andy can use this thread to inspire an MR article showing all of the tie-ins for the brewing industry.

[coalminer3]

Mmmm....beer!

Coors is so busy they have their own locomotives. I remember being out there and seeing lots of grain cars (covered hoppers) coming in and lots of insulated boxcars moving the finished product out. The neat part about this that you don't have to fool with loads and empties.

Meat processing plants are another possibility, depending on the era you model. There you can see stock cars, refrigerator cars, insulated and noninsualted boxcars, tank cars, hide cars, etc. (There was a recent thread about this on this forum).

If you are modeling "back in the day," remember that many industries used coal; so here's a way to have coal cars on your road w/o having to model a mine and everything that goes with it.

Think about fabricating plants or distributing facilities for other large companies. I remember a Bethlehem steel distribution facility near where I grew up that received flat cars (remember those) and gons with different steel shapes; agai neat stuff to model. also cars, trucks, and farm equipment all used to be shipped by rail (in box cars); again you get away from the loads empties problem.

I had a friend who worked for a food distribution operation that wholesaled to large chains. They got foodstuffs in box cars; "everything from peanut butter to toilet paper," he used to say, along with refrigerator cars and insulated boxcars of perishables.

How about a team track - they handled all kinds of cars - we had some where I grew up and they were an endless source of interest . High point was always around Christmas with carloads of Christmas trees down from the north country.

Videos and DVDs, and picture books like Morning Sun books are excellent sources of information about rail-served industries and the cars they handled. The key here is to study what's in the background of the video and the pictures because that's the info you need. Also, many railroads published shipper's guides, industry lists, etc. These often turn up at train shows and are relatively inexpensive because people don't know what useful information's inside. Different RR historical societies have also reprinted this stuff, too.

Hope this helps - this thread has a lot of potential value.

wor safe

[scotttmason]

Coal still turns up in interesting urban locations. In Madison, WI the university has a small coal fired plant right downtown. The main utility plant, monster brick building and other buildings, is further east on the line and may be natural gas fired. Good kits available for this kind of small structure. The university plant has (working from memory) siding with space for 2 cars, one more across street, bottom unloading, large coal pile and loader adjacent to plant.
Breweries offer a lot of interest as they evolve over time and the rails crisscross through tight areas with mixed truck, train traffic. Have one slated for my layout.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jrbarney


If I remember correctly, they combined the effluent from the bathrooms of a nearby amusement park with the effluent from their brewery, before dumping the mixture in the creek.

Is that how Golden got its name? FRED

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am humbled by the responses here on this thread. It is apparent that there is a need to understand various aspects of industries. I would also like MR to consider a series based on not just industries and operation but possibly how to use different types of cars. Perhaps it will help the hobby a great deal.

I am modeling a Sugar Refinery and would like to contribute what I have learned to this thread. Sugar Cane is grown in the deep south and Cuba as well as other areas of the world that is suitable for Cane. It is cut in 6 inch lengths and piled into a ship and sent north to Baltimore.

On arrival the cane is offloaded. I do not know the exact nature yet of the plant there, however Boxcars are needed to ship finished sugar in "Totes" or as boxed product. The Totes are large bags that go to the commerical industries. Such as bakerys, distillerys, food processors, candy works (Please dont think "Wonka") possibly to chocolate. While the boxed product is shipped to food distribution for grocery stores, resturants etc

The process to make sugar requires that a kiln be fed with "Milk of Lime" and Carbon (Coke from coal mines and steel works) and fuel oil or coal to fire the burners. These arrive in gondolas with LCL containers or covered hoppers. Also there are tank cars to deliver the Chemicals needed (Sodas etc) for the sugar making process and more tank cars to deliver molasses to the industries mentioned above. Also pellets of "worn out" molasses are used by covered hopper to agricultural elevators or as cattle feeds. Sometime in the late 40's box cars of animal meal from the slaughter houses have been used. So far we covered most different types of cars here.

I used a variety of websites to learn more such as www.monitorsugar.com of Michigan. I tried to build a sensible switch list to work the refinery and the prototype refinery has handled millions of tons a year. Through a theory of "Selective Compression" I ship about 8 Loads of sugar a day from this industry to any other industry that needs sugar. I have found that from cane to finished product of sugar, molassas, and cattle feed etc consumes all but 15% of the cane. So I end up shipping about 4 or 5 loads of each by product in addition to the sugar.

Sugar beets are very similar in processing.

I may want to step to a different track regarding coal. My family used Oil during ww2. Most had coal that was delivered to the home by dump truck and carefully unloaded into a conveyer that fed the Home's basement coal bunker. Coal was and still is a vital part of our country. When I see a unit train of 130 coal cars, I see about 4 cars an hour consumed by the power plant's boiler (Each boiler I was told) suddenly the mangnitude of railroading becomes clear.

Let us see if we can learn more from each other. I wish all of you the best fun in the hobby.

Lee

[leighant]

HighIron2003ar: I was going to send you some sugar information, with some pictures I can't post on this forum, but your account is not set up so I can contact you. This forum is set up so you can give the forum your email address. It is NOT accesible publicly on the forum, someone can send you an email THROUGH the forum without having your address, then you can respond only if you want to with that person.

I have had a couple of odd covered hoppers for 30 years trying to find a prototype. Finally saw a picture in a Model Railroader from the 1950s of that type of hopper used for Holly Sugar Co. Sugar is a good commodity for my layout, but the only real sugar operation in Texas in the 1950s was Imperial at Sugarland, and they didn't use those covered hoppers. And Imperial is associated with the Missouri Pacific, not the Santa Fe. However there was a sugar operation in the 1920s on the Santa Fe at Booth, Texas, about 10 miles southeast of Rosenberg. I found pictures in Fort Bend County Sesquicentennial 1822-1972 (local history pictorial book) of the factory and sugar cane cars of BOOTH OPEN KETTLE SUGAR. I can imagineer that it was still operating in 1957 with the sugar covered hoppers. The pun here is that the reporting marks for the car would be BOKX but the BOKX cars ("boxcars") will actually be covered hoppers. Meanwhile, I used the design of the 1920s Booth car and built my cousin's kid who lived in Sugarland a G gauge model of a cane car lettered for Sugarland.

"leighant"

[Anonymous]

leighant,

I made the appropriate changes to the member info so that emails can be sent. I was not aware of a problem until now. Thank you for assisting me with that issue.

I wanted also to express that it is good that you finally found something for those hoppers to run. I was motivated by a covered hopper in the B and O Rail museum's collection at www.BORail.org which was painted for Domino's Sugar of Baltimore. I picked this industry to model because it offered much operation in a 2 x 8 foot space.

Someday the layout room will be finished and hopefully there will be similar modules such as the Brewery based on a earlier post by dknelson and others that I have learned much from. thanks to the MR forums and related material.

There is a GATS train show coming up soon, and I will certianly look for some of these books as other models that are out of production.

My next projects in line will be a Distellery, Dairy Processor, Creamery, and a Food Distribution hub including a icing station. And I will be adding some seafood houses to ship crabs, oysters tuna from fishermen etc.

I hope to have a layout that has industries that are dependant on each other for the daily bread. (Pun?)

I wanted to ask if anyone has a way of picking out car fleets (or even a single car etc) to service these places? The post by leighant taught me that there must be a few orphan cars that needs work to do. In fact, I have a few pulpwood cars for a future papermill, however is there a way to use the pulpwood in a different form? (or I can interchange em as bridge traffic but these cars look well enough to earn revenue)

Again, thank you for your time.

Lee

[GerFust]

I second HighIron2003ar's suggestion that MR have a series about real industries (current and past) and how they operation. Trains Mag has some of this, but we really need more in MR with modeling suggestions.

Michigan State University also generates its own power, and has two stub-end sidings for incoming coal loads along the power plant. I presume ash is sent out by rail as well, but have only seen coal hoppers here. It's kind of a bummer, really, no matter how bad the weather or how badly the power grid fails MSU still has power and we keep working. Never any unexpected days off!

This forum has greatly reduced the need for research. My thread on meat packing plants proved very beneficial and corrected some of my erroneous assumptions, as well as helped me place my plant into a specific era when rail was a larger player in the industry than it is now. Thanks for all the great prototype information on all these inudustries!

[Anonymous]

GerFust,

I remember your wonderful meat packing thread. I dont want to spin this thread away from the Topic, but I would like to see every business and home in the USA capable of producing self sufficient power in case the national grid goes down.

At present I have plans to install a natural gas genset which will run my house in power outages for as long there is gas pressure on the line. With the recent problems and the ongoing terror war, there may be a need to prepare.

The fly ash may be shipped by pipe using air pressure to a offsite location for further processing. Certianly your university would resell the a***o make a bit of money.

Good Luck, Lee

[dknelson]

MR has had some fine articles on real industries, such as Jim Hediger's two part series on the auto industry just a few years back. Also note the Walthers books on steel, logging, the auto industry, and waterfronts. There was a good article on the glass business but I cannot recall if that was in MR or in MRP.
One place to look ... now don't laugh at me here .. is in the children's book section of your library, where books of the "all about" type sometimes feature a business or industry. Some of us old timers remember when some industries would create 15 to 30 minute movies about their businesses that were aimed at young school audiences (so did the railroad industry by the way) -- wonder if any of those old industrial films still exist? From time to time you'd even see them before feature films in a movie house, believe it or not.
Also do not ignore the highly specialized magazine business -- most industries have their own magazines that often feature good info on suppliers and customers.
I guess my point is that often the info is out there but it is not necessarily aimed at model railroaders or found where model railroaders are looking for it.
Dave Nelson

[coalminer3]

Also take a look at manufacturer's websites. There's a lot of good material on those, too.

work safe

[Anonymous]

MR has did an article in the past few years on what cars go where, and what they carry to each industry... However, my search in the index has not turned up anything... I'll have to leaf through the pile at home! (It may have been a sidebar to another article about a layout).

Andrew

[Anonymous]

dknelson,

No one is laughing. I am thinking the very same, but was too manly to actually post that here. It did put a smile on my day to see that some one actually mentioned childrens books. I remember surreptiously using those at the library.

I will contribute a bit about Alcohol. Specifically Segrams and some brands of whiskey and brandy. There is a Segrams outfit in the Baltimore area that actually recieved alcohol by ship via pipeline from the dock several times a month.

This is then through a very strict and thorough process turned into different bottles of whiskeys, brandys etc. Which is then shipped out on trucks and box cars. I have also seen ships with cement, cotton, and other commodities being offloaded in bulk via crane or pipe to the various industries that use these to (words, many words) further process for finished product.

Also I looked into the elevators and othr bulk industries and discovered that these are for export. They have a yard just for them and it is packed with grain, corn, salt, wheat, flour etc etc. I think a Port is a wonderful anchor to a layout.

I will also try to connect the port with the interior mountain areas for coal, gravel lumber (from logs etc) on one side and use another connection for agricultural products and some commodities from the west. Hope fully there will be enough for each of the 3 rr lines to do on my layout.

Lee

[dknelson]

we are all manly men here Lee. It's not our fault we hang around the children's book section of the library. Dave Nelson

[coalminer3]

Re: Highiron's post. That explains the guys lying under the pipe bridges and tank cars (LOL). I recall seeing tank car loads of wine on NYC freights passing through Harmon. So there's another prototype for you.

John Allen, of course, was probably the one to most fully exploit the idea of depicting a port on a layout, although many contemporary modelers have followed him. You don't even have to model all of a port area to generate traffic. George Selios's Franklin and South Manchester is a good example of that.

If I were looking for a prototype idea to follow I'd think about the Western Maryland's installation at Port Covington; relatively small compared to some, but full of modeling possibilities. Car floats are also good, too.

Maritme influence extends inland too. For example, in this part of the country C&O blocked loaded coal cars into "Tide" coal and "Lake" coal. Tide coal went east to be dumped into colliers for export, barges for coastal shipping, or for consumption by industries over there. Lake coal went west, either for dumping or for consumption in steel mills. So, all loaded coal cars are not the same. These loads were set out in different areas of the yard at Qunnimont, for example so trains could make an easy pickup. It kept the yardmaster and clerk busy, especially when there were two road jobs around along with mine shifters. But that's a story for another time.

I'm enjoying this thread - keep it going.

work safe

[Anonymous]

I thank you for your wonderful input. I stumbled onto www.surcose.com (Let me know if this doesnt work) for my sugar refinery and actaully learned too mu***o post here. But there were wonderful tidbits such as typical sugar production is running about 10 tons an hour. And Molasses about 15 tons an hour and to fire the power plant you needed 320 tons of coal for 3 plants. a day. (Now I need to find a space for my coal cars to deliver to this place.) (The WM and C and O did coal to Baltimore as well as NW (Or NS?) by ship or barge as well.

I am hunting for similar sites associated with Brewing and distilling and I have not yet found one worthy of posting here. But I welcome any sites that you all may have used in your explorations on these industries. However I have had the pleasure of finding a rather complete listing of industries dependant on the sugar refinery (Including a Syrup works yay!) If you like, I can post a list here.

Lee

[jrbarney]

Lee,
Oops. you had a finger slip there in the URL. It works much better if you spell correctly, i.e. <http://www.sucrose.com>.That sure is a "sweet" site for information on the sugar industry, but I didn't like the pop-up ad that I had to clear before getting to the home page.
Bob

[Anonymous]

Ty for the correction, I use a firewall from norton and adaware which usually stops popups. And trojans etc.

I apologize if anyone experienced a similar problem, i encourage patience. The site with associated links is worth the hassle.

I will keep looking for the other industires and If I find any that will be good for this thread I will add it here.

Good Luck all.

Lee

[CBQ_Guy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by HighIron2003ar
...I find myself looking over products in a attempt to figure out what it took to make that product and how best to model it in HO.

Perhaps others had the same lack of information. I would hate to shove a 50 foot boxcar up to the syrup plant and just load maple syrup. I would like to be able to run the needed materials for the product. Dont laugh but I find myself looking at labels as well as parts lists of different products.
Lee

Lee,

I do the same thing, and will be carrying it a bit further. I model the CB&Q (Burlington) in a rural location mostly, in 1969. This dictates to a point what type and road name rolling stock I'll need -- mostly Burlington logically. This followed by a fair amount of cars from the railroads I'll be interchanging with, and then followed by a mix of cars from other roads or parts of the country to round out the through trains, etc. I have been buying rolling stock, then, based on these needs and also influenced by planned industries on the layout, over the past dozen years, but...

...in addition, lets say by way of example, I will be modeling a fertilizer plant. Yeah, they ship out bags of it in boxcars and steel drums, too. No problem there. However, I will need to study and find out what raw materials they use to in the production of their finished product. Then I need to find out what type of car that material would be shipped in, AND I want to take it a step further to find out WHERE in the country (or Canada or Mexico, too, if applicable) the material came from, AND then learn what railroad serves that area. This will then determine what type cars AND what road(s) I have yet to purchase to round out my rolling stock needs. May be tedious to some, but lots of fun to me.

Hope this is helpful to you.

Take care,

[leighant]

I got a lot at my local library looking at bound volumes of "Business Week" from the 1950s. Some from the articles but mostly from the ads.

A.E.Staley (tankcar model by Intermountain) of Decatur, Illinois shipped custom-engineered STARCH to kraft paper mills for stiffening corrugated cardboard.

Armstrong Cork manufactured adhesives used to bond layers of plywood.

Swift & Co. received whale oil offloaded from a ship to tankcar (GATX ad)

Stauffer Chemical had a plant in Houston area for regenerating "spent" sulphuric acid used in refining process, had a fleet of tankcars for two way shipments- "water-white" clean acid to refineries and "spent" acid back to regenerating plant.

Hooker Chemical caustic & chlorine used in pulping for paper industry.

Article that Gulf Oil shipped anhydrous ammonia from Texas coast refinery to Spencer chemical in Kansas city MO for refrigeration to generate dry ice. (I knew from a Santa Fe refrigerator car book that Spencer shipped dry ice from KCMO to Galveston Texas area in special dry ice cars, apparently for use in seafood shipping. The Santa Fe book has pix of the dry ice cars.)

All back in the "transition era" of my railroad. Lot of ideas if you are willing to leaf through thousands of pages of magazine.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the wonderful thoughts, I have another industry to add to the thread.

I recently bought some Jaeger loads for flats and gons. These are wooden wheels with cabeling, coils of wire, telephone poles and Heavy lumber. I also will be using Chooch's new Oil rig gondola pipe/supply load as a sort of a fill-in as a "natural gas" supply rack.

I suppose a team track with a walthers over head, and another track with a simple dockside ramp with a small fence to secure the office and grounds particturly the very large transformer that is being loaded by a rented crane on another siding.

Some substation infrastructure, coal, oil, propane and electric company trucks and workmen will fill out the scene. Operation probably will be simple, Gons, flats, and a occasional boxcar with tools, vehicle and transformer oil etc would work well here. One could deliver consumeables (oil, coal or propane) by truck or rail as homes in the 50's used all three for heat, hot water etc.(not all at once, the utility bills would be astronomical)

Just a new industry for your line to maintain your electric, gas and telecommunications. Hope you like it.

Lee

[jkeaton]

In your original inquiry you mentioned loading maple syrup. Having lived all my life in syrup-producing areas, I have to say that I've never seen a maple sugar bush with rail service (Pity - narrow gauge steam would seem ideally suited). However, for the "season" (6-8 weeks), a nearby team track could be kept quite busy with boxcars of empty cans, jugs and bottles inbound, to be filled with the luscious syrup and then shipped out again. A big maple sugar bush might fill a couple of boxcars a week - and since these tend to be clustered in appropriate forest areas, and often work cooperatively, they might share a team track and together ship a boxcar load a day. An interesting occasional load might be new evaporator equipment - every few years, these need replaced or upgraded, and the big ones would definitely need a flat car with a tarp over them, or a double door boxcar.

[BRJN]

Due to happenstance (I got a lot of reefers and stock cars) early on during layout-planning, I decided to have a food-heavy industry mix. One major customer will be a food warehouser. Another major customer is a packing plant. (Era: 1900) Steers gotta eat, and everything they don't make into food has to be hauled away. (Manure, too.) For the grocery, I walked through a modern mega-store and took notes on general food types. I am going to have a Campbell's Soup boxcar. Most fresh food will come in reefers or ventilated boxcars. I don't have room for a dairy, but that could have a milk car every morning. It does not hurt that Ball Jars is just downstate from me; the brewery can get its bottles in a billboard boxcar. Since I have small children in the house, one feature for me is to have a variety of colorful cars to draw attention and interest and small fingers away from fragile things like HO-scale railings or weathered buildings.

[BRJN]

If you can find a book titled A Sampling of Penn Central, the author discusses many industries in KY, VW, OH, IN, IL and how many carloads they generated per year. This may help you get a start on something.

The book can be found at the Allen County Public Library (Ft Wayne IN) if you don't have a copy locally. ACPL does inter-library loans.