Can anyone give me some insight into how railroads interact with the cement or concrete business? I know nothing about this, and can't seem to find info on this on the web.
Are there "cement factories" that ship out product via rail to local cement facilities, or does all the raw materials just go directly to the local facilities to be mixed and distributed by cement truck? Are cement factories ever located in rural areas or are cement facilities simply a function of being close to the end consumer? What incoming commodities would a cement factory or facility require by rail, and who supplies it - quarries with stone crushers?
I understand that cement is often shipped out in two bay covered hoppers, but by whom and to whom? I have some Trinity 2 bay covered hoppers - are there any other car types that are widely used for cement/concrete freight?
Kinda looking for the business/product cycle of cement so I might add such a facility to my layout...though my layout is predominantly a rural one, hence that question above.
Thank you!
NB: for that matter, what the heck is the difference between cement and concrete? --See what a naif I am about this business?
beaulieu wrote:Portland Cement is produced by firing Limestone and a small amount of Clay in a kiln, this produces an intermediate product called Cement Clinker, this is then ground to a powder which the form of Cement that is sold. Concrete is a mixture of Cement, Aggregate, and Water. Usually Cement plants are located at a source of Limestone, but small industrial railroads are sometimes used as the active portion of the quarry gets further from the production facility. Railroads can bring items like fuel for the kiln (Coal or Pet Coke), Flyash to be added to the ground Clinker to make Portland Flyash Cement (PFC), and also Gypsum and Kaolin (smoothing agents).
Wonderful, and thanks. So it's plausible to have a cement factory in my generally rural setting, in which I already have a limestone quarry. How convenient! Also good use additional use for my kaolin cars, since I had some to service a paper plant on my layout. How convenient!
So then I take it they produce the cement at the plant, and then ship it out to local concrete facilities by railcar? - those local facilities where they make/mix the cement into concrete and send it to customers by concrete trucks.
Cement plants are usually located local to the source of limestone, but in a few cases are located at tidewater or on navigable lakes or rivers, and the limestone brought to them by ship or barge.
The rule of thumb in the cement industry is each plant has a market radius of about 300 miles, in which it provides all the cement, and competitors are barred by cost of transportation. In reality that 300-mile rule only applies to a base demand, and demand may fluctuate. In years where there is very large cement demand, such as for the construction of an airport, a major highway project, large dam, booming residential construction, then the base-load plant cannot meet the demand and cement is brought in from outside plants, usually by rail. No cement manufacturer wants to build a plant that can't be assured of running at 95% capacity or better, because if it doesn't run at that capacity level it probably won't make money and pay the mortgage.
In years past, much of the cement in a base-load plant's market basin was moved by rail. Today most of it moves by truck because most concrete ready-mix batch plants do not consume sufficient quantities of cement to justify the higher cost of purchasing rail-accessible land plus the cost of the spur, in return for the lower rail transportation cost. The exceptions are very large batch plants that usually by historic convenience are rail-side located, or plants that are directly supplying a single huge project such as an airport or major highway construction project or dam. Cement that comes in from outside the market basin largely moves by rail. In the West, because of long distances between urban concentrations with few people or cement consumers in between, there is much more cement moving by rail as a percentage of the total cement production, particularly to large projects that are in between cities.
Batch plants consume 10X as much aggregate and sand as they do cement, and any batch plant receiving cement by rail probably also receives aggregates and sand by rail, unless the plant has its own adjacent gravel pit. But most urban gravel pits are exhausted and gravel is increasingly moving by rail, sometimes as much as 500 miles by rail.
Gypsum is a major admixture in cement and usually arrives in 100-ton manual-door steel hopper. Fly ash moves in 100-ton covered hoppers. Cement moves in 100-ton or 110-ton PD (pressure discharge) or standard-discharge covered hopper of small cubic capacity. Some cement delivery customers like PD and some like standard-discharge; when you talk to them you learn that whichever method they like is the right one and the other one the wrong one.
Cement plants are fueled by coal, natural gas, or fuel oil. White cement generally requres natural gas -- the ash in the oil and coal is what turns the cement grey. Architectural uses have favored white cement for many years for buildings but in the highway, runway, and dam uses there's no justification for the extra cost of white cement. Many cement plants are fueled by coal; the exception is those on tidewater where fuel oil can arrive by barge or where air pollution regulations make it cheaper to burn natural gas or fuel oil. Generally coal arrives in blocks of 15-, 30-, 50, 60, or even 84-cars in standard 100-ton steel manual-door hoppers.
RWM
Railway Man, this is great stuff.
I take it that a cement plant is a large, sprawling affair, especially if it is shipping large quantities by rail, which from your indication would mean that it is probably serving a larger market than the usual 300 mile "local" reach. After all, it's no fun to model a plant that ships by truck.
The mix-batch plants are the ones that are most "local" then, and a cement plant itself would be fine in a rural type setting. It would be dumb to have a batch plant in the country I assume.
What do they use the Kaolin mentioned previously for, whitening the cement for architectural purposes? The gypsum and fly-ash always move in open hoppers? I know they move sand in covered hoppers, wonder why they don't need the weather protection for gypsum. Hmmm.
Thank you for the excellent info!
Lehigh Cement in Union Bridge Maryland recieved Cement by Railcar via the Maryland Midland.
I THINK it was National out in Martinsburg WVa and Coplay in Lime Kiln that produced the Cement for Lehigh.
Trucking was a max 250 mile radius from Union Bridge to feed a Ready Mix plant. I think I recall one in Arlington Va that had 5 silos, 6 of us would be preloaded the day before and race to Arlington to offload and about an hour later race back to Lime Kiln or Union Bridge to get more cement. This would go on for the day... sunrise to sunset until the ready mix plant says enough is enough, stop. And then we race to pre load for tomorrow's delivery.
Sometimes we got Cement out of Grace in South Baltimore by Curtis bay off a Ship next to the Canton Railroad that I think also delivered chemicals and Cement. Also in Baltimore we would deliver to a Lehigh silo for export by ship or transload onto other trucks.
A cement plant that makes cement would recieve Balls for thier Ball Mills for grinding before firing the stuff.
In Arkansas down by Hope we would get Cement delivered only by railcar. They would vibrate the stuff down the chute and up onto the big silo above the scale and we would weight out a tanker load of cement and off to the Ready Mix plant. I recall putting away 400-600 miles per day with a day cab... 9-14 hour days running back and forth feeding two or three of a company's ready mix in the area.
Once in awhile we dart into a coal fired power plant to dip a load of fly ash and truck it back to feed the ready mix.
Tanker truck tares with a R model Mack and a Heil Three potter or a Butler would be about 23 to 26 thousand give or take and gross at... 77 or so but we dump it to 80K and get around the scales anyhoo. They can measure a truck load to 20 pounds. It is interesting to see the loader watch the scale meter wind up in bigger numbers towards 80,000 gross and slap the off button and watch it stop right at 80K.
It only takes 45 minutes or so to unload a tanker at 14 psi. The problems is making sure you dont plug up because you are creating massive air/mix slurry and forcing it to climb... 30 to 100 feet up a 6 inch pipe. Electric motors fired by the plant is the best. Truck turbos tend to cough and plug up when it rains or when the engine isnt developing max horse.
How does one know it's moving ok in the pipe? Watching the dust fly out of the escape valve on top of the silo is one clue. Watching your tanker rock on it's tires and airride is another clue and finally a boot on the rubber hose connection is a good way to feel the stuff moving. There is a certain behavior of that pipe when the stuff is moving properly. It winds back and forth like a snake, a very large snake.
You always had a bucket of water to douse leaks. You see a spray of cement dust fly out of a leak and you poured water onto it until it quit leaking after sealing. However you never took your eyes off that pipe and off the hose. Should something fail, people will die.
Finally but not last, every time a man goes up top of the tanker to open the hatch there is danger of finding that there is pressure in that tanker and it can throw a man a few hundred feet to his death.
Sometimes recievers like the Lehigh in Baltimore can feed 20 trucks with air sufficient to unload all of them at once. Woe unto the one lazy driver who fails to shut off his tanker when unloaded. The loss of air can threaten the entire operation. You would listen for the tanker's music. When it is unloading there is a musical hum. When it starts to whine and hollar you banged on the bottom of the pot with a rubber mallet to get the last little bit out. When the tanker is in full cry, it's empty.
If you hear a great metallic cough that increases in pitch and duration you have a very short time to close off the pot and flush the silo with air. That means your turbo is plugged or you are plugged up somewhere and the tanker literally is consipated.
Such a scenario requires the tanker to be shut down, pressure off and the hose removed along with beating on the silo pipe to dump down the several hundreds if not thousands of pounds of product to the ground to clear the plug. Concrete plants really weally get angry. If you are in rain and dont clear it, it's turns into a solid mass and probably needs a total replacement of rubber hose and everything else involved in the unloading.
By the way... they bill down to the pound... it better be empty. Once I had a check valve fail during unloading and the cement fell down the silo, punched the tanker and blew into the turbo. Made for lots of drama and dragging 20 something thousand pounds back to the shop to replace the piping and valves that were destroyed. That was the one time I was forced to dump the tanker pressure and let the chips fall on that plant for the day. The enormous HISS of 15 PSI air escaping out of the 2 inch bleed off is very dangerous and will destroy a human being on teh right side of that tanker. Oh yes, they did yell and scream but in the end that plant got thier cement. But lost many manhours of work and lost profits to local contractors waiting on the concrete that was badly needed.
The cement also went to Hagerstown to feed a concrete pipe culvert maker. Thier silos were way up top above the production room and much much much smaller than the tanker you are unloading. It takes a bit of eye, some WAG and a dallop of gumption to move just this much cement and not over fill that silo.
I recall Gypsum in flat bedding, those got covered wagons and tarped to the Nth degree. The Dry wall I think was one material that recieved good treatment. Flyash traveled in closed tankers because I think it is considered a pollutant believe it or not.. Power plants would dump the ash into a designated field every day, what they cannot sell.
Finally you had Mortor to consider, Lime for a roofing plant and other items that would travel in the tankers. Each one behaved slightly differently during unloading.
A trucking company that provides 300-500 tankers within 200 miles of a cement plant or a cement bulk house is the company that everything in the region related to concrete depends on every day all the day. I think each of us ran 3 to 6 loads per truck per day and logged ... I reckon 50 thousand pounds at a time... million pounds a week is not unheard of.
The pay? The cement plants with Union get paid per hour large amounts of money. The hauler of the cement paid per load. The more loads you delivered the more you made. I think it ranged from 40 to 80 dollars per load. That worked out to a few hundred dollars gross per day.
Gasoline tankers are about two times that close the pay. Not bad for a high school graduate who does not go to college. I think my first pay check was 500+ dollars net and 4 paychecks later that first month close to 2000 net. I literally didnt know what to do with all of that new found wealth so... it was a good living if you can stand getting out of bed at 1 AM to get the truck rolling at 3 AM to deliver by 8 AM and work until 7 pm.
Oh one other thing. Desiel fuel. Those macks only had 80 gallon tank on one side, to maximize the payload revenue. You were either running out of the stuff, refilling or otherwise constantly betting your workday against the remaining fuel. It was best to deliver into places with the electric motors, those were the best. If you had to blow the stuff yourself off your truck engine and run out during the blow... well... you just got yourself fired.
It was better to off load that last load late in the day, and run out of fuel half way to the yard to sit for the rest of the evening dealing with that breakdown than to run dry during a pump off. Sometimes you told the dispatcher.. NO way. But gauranteed you give your tanker load to someone else and start the next work day empty and having to go get loaded before making any money.
When dispatch starts asking you how much fuel you got, you started to make a bet with yourself to get that extra load that can be really lucrative at the end of the week. Sometimes one paid a local dump truck driver to sit next to you transferring fuel with a manual pump while you offloaded so you had fuel to run. All cash and no tracking, no problem.
That was a very long time ago.
shawnee wrote:Railway Man, this is great stuff. I take it that a cement plant is a large, sprawling affair, especially if it is shipping large quantities by rail, which from your indication would mean that it is probably serving a larger market than the usual 300 mile "local" reach. After all, it's no fun to model a plant that ships by truck. The mix-batch plants are the ones that are most "local" then, and a cement plant itself would be fine in a rural type setting. It would be dumb to have a batch plant in the country I assume.What do they use the Kaolin mentioned previously for, whitening the cement for architectural purposes? The gypsum and fly-ash always move in open hoppers? I know they move sand in covered hoppers, wonder why they don't need the weather protection for gypsum. Hmmm.Thank you for the excellent info!
Cement plants vary considerably in sprawl depending upon the size of the plant and the cost of horizontal land to place it on. The plant itself, not including the limestone quarry, can be compacted into as little as 5-6 acres, and there are examples of such in urban settings or in canyons where horizontal space is limited, e.g., Salt Lake City (urban) and Devil's Slide (canyon), Utah. It's not uncommon for a plant to stairstep down a hillside, e.g., Lime, Oregon.
Cars that would be seen at a cement plant today are:
Cars that would be seen at a ready-mix batch plant today would be:
In general, covered hoppers are only used for bulk commodities that:
Everything else moves open-top.
It's not dumb to have a batch plant in the country. Ready-mix concrete at some time or another is needed to build just about everything. Small towns of 5,000 often have a batch plant supplying local needs and out into the surrounding countryside. The batch plant might often be 5 miles outside of town next to the owner's gravel pit, because trucking gravel is expensive and he already owns the land the pit sits on. But small batch plants rarely have rail service.
Correct, kaolin's primary use is as a whitener. Not a lot is used in cement making, maybe on the order of 2,000 carloads a year, U.S.-wide.
Gypsum is used to control the setting rate. Between 2 and 10% of the cement may consist of gypsum -- it depends a great deal on the chemistry of the limestone that's being used in the cement plant. Type III (high-early) cement usually has a higher gypsum content to help it achieve quicker, faster strength (which is why it's called high-early). Type III is very common in high-rise building construction.
There is a moderately humongous cement plant at Monolith, CA, which ships in covered hoppers. The eastern extension of the plant's rail service seems (on satellite view) to be a coal delivery track.
The actual quarry is some distance to the northwest, connected by a long conveyor line to a covered surge pile (very large circular structure) at the plant proper.
At the other end of the spectrum is a small batch plant just north of Ashland City, TN, which also manufactures a variety of sizes/types of block. Some time in the past, it received raw cement by rail, but that line is now abandoned. Not sure where the aggregates come from.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Here is a decent sized batch plant in Madison, WI.
Satellite view
On the north side, they unload sand and gravel, 100 ton hoppers, some 2-bay, some 3-bay. For a little bit they were using ballast cars for the gravel. Usually 15-20 cars a day, when I was working around there. I think they do more unloading now. More track has been added.
The south side is the cement unloading. In the summer not uncommon the shove 20 cars a day in there. The yard is to the west, so multiple runarounds to get everything in there.
Usually, the crew would cut off west of Hwy 51. Run into the pass, pull the empties, shove them east of Sycamore. Go west of 51, pull the cement into the pass. Run around and shove in. If the building was open and clear, shove through it, otherwise shove up the middle track, past the crossover. They had a carmover. Go back across 51, pull the sand and gravel into the pass. Runaround, shove in, over the pit. Then pull the empties into the pass, and hope they fit. Continue eastbound. Quite the operation.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com
I believe Pelle Søeborg models a cement plant on his excellent modern layout, it might be worth checking it out at the LHS....
Mountain to Desert: Building the HO scale Daneville and Donner River
Railway Man,
Your postings are an education in themselves. Thank you!
For someone from the UK, they also give an insight into US working life. Different cultures, different practices, and read with considerable interest.
Dennis
Spent two weeks in the UK near one of the bases NE of London and gotta tell you, the USA is 24/7 particularly in the larger cities.
In rural areas with industry sometimes three shifts a day or more common, two. In trucking we dont stop until the Boss stops getting orders from the concrete ready mix plants which wait for the last of the top offs from work crews laying concrete.
Ice, Snow, Rain... they dont care if it's night or day. That cement moves. In fact during summer months night ops is much more intense where the crews try to lay concrete without the heat curing the stuff too fast.
Very large projects such as the I-270 corridor between Washington DC and Frederick required much concrete. I recall that they would flood a ready mix plant with tanker trucks faster than the plant can make concrete and load into mixer trucks. Add in the mix of semi trailer dumps and dump trucks running sand, rock and the occasional liquid tanker delivering additives during the workday... the Ready mix plant is a extremely intense, dangerous and active workplace to be on. You will not get bored or sleepy doing this work.
Out west of the USA, they simply ship cement straight to the road being built and made concrete right there over the paved dirt that will be the new Interstate. Distances between cities or rural areas are much greater and requires many trucks to deliver the required product the same day.
Sometimes several companies cooperate to take on really BIG jobs. I think I recall a place near Grissom Texas where about 5 different companies mustered all availible manpower and equiptment to pour hundreds of yards worth of concrete from very large distances away from the job site. If memory serves plants up to about 250 miles away sent all thier trucks to the jobsite.
Finally really HUGE jobs such as the Hoover DAM near the Las Vegas area. That concrete is said to STILL be curing from pours made dozens of years ago and require another dozens of years before it's all hard. I dont know if it is a urban myth or not.
Successful ready mix companies had thier own quarries for sand and stone. They only need additives and cement. One idea to understand some plants like the one I worked at, these were portable. You could have a town with new schools being built, then houses, then subdivisions and then new sewer lines to run em all (Manholes) Once the local area of about 20 miles radius is all finished and the number of yards of concrete drops below profitablity, they pack the entire plant up and transport it several counties away and set up again to serve a new area being developed.
Sometimes you see a pernament ready mix plant rotting like a junk yard, there is simply no oppertunity left to activate, man and operate the plant in that area. Not unless Uncle Sam wants a new international airport or freeways in the area in the future.
Last ChanceFinally really HUGE jobs such as the Hoover DAM near the Las Vegas area. That concrete is said to STILL be curing from pours made dozens of years ago and require another dozens of years before it's all hard. I dont know if it is a urban myth or not.
No urban myth, concrete can continue to cure for many decades. One memory from my one and only class on engineering materials (35 years ago...) was about some concrete test cylinders prepared sometime after 1910 and dumped into LA harbor. Every few yeas some cylinders would be pulled out and tested, as of the early 1970's the cylinders were still getting stronger.
The concrete in Hoover is undoubtedly pretty hard, but it is still curing and in need of cooling.
you'd think living with in walking distance (a block away if even) of a rail serviced cement plant i'd be able to help out more. but then again there's a cement plant that uses all trucks no more than 3 blocks away and i couldn't tell you much there either. but i do know that a small arce little crap town (you blink you miss it, literally) called Middle Inlet, Wisconsin has a concrete plant. it's not rail serviced, but it is in the middle of bum frick egypt. and as for the cement hauler guy running around in a Mack R model.......dude you just dated yourself haha. i won't say anything about when they used them, but i'll make you feel a little younger by saying if you pay attention you can still see some companies using an old R model as a regular rig, usually a dump truck around here. i remember installing a stereo in one of those once
Mack R is dated yes. But you aint have fun until you got a hold of a Diamond Reo, Marion or Autocar.
All solid, no suspension to speak of and able to go places that will break today's pampered rigs just forward of the fifth wheel. Particularly those made on import steel framing.
On really bad bumps and poor concrete (Actually crumbling concrete) roads the dust shaken and raised up off inside the cab presented a hazard to breathing. It would show up years later as Reactive airway for me.
One other thing, if you are inside a cement loading facility that pulls from overhead silos, there are certain sections marked with a red light that you just dont go into. A man can find himself knee deep in the stuff and dust so thick as to absolutely lose orientation in space, sight and feel and a progressively worsening breathing situation. You only have moments to choose one direction (Usually backwards) until you ran up against the wall and felt to the man door to get out.
You never went foward because sometimes there is a grate with a auger below.
At least one urban myth or story tells of workers entombed as part of the bedrock foundation for high rises.
Some cement plants burn, or burned, waste chemicals. What is really interesting is that the car was loaded about 4.5 years before it was unloaded.
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2001/HZM0101.pdf
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
shawneeI take it that a cement plant is a large, sprawling affair..
Sprawling!?!?!?!? Let me give you an example. I once did a TV newsreel inside a plant that had a rotating drum for cooking limestone into cement. Rotating, a dozen feet around, glowing red hot like the fires of Hades inside as I looked into it... and almost a quarter of a mile long! Looking into that was...man... awesome!!!
do any of you remember the little steel "awnings" above the car reporting marks used on cement covered hoppers? most of those cars had so much lime wash down over the sides the reporting marks got covered up. Mopac welded steel plates at an angle above the car number to keep the "weathering" from obliterating the reporting marks.
grizlump
Hoover *** is still curing, at least yet as of bout 5 years ago last time i saw a thing about it on discovery or tlc. now think that's still curing after........60 years? and they even had an integrated cooling system that flushed water through a pipe system. and as for the body in concrete it is an urban myth. as explained in a show about urban myths, by a contractor that was his business making foundations for skyscrappers, if someone did die in the concrete the body would be taken out because it would weaken the concrete in that area most likely causing problems in the future. after all body's do decay, the flesh and organs take up space and as the decay happened the not yet concrete would shift to fill the gap felt of the body and then there's a big problem. and i know someone will complain about that statement so i'll beat them to it. yes i realize concrete/cement would greatly reduce exposure of air moisture to the body and would slow down the nature process of decompossition. and with that all i haft say is woopee, then you just have the problem of a fully constructed skyscrapper (few million tons) pressing down on these voids.
and autocar. seriously? you used them? next you're gonna be telling me your'e first rig was a kenny diamond T. i like the older Pete 379's personnaly. saw pics of one once with at least a good 70" high rise sleeper and 3 axles. no taggers either just 3 driven axles. i love driving down the highway and pass by an oversized load truck and count the axles. 4 on the trailer, 1, 2, solid axles on the rig along with a pair of taggers. ok i got way off track. sorry
You may want to check out history of now defunct Lehigh and New England. One of its branches was largely focused on the what was called the Cement Region. This branch left either the main or another branch at Cement Junction in Bath, PA. and served several large cement plants such as Nazareth Cement, Lone Star, and 3-4 more. See Lehigh and New England by Crist and Krause, published by Carstens,
shawnee Are there "cement factories" that ship out product via rail to local cement facilities, or does all the raw materials just go directly to the local facilities to be mixed and distributed by cement truck? Are cement factories ever located in rural areas or are cement facilities simply a function of being close to the end consumer? What incoming commodities would a cement factory or facility require by rail, and who supplies it - quarries with stone crushers? I understand that cement is often shipped out in two bay covered hoppers, but by whom and to whom? I have some Trinity 2 bay covered hoppers - are there any other car types that are widely used for cement/concrete freight? Kinda looking for the business/product cycle of cement so I might add such a facility to my layout...though my layout is predominantly a rural one, hence that question above.
This has been a good thread! If you have enough space and could do justice to a smallish to medium-sized cement plant, the rural setting is just fine -- you will find that many if not most cement plants are in very out-of-the way places (think Grand Chain, IL or Alpena, MI or Fredonia, KS to name a few!).
Your average cement plant today will likely receive few if any inbound raw materials or fuel by rail. Most well-positioned plants (i.e. the ones still running right now! ;-) have water access and hence receive their fuels (usually coal, coke) by barge/ship, much more economically and on the larger scale that a typical 1 million ton cement plant demands. Same with raw materials (rule of thumb to make portland cement: LISA = Limestone, Iron, Silica, Alumina). Most plants have their own limestone quarry and limestone is by far the major raw material, with stuff like iron fines, sand, clay, etc. being used for the I-S-A components to the extent that your limestone doesn't have enough of any of those. If you were to rail in a few loads to your plant, likely candidates would be coal or petcoke (open and covered hoppers, respectively), fuel quality waste in tank cars, and perhaps clay (alumina) or granulated blast furnace slag in hoppers and/or gondolas. In my experience you can find gypsum locally and truck it for cheaper.
The bigger share for rail is on the outbound side, again for plants on the water with long-haul (up to 1,000 miles+) shipping patterns vessel/barge is the most economical mode but for a land-locked plant such as yours you may move cement in a 50/50 split, truck vs. rail. Most of your shipments will move to your own cement distribution terminals, while a few of your larger customers might have ready-mix plants with enough volume to justify rail direct. These smaller destinations are often where your PD cars will go, while your higher-volume distribution terminals will take gravity cars.
As for photos, the Lafarge website has brochures on each of their plants and the brochures have pictures, so if you look at a few of these you can start to get a sense of what a cement plant actually looks like and, roughly speaking, how it functions.
http://www.lafarge-na.com/wps/portal/lna/products/cement --> at bottom left see "Cement Plant Brochures".
Hope this helps, contact me offlist if you need more info,
JAJ
I live in a rural part of New Jersey and there is a concrete plant right down the end of the road where I live. Clayton Concrete inc. There are many aspects of a "concrete plant" this particular one at one time had a rail spur going to it but it no longer exists everything is trucked in or out. But as mentioned you can just supply a little imagination and use rail lines and or even barges etc. I supplied a link below for a company out of Texas that manufactures concrete plants. This ought to give you a little insight and get your creative juices flowing. One thing that hard for many of us to remember about model railroading is scenery compression. On your model railroad depending on size constrictions you may be forced to pt your concrete plant or other industry near lets say a school or farm house and out buildings a residential neighborhood etc. Yes there is a certain amount of flow and realism that should be maintained to actually give the illusion that this is real but as I was told by one of the hobby's great builders think of each scene as a snap shot and individual piece of your world as the train moves on to the next scene it theoretically could be miles and miles away from the last scene not merely on the other side of a bush or row of trees. I was also told something that is always on my mind when building is that the scenery and details are there to compliment the trains not the other way around. So if you want a cement plant in your neighborhood go right ahead and build one, I got one in mine.
http://www.randsinc.com/catalog.htm
Cement plants are located next to limestone quarries. Limestone is burned in a kiln creating a material called klinker that is ground into the powder that is cement. The plants have one or more kilns that are several hundred feet long. a mill, silos and large piles of stone and coal. In comming rail traffic would consist of gypsum, lime and lots of coal. Out going would be cement to concrete plants (covered hoppers) and maybe synthitic gypsum from the anti polution equipment. The quarries are very large and have some realy serious equipment.
Cement is the powder you mix with sand, stone and water to make concrete. For the record cement is not what comes out of the back of a ready mix truck, it's concrete.
In my personal railroad experience we have a massive cement plant located in an extremely rural area,it is served by a dedicated local which often pulls close to a 100 cars a day, these cars are sent to hump yards where they're broken down into smaller 4-10 car shipment to batch plant customers in cities such as St. Louis, Milwaukee, Ft. Wayne etc., the plant is very similar to those offered by Walthers kits but there are numerous structure over a wide area, all located in or near a quarry, no ingredients are brought in by rail though they often burn waste solvents as fuel (could come in haz-mat tanks though) others burn coal.This plant recently doubled in size bought new sw-1500 (rebuilt) and hundreds of cars. Other online plants are in a medium size town(Michell IN ) and also in suburban Louisville(Jeffersonville-Speed IN ). Also an interesting operation is Maine Coast I believe which loads cement out to barges for dragon - how about a cement plant to rail barge operation? Branford Steam railroad has a similar gravel operation to water covered in R&R ? in the past.
Having been in the Concrete business in the West for 35 years, you have pertty well nailed it.
JR
I'm surprised no one responding has yet mentioned a great resource to answer your question -- Jeff Wilson's book, "Model Railroader’s Guide to Industries Along the Tracks 3" (look at http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/12422.html). There is a whole chapter devoted to prototype information on cement plants and suggested modeling ideas.
I toured a cement plant last September just south of Laramie, Wyoming. They have nearby quarries for limestone (which I also visited), gypsum, and shale (clay). They bring in small amounts of iron additives, such as slag. There are two kilns. The site is served by rail on the UP mainline, but the cement plant owners/operators have their own small switcher, saying it cost too much for UP crews to do the switching.
Go to Google Maps and search for Laramie, then pan about 1-2 miles directly to the south to see it on a satellite image. The active ne quarry is about 8-10 miles to the east-southeast.
tomikawaTT There is a moderately humongous cement plant at Monolith, CA, which ships in covered hoppers. The eastern extension of the plant's rail service seems (on satellite view) to be a coal delivery track. Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Monolith is 1 of 2 cement plants served by the UP out of the yard in Mojave and is located just south (railroad direction) of Tehachapi. The other plant is at Oak Creek, about 10 miles west of Mojave. Train frequency is about once a week for both plants. Oak Creek will use 3 or 4 SD70's of the newer vintage and a dozen or so cement hoppers. Monolith also has 3 or 4 SD70's, up to a dozen or more cement hoppers, a few coal cars, plus a chemical covered hopper or 2 for a plastics plant in Tehachapi. Yes, the SD70s switch the local industries.The Monolith plant uses a track mobile to switch inside the plant. MANY moons ago they had a narrow guage line to bring the rock from the quarry, but that has been replaced by a conveyer belt system, and then large dump trucks. Both plants also have a steady stream of double bottom cement trucks (dry, not wet) heading in and out every day. On an irregular basis there is a cement rain that heads north over the Loop. Lots of power, very few cars compared to the regular trains. The coil steel train is the next lowest in the cars to unit ratio.
Unless you really have the space I would suggest modeling just the loading spur going under the silo and make the rest of the plant part of the painted backdrop. As noted they are LARGE. Not that deep, but long and tall. The Monolith plant sits right beside the UP main against the mountains and dominates the view for a good 5 miles in both directions from the valley. Even better, model just the spur disapearing into the background to hold a few cars. The Oak Creek plant sits in a notch in the mountain and is not very visibile until you drive in almost a mile on their private road. I usually just see the local sitting on the branch waiting for space ot open up in the Mojave Yard.
Phil
Timber Head Eastern Railroad "THE Railroad Through the Sierras"
You might consider picking up Kalmbach's The Model Railroader's Guide to Industries Along the Track:3 which has a very informative chapter titled--are you ready for this?--Cement!
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet