Omaha Road Man As some of you may know from my previous posts I will be modeling the US Rubber tire plant in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on my future layout circa 1950. Through my research I've determined the plant recieved carbon black shipments in covered hoppers. I've found some pictures of these online; all black and lettered for the company that produces the carbon. My question is this: how many companies produced carbon black? Did they all have their own hoppers, were they all painted black? Was carbon black ever shipped in regular (ie lettered for the home road) hoppers?
As some of you may know from my previous posts I will be modeling the US Rubber tire plant in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on my future layout circa 1950. Through my research I've determined the plant recieved carbon black shipments in covered hoppers. I've found some pictures of these online; all black and lettered for the company that produces the carbon.
My question is this: how many companies produced carbon black? Did they all have their own hoppers, were they all painted black? Was carbon black ever shipped in regular (ie lettered for the home road) hoppers?
When Swan Hose had a Banbury department they received carbon black in covered hoppers and it was not unusual to see six or seven coveredhoppers waiting to be unloaded.Later Dayco/Swan decided it would be cheaper to buy rubber then to make it in house.Swan made automotive and rubber and plastic garden hose.
Sadly the new owners closed this plant around eight years ago.
Larry
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Carbon Black is usually thought of as the stuff that makes your tires black. I understand it also helps to give strength to the finished rubber. It is also used in paints and inks, and it probably has other industrial uses.
Scale Trains has announced Carbon Black cars for near-term release, but they are all too modern for your 1950's era operation. Overland Models imported brass models of the 47' Carbon Black cars, appropriate to the 1933-1970's period. Rail Shop, Inc. produced the same car in a plastic kit, and F&C produced them in resin. I know modelers who just use any black covered hopper and call it a Carbon Black car, but that's not accurate. There was also a wood & cardstock & metal kit in the 1950's. I don't know the manufacturer, but I have one in the Continental Dustless scheme. Mine has up-to-date trucks and couplers, but it's otherwise pretty primitive. I keep it around as a curiosity. I understand Carbon Black has also been packed in bags and shipped in boxcars, but I don't know anything about that.
A rubber plant would also receive ammonia and liquid latex in tank cars. Latex in solid form might arrive in boxcars. During your era, the big tire plants in Akron usually shipped out finished tires in wood-lined boxcars before they had a chance to cool. It has been said that the warm tires would discolor if they came in contact with steel. That's one reason the AC&Y had so many single sheath boxcars. In that era, they were typically hand-loaded and stacked in an interlocking "herringbone" pattern to maximize the space.
I know the subject was covered in some detail by one of the magazines, but can't remember where I read it. Maybe Railmodel Journal, or maybe one of the back issues of the AC&Y Historical Society News. Information has been published on the companies that produced Carbon Black. It is a byproduct of petroleum, and typically comes from refineries. Most of the production in your time period was centered around Texas, Oklahoma, and the Gulf Coast, but Carbon Black was also produced in such areas as Charleston, WV.
A Carbon Black spill is horrible. The stuff is a solid, but the granules are so fine and slippery that they flow like a liquid. It's almost impossible to do much good with a shovel.
With all due respect to Dave, your railroad doesn't need to have a tire plant or a refinery in order to justify a Carbon Black car. It only needs to be somewhere between those two industries. There's a lot of track between the refineries of the Gulf Coast and the tire plants of Akron, Dayton, and Eau Claire.
Tom
Edit: The Fall, 2012 issue of the AC&YHS News Magazine had extensive coverage of Carbon Black as a commodity shipped on the Akron Canton & Youngstown Railroad, to serve the rubber plants in Akron.
Some of the first uses for covered hoppers were carbon black. They are specialized so are not very common outside of their specific routes. Unless you have a carbon black plant or a tire plant on your layout, you would probably never see one.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
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The Cabot carbon black hopper was the subject of an Eric Stevens 'Dollar Car' article in MRR in the '50s. It wasn't a difficult scratchbuild, if you'd like a challenge.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Here is my file of refrerences to carbon black cars of the 1950s. I entered these with spaces between listings but they sometimes get all jumbled together when posted on the trains.com board. The references to decals are to decals available 20-30 years ago, probably out of date.
Thanks a ton guys, really useful info.
Dave-the-TrainIIRC the type put on were completely different from Athearns,,, the new ones were circular when looked at from above with a central outlet to which a hose would be attached from below - so the load went out downwards instead of sideways.
Correct, they are pneumatic outlets.
F&C sell a resin carbon black car kit. Go to HO, Freight cars, CABOT.
http://fandckits.com/
If you can find it there is an old book of car plans, I think its Kalmbach, its a 30-40 year old softcover book, a "cars you can build" type book. It has plans and how to for a carbon black car.
I have a neighbour who made tyres with Michelin in the 70s. His opinion of the filthiness of carbon black is unprintable.
Athearn decorate one of their Centreflow hoppers as a Carbon Black car. There was an article in one of the model RR mags about how to change the incorrect (standard for all the models) hopper outlets to the correct style, IIRC the type put on were completely different from Athearns,,, the new ones were circular when looked at from above with a central outlet to which a hose would be attached from below - so the load went out downwards instead of sideways.
I guess this might be too late a period for what you want but it might be a guide to what to look for when looking at any pics of earlier cars.
I very much doubt that anyone else would want anything to do with shipping carbon black other than the people that made or received it. If/when boxcars were used they were probably in captive service... and scrapped when done with... in those days they probably ran them to a remote spur and burnt them.
Omaha Road Man My question is this: how many companies produced carbon black? Did they all have their own hoppers, were they all painted black? Was carbon black ever shipped in regular (ie lettered for the home road) hoppers?
Carbon black is produced by several companies, Sid Richardson and Cabot are two of the biggest. They both have multiple plants.
Pretty much every carbon black car I've ever seen was painted black because it was going to end up that color anyway.
Carbon black (as others have stated) is tricky to unload so a standard bottom outlet car isn't a good method to use. They carbon black covered hoppers are specially equipped cars with specialized fittings typical of cars handling very fine powders. As such they are all privat cars.
If you loaded carbon black into a regular car it would have to be a very clean car, once the black was loaded it would contaminate the car and would be very costly to clean the car to load something else. Even loading carbon black in boxes or containers into a boxcar contaminates the boxcar (just as loading hides does). and requires the car to be cleaned. That's why carbon black covered hoppers are some of the earliest varieties of covered hoppers.
So you are pretty much stuck with boxcars of containers of carbon black or specialized covered hoppers.
Carbon black is evidently not easy to ship or store due to its tendency to cake, and the tendency of pellets to become powder. This suggests to me that once a car is used for carbon black there is likely little appetite to clean it thoroughly enough to use for other ladings. It also suggests that perhaps the unloading hoppers are a bit different than those used for other materials. Hence the specialized and dedicated car. I also have read that carbon black is readily contaminated particularly with bits of iron -- it tends to be stored in silos lined with stainless steel. So the interior of the car may be different also
In this web entry eaneubauer.ipower.com/bookcat.pdf
Eric'r Railroad Car History Book Catalog 1/1/09, I found an intriguing entry for a book on carbon black cars from 1990, price $30
This is not to say that if you don't want to purchase a specialized (read: pricey) model of a carbon black car that you couldn't take an available covered hopper, paint it black (which all carbon black cars seem to be) and appropriately decal it.
Dave Nelson
I have never seen evidence of carbon black being shipped in non-specialized cars. If you are looking for carbon black hoppers for the 1950s, you are in luck, Railshop makes a model of one.
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