I was thinking a Candy Factory or Bakery would be a good industry. I can unload ps-2 covered hoppers for dry goods sugar, flour, etc and a tank car for corn syrup. Loading docks for boxcars and trucks etc.I model the transition era so smaller hoppers,tanks, and box cars are good as I'm planning a 4x8 layout.
Would these factories have a "pit" next to the factory/building to unload the dry goods???
Also how does corn syrup get unloaded? Gravity into another "pit" or is it pumped out?
Does anyone know what size tank cars would be used during the fifties? HO examples?
Candy factories and bakeries in my experience recieve bulk good in and ship very little out, most of it is trucked. A boxcar is 40-50 tons, very few places need 40-50 tons of candy at one time. Baked goods are trucked locally so they stay fresh. I don't know how goo bread would be if you shipped it by rail and it sat in a boxcar for a week before it made it to the shelves.
The places I have seen that recieved flour and sugar recieved it in airslides and vacced it out of the cars using stainless steel hoses. Liquids are pumped out of cars.
During the 1950's flour could have been bagged in boxcars.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Since I was born/raised in Millersburg (PA), the first thing that came to mind was Hershey. The google satellite map shows multiple sidings and spurs around the plant, google earth images are not clear enough to figure out the answers to your questions.
I remember something in the chocolate world tour about moving the cocoa beans by rail, but not sure of the details. A simple email to The Hershey Corporation or the Hershey Derry Township Historical Society ( http://www.hersheyhistory.org/ ) may answer these questions.
As a kid, I never really paid attention to the railroad operations around the Hershey plant. I don't live there anymore, so a "field trip" to find out for you isn't feasible.
Good Luck on your project.
Inspired by Addiction
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Would these factories have a "pit" next to the factory/building to unload the dry goods?
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Maybe..The cars could be off loaded into storage bins and the pit would be next to the bins.
Of course these dry goods could be shipped by boxcar in 100# bags just as easy.
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From my observation the tank cars gets unloaded into holding tanks by pump-I notice a small shed that housed the pump(s) next to the tanks.
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As far as the 50 era tank cars I suspect any single dome 40' tank car assigned to corn syrup service will work.Of course the corn syrup could be transported by boxcars in 55 gallon drums.
As far as boxcar shipments candy or cake mix could go to a distributor in major cities since interstates wasn't built then..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Corpus Christi had a commercial bakery (mostly bread) ca 1960s-1990s that had one spot on a multi-customer industry track about half a mile distant. That one spot had an undertrack opening- I wouldn't esxactly call it a pit- where a conveyor/ (suction?) device could be inserted under an Airslide hopper to unload flour.
leighant Corpus Christi had a commercial bakery (mostly bread) ca 1960s-1990s that had one spot on a multi-customer industry track about half a mile distant. That one spot had an undertrack opening- I wouldn't esxactly call it a pit- where a conveyor/ (suction?) device could be inserted under an Airslide hopper to unload flour.
More then likely that was for a conveyor for covered hoppers..
To unload you open the bottom hatch and let the contents slide out and when needed a large car viberator was attach to the sides by using the car's viberator holder located on both sides of bottom hopper..This will shake the contents out.
Thanks for the info! I was thinking this midwestern candy factory would need to ship their goods in bulk to to their distributors east and west coasts in preparation for the holiday season ;-) They are after all one the biggest candy factories in the USA during the 50's. Thus the box car, but like you said I might just have it trucked out and bulk goods delivered via rail.
Based on my childhood experience at a soda factory, ingredients like corn syrup would likely be tanker (due to quantity) while coloring and flavorings would be 55 gal. drums.
Co-owner of the proposed CT River Valley RR (HO scale) http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/
How common was corn syrup in the 1950s?
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
A few of my research notes on CORN SYRUP and BAKERIES and CANDY FACTORIES in the 1950s.
Corn Products Refining Co.
(subsidiaries: Chicago, Peoria & Western Rwy,Crystal Car Line)
products: starch, syrup, sugar, oil, cattle & chicken feed
bulk products sold to following industries:
candy, ice cream, baking, textiles, laundry, canning & preserving,
brewing, rayon, meat packing, baking powder, soap, paint, paper,
chewing gum, feed.
Corpus Christi plant one of 4 major. site purchased 1946. into operation June 1949. manufacture starch, dextrose, sugar, syrup, crude oil (corn oil?) & high protein stock feed from milo.
Moody's Industrial Manual 1955
Corpus Christi plant uses dilute SULPHURIC ACID to process grain
Time 54: p.86 Nov.7, 1949
Corn Products begins first grinding work, govt. order of starch for shipment abroad, will test eqpt before going to full-scale milling
Corpus Christi Caller June 7, 1949 p.6
photo Corn Products silos with grain boxcars C C Port Book Aug49 p.1
CPC plant switched from using South Texas milo to corn which had to be shipped in, CPC hoped to get local farmers to produce corn locally but doesn't grow well here. [CC Public Lib. clipping file 1970]
CPC plant being sold to petro refiner because it is uneconomical; CPC plans to use plants in corn producing areas. [CC Public Lib. clipping file 1979]
Sugar largest agricultural import by weight
World Almanac 1955 p.696
bags for sugar shipped on fork-liftable pallets. ad for Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills Business Week Nov.12, 1955 p.74
Covered Hopper cars for handling bulk sugar:
AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING CO. 2 covered hoppers, p.638 1954 Eqpt Reg
BOOTH OPEN KETTLE SUGAR reporting mark BOKX
proposed ficticious sugar refinery
no conflicting real BOKX in 1954 Eqpt.Reg.
CANADA & DOMINION SUGAR CO. LTD. 5 tank cars per 1954 Eqpt Reg
GENERAL AMERICAN TRANSPORT
GACX airslide covered hopper used for bulk sugar 1990s, multi pix
Rail Model Journal May96 p.33
HOLLY SUGAR CORPORATION
(HLYX 100-103 TM tank 8000 gallons)
HLYX 200, 38'6" int length Roofed Hopper 2050cu.ft.90,000 lb capy
NATIONAL SUGAR REFINING CO.
NSRX 200-209 35'3"overall length 1799 cu.ft. 140,000 lb.capy
NSRX 300-329 47'overall length 2893 cu.ft. 140,000 lb.capy
(300-329 includes 7 insulated LOs)
per 1954 Eqpt Reg
REVERE SUGAR insulated LOs
RSRX 122-127 32'4"overall length 1590 cu.ft. 140,000 lb.capy
RSRX 128-132 35'3"overall length 1665 cu.ft. 140,000 lb.capy
SOUTHWESTERN SUGAR & MOLASSES CO. 103 tank cars
p.680 1954 Eqpt Reg
BAKERIES
Commercial bread bakeries in Texas with 50 or more employees,1962.
3 Rio Grande Valley 4 Corpus Christi 1 Victoria 7 San Antonio
3 Austin 9 Houston 3 Beaumont 4 El Paso 3 Waco
4 Ft Worth 11 Dallas Atlas of Texas p.78
Commercial cracker & biscuit bakeries in Texas with 50 or more employees,
1962. 2 Dallas Atlas of Texas p.78
CANDY
Candy factory 50 or more employees
Houston Lufkin Nacogdoches San Antonio El Paso
2 Ft Worth 3 Dallas
Atlas of Texas p.76
hope this helps satisfy your sweet tooth a little....
I'm guessing that the era being modeled is the 50's from the above responses. Earlier flour and such were moved in sacks as there was not always an automated method for unloading. Remember that the consignee strikes the deal with a shipper and the railroad, through a freight agent, sets out an appropriate car. Small rural cities lagged behind in automation.
The bread industry, as noted above, is a rather local type of business that brings in large quantities of stuff and distributes locally.
This does offer some great opportunities for modeling if you are a vehicle fanatic also. This is a chance to place fleets of trucks at docks and similarly marked trucks around your railroad. This can work for a lot of industries.
see ya
Bob
Indeed..And don't forget the fleet of home delivery trucks..
Customers could order their bread,cakes,pies etc from the bakery and have it delivered on a weekly or biweekly schedule.
How many recalls:
"Hey Mom! Here comes the Omar man"
and the jingle "
“I’m the Omar man, knocking at your door, if you taste my bread (mmmm boy), your gonna want more.”
commercials of the 50s?
I think the "Catch-22" in this is that a candy factory or bakery large enough to both receive and ship by rail would probably be too big to easily fit into a typical model railroad. A smaller operation that rec'd flour, corn syrup, sugar etc. by rail (one or two cars at a time) and shipped it's product out by truck to local wholesalers or retailers would maybe be more "layout friendly".
I have an industry on my (more-or-less) modern era layout that might fit what you're looking for. It's just a "placeholder" right now, but I envision the finished industry as some sort of food mill/factory that produces things like cereal, cereal/granola bars, and other stuff like that. It's in a back corner of the layout, so the only modeled portion is a backdrop flat part of the bldg with some grain silos, similar to what a brewery might look like.
Rail loads in include covered hoppers with various types of grain, tank cars with corn syrup or vegetable oil, reefers with fruit or other perisible ingredients, and boxcars with various other non-perishible supplies (bagged ingredients, product packing material, etc). The finished product is shipped out via truck on the (imaginary off-layout) other side of the facility.
I have a weird love affair with covered grain hopper cars, so I needed a good versatile industry as an excuse to get more of them. I also wanted to diversify my rolling stock inventory, so this gives me an excuse to have a few tank cars in my fleet .
Dan Stokes
My other car is a tunnel motor
wjstix I think the "Catch-22" in this is that a candy factory or bakery large enough to both receive and ship by rail would probably be too big to easily fit into a typical model railroad. A smaller operation that rec'd flour, corn syrup, sugar etc. by rail (one or two cars at a time) and shipped it's product out by truck to local wholesalers or retailers would maybe be more "layout friendly".
Excellent observation..
Still a large building or IMHO better would be a 18-24" flat building along the back drop could suffice for a large bakery of the 50/60s..
It can be done by thinking outside the box for the best solution.
I suppose you could do part of the factory. Up until a few years ago, Pearson's Candy Co. here in St.Paul (Salted Nut Roll, Nut Goodie etc.) used to ship raw peanuts from the South and roast them themselves to use in their candies. Not sure if it was in the main plant, or a separate building, but I could see a moderate sized "roasting house" for a candy company being served by rail, with the rest of the factory being off the layout or represented on the backdrop.
wjstix I suppose you could do part of the factory. Up until a few years ago, Pearson's Candy Co. here in St.Paul (Salted Nut Roll, Nut Goodie etc.) used to ship raw peanuts from the South and roast them themselves to use in their candies. Not sure if it was in the main plant, or a separate building, but I could see a moderate sized "roasting house" for a candy company being served by rail, with the rest of the factory being off the layout or represented on the backdrop.
What a unique idea for a industry..
Talk about thinking outside the box..
Not sure about the roasting part, but my wife could confirm I'm "nuts"....
The D.L. Clark company, which made Clark bars and a ton of other items, used to have their factory here in Pittsburgh. It wasn't an especially large building. But the coolest thing was that the rail siding entered the building on the second floor. The Pennsy mainline was across the street and on a raised piece of ground, so the siding crossed over a street and into the second floor of the plant. I always thought that would make a really neat model.
Here is a photo of the bridge crossing the street below: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pghbuccos/7089337521/
I saw a photo not too long ago of a rail car sitting inside building, but now I can't remember where I saw it.
Jim
Interesting Jim, reminded me that at one time Minneapolis had a railroad trestle system that was used to serve the flour mills near downtown - there wasn't room on the higher "town" side of the buildings, which were built on the side of the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River near St. Anthony Falls. This might be interesting to model, as the large mills could be represented by flats.
By the way, that's not the river in the foreground, the river would be out of sight to the right. The water is the "mill race" (I think that's what they called it), an artificial waterway that siphoned water from the river to power the waterwheels turning the mill wheels in the flour mills.
http://www.mrdbridges.com/bridgesImagesMain/lostA10.jpg
Neither Jolly Rancher nor Hammond Candies here in the Denver area had rail service, so I presume a candy factory that needs rail service would be something emense like M&M mars or Nestlies that manufactures millions of units per day.
While the Keebler Cookie factory here in Denver is right against an industrial rail line, it does not use it. The factory is huge.
Would the Food and Drug Administration allow baking flour to be dumped into a pit from a covered hopper and possibly become contaminated with all kinds of dirt and debris that has blown into the pit? I don't think so. They probably require sanitary handing equipment.
cacole Would the Food and Drug Administration allow baking flour to be dumped into a pit from a covered hopper and possibly become contaminated with all kinds of dirt and debris that has blown into the pit? I don't think so. They probably require sanitary handing equipment.
There are FDA guide lines on unloading flour and sugar..I suspect the cars hopper is connected to a sanitary unloading hose which is connected to a storage bin/tank.
Just got hit by a long-ago memory double-whammy.
Frank Ellison had a scenic flat of the Thousand Window Bakery behind one of the yards on the Delta Line. I noticed it because I had heard radio announcements (and boy, did I just date myself!) advertising Sunshine Bread, "From the thousand window bakeries."
A couple of years later I found the prototype, adjacent to Sunnyside Yard - three or four (industrial height) stories of almost pure glass. The tracks entered the building at ground level. Product was shipped by truck to New York City and Long Island retailers. Big sign on the roof facing the yard, with a picture of a loaf of Sunshine Bread and that line I italicised above. The bread wrapper was white, with a lot of little polkadots.
The idea could be crossed with one I encountered later - an aisle-edge edifice of about that size which was actually the back of the local control panel.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
This topic got me curious, and I looked to see if the Necco candy factory here in MA had a spur. It appears so! :-)
Building on its wafer base, Necco rolled out a host of now-extinct exotics early in the century: Hoarhound Ovals, Jujube Monoplanes, Whangbees, Montevideos, Chocolate Need-Ums and Climax Mint Patties. In 1927, it built what was then the world's largest candy factory its current one with a rail spur into the basement for incoming sugar. In 1938, it launched Sky Bar, the first multicenter candy bar, with a sky-writing campaign.
They are talking about the old factory in Cambridge MA. The one they use now is in Revere MA, and while there are tracks next to it, I don't see a siding. http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=r2210f92gzpj&lvl=17&dir=0&sty=o&form=LMLTCC
www.newenglanddepot.net
ctyclsscs The D.L. Clark company, which made Clark bars and a ton of other items, used to have their factory here in Pittsburgh. It wasn't an especially large building. But the coolest thing was that the rail siding entered the building on the second floor. The Pennsy mainline was across the street and on a raised piece of ground, so the siding crossed over a street and into the second floor of the plant. I always thought that would make a really neat model. Here is a photo of the bridge crossing the street below: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pghbuccos/7089337521/ I saw a photo not too long ago of a rail car sitting inside building, but now I can't remember where I saw it. Jim
It is amazing to me at this point in time to be sitting at my computer in Texas and continue to find things that were manufactured well within 100 miles of my home when I was growing up. I grew up in a town called Wheeling that was about 50 miles from Pittsburgh. It seemed to me at the time that there were factories everywhere you looked and in every town you went through. Tremendous numbers of trains ran everywhere and there were always sidings at the buildings with freight cars. As a child we always tried to by products that were made in America as they were much higher in quality than other items that were available. I sure do miss those days.
Wow! Talk about being hit by old memories.... There WAS a Breckt Chocolates & Candies here in Denver that had a siding. It was right where Speer Boulevard went air born to go over the southern lead to Union Station, D&RGW and C&S Rice rail yards. The industrial track (D&RGW) to the south of the yard went under the viaduct and to the factory. I actually believe it used to be a "tunnel" track where the track went under the building and the one immediately to the north. This building is now the Acme Lofts, the one to the north is gone. The reason I suddenly remembered it is because painted on the building there was a big hand with a pointing finger that said something like, "No clearance for trainmen on side of boxcars".
Another reason this was interesting was on the other side of the building the track went over Cherry Creek on a very light trestle to serve industries on Wynkoop street (in front of Union Station). Today it is a foot bridge.
Breckts candies built the factory in 1908. Somewhere it changed hands and by 1968 the Acme Matress company sold the building. Don't know where it switched hands between the two, but the Breckts Candies painted on the building lasted until 1992 when it was converted to lofts.
http://bridgehunter.com/co/denver/wynkoop-street-rr/
I checked out the Clark Company on the Bing Maps. Really cool! In fact I've decided that I'm going to incorporate this into my layout. What a visually interesting addition it will be!!!