Loads to a metal manufacturing plant

[DSteckler]

A company that manufactures metal goods, e.g., nuts and bolts, washers, screws, etc.  Besides steel coils and cardboard boxes (for shipping), what kind of loads would this kind of company receive by rail?

[mbinsewi]

Maybe the different chemical solutions that the steel coil rods are soaked in before the bolt making process ?

Mike.

[dknelson]

DSteckler

A company that manufactures metal goods, e.g., nuts and bolts, washers, screws, etc.  Besides steel coils and cardboard boxes (for shipping), what kind of loads would this kind of company receive by rail?

 

Depends on the era, the size of the operation, and also on the product line. Some such operations make their own billets and thus are truly steel mills.  Others get billets as incoming loads.  

If a mill or mini-mill, then loads of scrap metal for the electric furnace.  A truly huge operation might need cutting oil by the tank car.  The cleaning and descaling chemicals might also arrive by tank car.  Decades ago a big user of electricity might have its own power plant and get coal in 55 ton two-bay hoppers.  That would be unlikely these days.

 

If they also made cast goods they could get foundry sand in covered hoppers, and wood for pattern making by the flatcar load.  

 

Consider Northwestern Steel & Wire in Sterling IL.  They were a major manufacturer of nails and wire fence.   There is a neat website about Northwestern Steel and Wire here:

http://www.nwsw.info/

 

I think you will find much useful information on that site - it is a big one so take the time to explore it.  Here is the best part.  For many years a major "load" they would receive was ... retired steam locomotives, right into the 1960s.  And to make things even more interesting, since they were surrounded by steam locomotives they continued to use steam as plant switchers right into December 1980.  Initially they used CB&Q and Illinois Central engines, but then they received a big string of Grand Trunk 0-8-0s and that is what they were using the day I visited in 1979.   There were four locomotives in steam all on the same day.  It was a trip back in time.

 

Dave Nelson

 

 

 

[DSteckler]

Thanks, Dave!  Lots of good information there.

[DSteckler]

Great idea, Mike. I'll do some research into that.

[Colorado Ray]

You would also have an occasional outbound load of steel cuttings scrap in gondolas.  During college I worked a summer job at a valve manufacture.  One of my duties was to periodically rake out cuttings from the oil bath under the cutting machines into a wheelbarrow and haul them to a dump chute that dropped to a gondola parked alongside our building.  

Ray

[dknelson]

Colorado Ray

You would also have an occasional outbound load of steel cuttings scrap in gondolas.  During college I worked a summer job at a valve manufacture.  One of my duties was to periodically rake out cuttings from the oil bath under the cutting machines into a wheelbarrow and haul them to a dump chute that dropped to a gondola parked alongside our building.  

Ray   

Ray, I once saw an interesting portable baffle that mounted on the side of a gondola that was parked under such a chute.  I wrote up an article, with two prototype photos (which also show the kind of chute you speak of) and some model photos as well, for the NMRA Midwest Region Waybill, Spring 2014 edition.  It can be found here:

http://www.mwr-nmra.org/region/waybill/waybill20141spring.pdf

Dave Nelson

[DSteckler]

Thanks, Ray.  I was planning a 1 -2x week outbound scrap load.

[ndbprr]

The bolts and screws would be made from wire and heat treated to harden them. I doubt full width coils would be used. Probably pre slit coilsjust wider then the size ofthe washer. Some may be   zinc, cadmium or chrome plated.

[Eddystone]

Nut and bolt mfg. would get it's steel as steel rods. 

If you model a fab shop you could get loads of steel such as plate and structural steel and ship out semi finished steel ready to be assembled such as building girders or bridge sections ect.