Hi all. My dad and I just built a small layout that's about two feet from the wall and 20 feet long. I plan to build a paper mill with about 5 industry tracks. Could anyone tell me what mainly is brought in by rail to paper mills? Also, any additional info would be helpful.
Andy
Our local mill gets its raw materials brought in by rail - woodchips, chemicals in tank cars, goodness knows what in box cars. Boxcars haul away the rough paper pulp products to other mills to turn into paper. Most of the woodchips come in by truck though.
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
Glatfellter Paper near me gets logs by rail (on flat cars) and turns them into chips. Chemicals by tank car and covered hopper. Other items come in in boxcars. Ships out paper of all types in boxcars, the spent liquor (chemicals used to make chips into pulp) in tank cars.
It depends on what the output of the plant is. Some mills produce only coarse products like linerboard, corrugated and kraft paper. Others produce more refined papers, including coated stock such as magazines are printed on. Products going out might be palletized sheets, or continuous rolls.
A mill producing more "finished" products would use more chlorine (bleaches the paper fibers to white) and more cotton fiber. Coated papers use a lot of kaolin clay, once shipped packaged in boxcars, then in bulk in covered hoppers. Today it is shipped as a slurry in tank cars.
Your mill might also use recycled materials, which would arrive in bails, either in open gondolas or in boxcars, depending on the nature of the material.
Don't forget that a paper mill consumes massive amounts of energy, so you might have a boiler plant on site that receives coal or oil.
Outbound products are typically shipped in insulated boxcars, since paper is very sensitive to moisture and temperature variations.
I modeled a significantly compressed paper mill on my N scale layout.
The pulp yard is in the foreground, then clockwise from the left is the digester building, where chemicals and wood chips get delivered, and chemical waste is shipped out. Next, the power plant/boiler house (with the double smoke stack). There's a coal pier there for unloading hoppers, and fly ash gets shipped out in covered hoppers. Next there's a two track fiddle yard, where outbound cars are stored until the "digger" comes to swap them out for new inbound cars. The large building is the main mill (a fraction of the size it should be!) receives deliveries of equipment, and that's where I spot my kaolin loads. Across the main line is the warehouse for outbound product shipments.
I designed it to fit inside the return loops at the end of the layout. They pass under the mountain in the background.
Hope this is helpful.
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
According to the paper mill thread on this forum and other sources, the mills that make paper from raw materials, such as woodchips, chemicals, etc. are larger and receive more diverse types of rolling stock than mills that produce paper from receiving recycled paper products, which are smaller outfits, and may be more practical to model. Although, it sounds like you have enough space to model the larger type.
There is a company in Brownstown Indiana that was going to make a paper product for use in the turkey brooding industry, kind of an underfoot litter type thing that rolls over existing litter and both cushions the little chicks and absorbs excrement, which can breed diseases. Don't know if it ever came forth but it was supposed to be made from 75% fine fibers (newsprint) and 25% coarse fibers (corrugated boxes). On a model, those products could be received via boxcar. I plan to build such a mill on my layout.
So, do some research, and you might fine other products that are based on paper that might give you even more ideas, if your original plans don't work out.
- Douglas