Breweries and Refrigerator Cars

[mondotrains]

Hi Guys,
I have a brewery on my layout made up of two structures. One is main building (brewery) for receiving the ingredients for the brewing process and another building where the storage tanks are housed inside and from whose siding I expect beer to be distributed to the "world".

My first questions is: Am I setting up this operation correctly? I expect covered hoppers to arrive at the brewery with the necessary hops etc. for the brewing process. I have connected this building to the other with overhead piping so that the finished brew can be stored in the tanks inside this "storage and distribution" facility. I expect empty refrigerator cars to arrive and be filled with kegs of beer, I guess.

Are any of you guys out there familiar with the brewing process that would have been used in 1959....the year I'm modeling? Am I setting up my operation correctly? Are refers the correct car for distribution?

Another secondary question is in regards to the "refers", if in fact I should be using refers for distribution. As you probably know, there are model makers that have created a number of custom-painted Athearn refrigerator cars, with all makes and brands of beers imaginable. I talked to a guy at Greenway Products recently, who prints many different beer labels and brewers on refrigerator cars and he said that they aren't really prototypical. I guess one would have to call these cars "fantasy" cars....they look great but for the most part, they didn't exist in reality.

I think Greenway Products cars look great and want to buy some, especially some with fantastic graphics and with the New Haven reporting marks (I model the New Haven) but certainly I don't want to go to jail on a "non-prototypical refer rap".

Could I please have some input on these refers?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Mondo

[Anonymous]

Mondo--

Is there a brewery in your area that you could visit? Many of the breweries around here offer tours (and free beer), and you may get some idea of how they are rail served. What you have sounds fine, but depending on space you could add icing facilities nearby for reefers, as well as a bottling house, wash house, power plant, and a brewery grain elevator.

Reefers are fine for beer, but I'm not certain if the billboard ones we see are correct--I would guess not. I know I've seen pictures of PFE reefers switched at breweries in the past. I'm not certain, but I think most grain was carried in boxcars until the '60s. Perhaps someone who knows covered hoppers or reefers better will chime in.

Gary

[SpaceMouse]

My brother is planning to set up a railroad line that will bring beer from the kitchen to his entertainment center. But that is not really waht you were asking is it? It more of a point to point layout.

[Anonymous]

In the days before pasteurized beer, the live ingredients present in keged beer DID require the shipping and storage of kegs in the cold, hence the reefers. Some of the larger brew houses did have reefers done up as rolling billboards. It is true that they were rare. Today the concpet of 'billboard reefers' is very pupular and hence the creation of artwork that is not a prototypical reproduction. I do not know the time period when it became 'normal' to process all beer with pasteurizing, eliminating the need for refigeration. i think that in 1959 your probably fine. Bottled and canned beer has always been pasteurized and can be shipped warm. Cheers!

[Anonymous]

Circa 1959 a brewery would receive malt and hops most often in plain 40' boxcars -- covered hoppers were just then coming into general use for foodstuffs. "Grain doors" made of wood and heavy paper would be used to keep the grain inside the cars. Unloading at that time would have been done by hand (and shovels) into below-track hoppers at the brewery.

A brewery might also receive bottles and cans by plain boxcar inbound. At a later date, corn syrups might be receive by tank car.

Outbound loads would consist of ice reefers for keg beer, and insulated plug-door or plain boxcars for bottled and canned beer. Insulated cars would be preferred, but plain cars would do for the summer rush season. Other outbound loads would be "wort" (spent grain from the brewing process) shipped in plain box cars and broken glass (in gondolas).

Reefers lettered for the brewery were found, but weren't common. For example, of all of the hundreds of DSDX (Dairy Shippers Dispatch) reefers used by Schlitz, only one was painted and lettered with the Schlitz logo.

[Anonymous]

Remember, "billboard reefers" were outlawed in the 1930's by the ICC. The company name couldn't be in letters larger than 12"

But reality might be different on your layout, and they do look pretty good, so....

Wayne

[dknelson]

A book has been published by the Milwaukee Road Historical Society on "The Beer Line" in Milwaukee. I think it will give you some excellent ideas and it has wonderful photos of when the railroad served the Schlitz, Blatz and Pabst breweries in Milwaukee WI.
The Milwaukee breweries such as Miller shipped bottles and cans using insulated boxcars by the time I became aware of the process. Some of those cars can go for days with minimal temperature loss, but they are loaded in a chilled environment.
Also someone mentioned bottles. Another thing that would be shipped out would be hoppers filled with broken glass bottles. The right of way would glisten in the sun from bits of glass that would leak out.
Also spent grains would be shipped out. Schlitz actually had a duck farm south of Milwaukee where they used the spent grain. Then Schilitz also had a fertlizer subsidiary to make use of duck manure, grain hulls, to which they added the remainder from cranberry juice production. Almost like the animal/meat business -- nothing wasted.
Dave Nelson

[orsonroy]

Since I'm modelling Peoria cisca 1950 (the whiskey capitol to the world), I've had to do a bit of digging to find information on the brewing industry and it's relationship with railroads. Since Peoria had over 80(!) breweries and distilleries in it at one time, I've looked into beer making as well. Here's my take on what I've found for the 1950s:

The brewery would have received raw materials by 40-foot boxcar. Hops would be bagged, and barley and wheat would be loose in the car. Water was from the municipal source. The plants would NOT have started seeing covered hoppers until the late 1960s, since the vast majority of covered hoppers for 1959 were still used exclusively for mineral transport (cement, sand and carbon black, especially). Paper boxes were usually outsourced and shipped via truck, labels were mostly printed on site, and bottles would likely be made on site as well (you can use covered hoppers for silica deliveries). Don't forget to add a short siding for coal hoppers and the power plant!

On the way out, beer and spirits needed temperature CONTROL more than "cold". Anhauser Busch had a LARGE fleet of 36-foot "reefers", with standard reefer doors and NO ice bunkers. Bud was shipped all over the country in these cars. Manufacturer's Railway is a A-B owned shortline, and their Mathers leasing boxcars (the green ones sold by P2K) ran around all over the country for their use. I'm actually having a hard time tracking down what other reefers would have been used to transport alcoholic products, because the railroads were generally secretive about their movements. Loss through theft was a real problem, and you didn't want to advertise that you had a boxcar full of 30 year old scotch sitting around! I'm planning on using very plain 36 and 40 foot leasing company reefers to represent this traffic, until I find out more.

The only really correct models of beer reefers (post 1932) are a series of A-B reefers made by Sunshine. They're hard to get ahold of, and I don't have any yet. You can represent the cars by using Roundhouse or Atlas 36 foot models.