Prototype information for the modeler

I'm interested in modeling a tire plant on my layout, but need more information on what kind of loads a typical plant would recieve/ship and what kind of cars would carry them.  I'd be modeling a plant circa 1950.  Off the top of my head I can think of coal (for an onsite power plant), chemical tank cars for treating the rubber, and outgoing boxcars of tires and the occasional tank care of waste.  What is a mystery to me though would be incoming loads of raw material for the tires.  Steel wire perhaps (for steel belted tires)?  How would the plant recieve raw rubber?

 Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

If the plant had a Banbury department for mixing  rubber compound then they would recieve Carbon Black...You would need J flex(a oil like substance) and other compounds.

Yes, carbon black would arrive as a raw material in black covered hoppers. These covered hoppers were used long before covered hoppers became common place with other materials (pre 1950). I believe these cars, at least in the steam era, had "Carbon Black" lettered in white on the side of the car. Models have been available and I believe someone makes decals. I believe many years ago in MR, there was a article on how to scratchbuild one. It may have provided some background info too.

It's not the time period that you model but we have a Goodrich tire factory in Woodburn, Indiana serviced by NS. They still use black covered hoppers to bring in the carbon black.  Inbound cars are box cars, carbon black hoppers and tank cars. Outbound are the emty CB hoppers, tank cars and box cars. I asked a railroader what was in the box cars coming into the plant and he said: "tires". I am not sure why they were shipping tires in but they could have been rejects or tires from another location being warehoused (from China?).

The local runs on this former part of  the Wabash 5th District. (Maumee Western also runs on this former line to Toledo and interchanges on the east end.) Interestingly, the NS local uses a caboose as it runs backwards the 9 miles or so from New Haven, Indiana (East Wayne Yards.) The same railroader told me the reason they run backwards is that the siding on the other end of the line was condemned. A friend and I chased the train a few months ago and filmed it. The local services other customers on the line like a lumber yard, clothing warehouse and factory that receives plastic pellets. But that is small busines compared to the tire plant. If the Goodrich plant ever shuts down it will most likely be end of the local. On our chase we also noted about a half dozen empty gons headed to interchange with M&W. The spur to the Goodrich plant off the line is several miles long. Typically the train does not run more than a dozen cars out and back. When they return, they run engine first with the caboose tucked in behind the loco. (Either there is no run around track at the plant or they do not use it.) Typical power is a high nose GP-38 or a low nose GP-38-2.

Rubber would be shipped in boxcars.

 i remember shipments of carbon black in black covered hoppers from Sid Richardson Co. with the reporting marks SRCX.  on the old Big Four we used to get a lot of tires in 40 and mostly 50 foot box cars off the GM&O at E. St. Louis.  i believe they were out of the big Goodyear or Goodrich plant at Union City Tn.

  the local inhabitants used to love pilfering these loads and they were easy to find in the yard since you could smell a car load of new tires from quite a distance.  the railroad cops had to baby sit these loads until they left on an outbound train

  one inbound commodity you might be surprised about for your tire plant is wheels.  Kelsey Hayes used to ship car loads of new wheels to different tire plants where the new tires were mounted and balanced and then reshipped to auto assembly plants throughout the country.   this obviously saved the auto makers from having to mount the tires and they could just use them as they came out of the box car.

grizlump

Thanks for the help so far guys.  The specific plant I eventually want to model is the U.S. Rubber plant in Eau Claire, WI, pictured here (after name change):

 http://www.2719.com/pages/towerphoto1.html

 The photo only shows a small portion of the plant, which is fairly massive.  The plant ceased operation in the early 90's but is still around in mostly the same form, so modeling it should be failry easy.

I do know that in the time I plan on modeling (early 50's) the plant was served by three different railroads-Soo Line, Chicago and Northwestern (Omaha Road), and the Milwaukee Road-each of which took a turn switching the plant for a week at the time.  Parts of the plant were switched 3 times a day, so there'd be plenty of action to model.