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Brewery incoming loads

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Brewery incoming loads
Posted by soller on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 1:25 PM

Hi!

Want to model a brewery and need some info

What loads recieves this industry?. I know it recieves grain hoppers, coal or oil for the boiler but what else.Question

Thanks in advance.

Tags: brewery
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Posted by oregon shay on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 8:53 PM

Just off the top of my mind I would imagine a brewery would need a supplier for packaging the product - bottles back in the day, and now also cans, as well as kegs, and boxes and such to pack the products in.  

I remember some years ago when I lived in Denver that Coors built a second brewery to enlarge their market share.  The rather large brewery in Golden was joined by another in Tennessee I believe.  And at the time Coors' slogan was "brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water"; I figured that the water and who knows what else was shipped by rail from Colorado back east.

Will.

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Posted by oregon shay on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 9:08 PM

More on Coors -- Now I seem to recall that Coors made their own bottles and such, and would need raw materials for that.  Additionally, part of their marketing/manufacturing concept was that their beer was kept cold from brewery to retail outlet.  I imagine they used mechanical refrigeration, but since it's your brewery and your railroad, you could use ice and refer rail cars to move your product.  An icing station and supplier of bottling materials would enlarge your potential industrial base. 

Will.

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Posted by soller on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 12:23 AM

Great info.

Thanks Will.

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Posted by dehusman on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 12:30 PM

It will need hops which comes from the uper midwest, the brewery in Houston always got hops in green CNW covered hoppers.  It will need the gprain or grains to brew the beer.  Wheat in midwestern covered hoppers or rice in cars from roads that serve the area from Texas to the Carolinas.

Bottles, kegs in boxcars.

Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com

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Posted by charlie9 on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:20 PM

a lot would depend on the era you are modeling.  for instance, when i first came to St Louis as a young man, bottle beer was sold in returnable bottles.  i would imagine, the empties made their way back to the brewery in the reverse of the outbound product.   i don't know when cans became popular but there were two major can manufacturers in St Louis and the new cans were trucked to the breweries.

Anheuser Busch had their own cooperage operation adjacent to the brewery in South St Louis.

I do remember getting reefer loads of beer on the railroad.  I think it was draft beer in aluminum kegs that needed refrigeration because it was not pasturized like the canned and bottled stuff.

Do a little research on the MRS or Manufacturers Railway.  It was owned by A/B and switched the worlds largest brewery in addition to some other industries in the are south of downtown ST Louis.

Later on, Busch built breweries in other cities so outbound rail shipments from their flagship plant dwindled a bit.

And now for a word about Coors.  I never liked the stuff myself, it was more like chemotherapy to me than beer.  They never had much of a presence in the eastern US supposedly because of transportation issues.  Later on, they said the demand was so great, they would start selling their beer in the south and east.  I heard the real reason behind the migration was because Busch had never been a real big player on the west coast and when they started marketing there, Coors lost so much market share they had to do something.

Charlie

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Posted by BRAKIE on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 2:09 PM

Off the top of my head,barley,hops and yeast.

Frankly I never did like the taste of beer.Dead

Larry

Conductor.

Summerset Ry.


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Posted by cjcrescent on Saturday, February 16, 2013 11:18 AM

Cars for a brewery, both loads in and out.  I'm trying to go for any possible load coming in or out.

Reefers, ice or mechanical ships out.

Grain Hoppers, Wheat, oats, barley, &/or rice,

Boxcars: Cardboard for boxes, or pre-made boxes, lumber for pallets, or pallets pre-made. small machinery, such as augers, conveyor belts. Dry yeast. Barrels of lubricating grease/oil for conveyor belts, augers, various machinery needing lubrication.

Flats, lumber, piping for brewery, new boilers and brewing vessels.

Coal hoppers coal for steam/heat

Tankcars, fuel oil if oil fired.

Gondolas, for used "mash" ash from boilers.

Carey

Keep it between the Rails

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Posted by soller on Saturday, February 16, 2013 12:33 PM

Searching on google maps I have found the Yuengling brewery in Tampa:

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Posted by soller on Saturday, February 16, 2013 12:46 PM

Are these corn syrup tank cars?

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Posted by leighant on Saturday, February 16, 2013 2:31 PM

Some breweries may have provided ice to railroads, not merely for the breweries' rerigerated loads, but also for general railroad use.

According to an SFRD table of ice manufacturers that supplied the railroad in 1934, reprinted as a supplement to Santa Fe Modeler 2nd Q 1989, ice manufacturers in Galveston included:

  • Galveston Ice and Cold Storage (with trackside facility)
  • Galveston Brewing Co. (with trackside facility)
  • Fraser Ice and Cold Storage (with trackside facility)

GALVESTON BREWING COMPANY was located 1895-1965 near 33rd and Market Street (Ave D), a block from the sprawling abandoned but standing Falstaff brewery.  I can’t find any pictures of Galveston Brewing but the Galveston Architecture Guidebook (Rice University Press) describes it as a “castellated Victorian Romanesque style” structure, similar to the Lone Star brewery at San Antonio which is now the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Heljan brewery #678 has some similar lines and features: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/322-678

Both Galveston and San Antonio breweries were designed by architect E. Jugenfeld of St. Louis.

Galveston Brewing was located close to where I would expect icing of Santa Fereefers to have occurred.  On the other hand, does it seem likely that SFRD would have routinely obtained ice from a company for which ice was a sideline? 

Santa Fe had a 14’ x 39’ ice house (storage I presume, not ice manufacturing) as part of its facilities in Galveston at one time.  I found evidence of this from an internet list of documents, “Texas Archival Resources Online”, available at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/houpub/00008/hpub-00008p6.html

The list refers to a Santa Fe operations collection at the Houston Public Library/ Houston Metropolitan Research Center.  The list gave only a one- or two-line description of the document without date, stating it was a record of an ATSF order for replacement of existing 14’ x 39’ ice house at Galveston.  (Santa Fe Collection, Box 353, Operational file #3000) The term “replacement” suggests there was such an ice house there both before and after the (unknown) date of the order.  14’ width would fit within the same track spacing as the 15’ icing platform at Amarillo for which plans were published in Santa Fe Modeler 2nd Quarter 1989 p.13.  I can’t find a “standard” Santa Fe ice house in Santa Fe System Standards. (Kachina Press)

Could ice have been delivered by truck from commercial ice plants to a railroad icing platform a mile or two away, or might Santa Fe have used ice cars to transport ice locally between ice plant and their icing dock?  Santa Fe DID own a small ice (storage?) house on its property in Galveston.

I am tentatively planning some in-town ice-related movements on the Galveston-based layout I am building...  purchased ice from the brewery in Santa Fe company-service ice cars to the icing platform, possibly used partly as storage on wheels...  iced cars from the icing platform to the docks for incoming perishable loads.

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