I was given two Bakers Chocolate tank cars made by Athearn RTR. I got on Google images to see if there was a prototype and its mostly model rr pictures with one picture of a tank car with caboose on what looks like private property. Does anyone know anything about the prototype, what did it haul etc. What yrs did they run etc. I tried but didn't find anything on line, any links that might give me more info on the real thing? Thanks
Bruce
Back in 1987, the New Haven Railroad Historical & Technical Association re-published a 1944 magazine article from the New Haven RR's "Along The Line" magazine about Baker's Chocolate. This "Shoreliner" magazine is still available from the NHRHTA as Volume 18 Issue 4:http://www.nhrhta.org/htdocs/order.htm
The 3-page article does include 4 pictures of Baker's freight cars and two of the factory.
For more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Baker_%26_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker's_Chocolate
Summation: The Baker's Chocolate Co. was located in Milton Lower Mills and Dorchester Lower Mills along the banks of the Neponset River just south of Boston, Mass. This was along the Milton Branch of the Old Colony Division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford RR (now the Mattapan trolley extension of the Red Line of the MBTA). If you go to Bing Maps, many of the factory buildings are still there; it's where Adams St. crosses the Neponset River, and the railroad bridge is still there just up river a bit. Heck, even the billboard sign is still on top of the HQ building.
Bulk chocolate was made in this location starting in 1764. It was renamed Baker's Chocolate in 1780, and continued until 1969 before they moved everything to Delaware. Liquid chocolate was shipped all over the USA in various tank cars, including milk cars and milk-tank container flat cars.
There was a 35,000,000 lb. capacity concrete silo facility for cocoa beans, they employed 800 people during WWII, and just before WWII, Baker's was shipping 600,000,000 lbs. of chocolate a year.
First off the Athearn car is to long, and has a bonnet instead of a manway cover. There is a great photo of the early car on the cover of, Classic Freight Cars, vol 2, a rolling pipe line of colorful tanks. This book is hard to find. Baker had a two compartment car and there's a photo of it in Jim Kinkaid's book on framless tank cars. Thomas Trains made an all metal kit many years ago
that's fairly accurate. It shows up on ebay once in a while.
Regards, Bobby
thanks guys for the info, not sure how I will work these into my railroad. Interesting reading.
The book "Railroad Freight Car Slogans & Heralds" by John Kelly has a picture and some info on a Baker's Chocolate tank car...in fact, it's one of the cars pictured on the cover.
Railroad Freight Car Slogans & Heralds
I would guess that at least some of the tank cars might be bringing in enulsifiants and other ingredients to make things like the familiar Baker's Chocolate squares from dry cocoa powder and sugar. Whether a small modeled facility (or even a big one with suggestive compression) would justify that size delivery, rather than receiving material in drums or carbons or whatever from a boxcar (or a truck) I couldn't say... but it might be a useful story for an origination move TO Baker's Chocolate...
I would be interested in the extent to which Baker's produced chocolate syrup or similar products. Certainly none of the 'drinking chocolate' grades they produced were liquid.
The manufacturing recipes may be preserved at the Harvard Business School's library special collections:
Collection Identifier: Mss:435 1812-1945 B168
This would establish what products were marketed in liquid form, and other records might then indicate the volume or amount shipped in particular years.