"Out of Steam"

[Anonymous]

This article (the second of a three part series) is a fascinating combination of social and railroad history in Milwaukee:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec04/281548.asp

Two sample quotes:

"Digital commerce supplanted 50-ton boxcars with information highways."

"Miller ships a trickle of its beer output over the rails - at most 3% - and puts the rest on semitrailer trucks."

[oltmannd]

Wonder how many of those semitrailer wind up on intermodal trains......maybe without the shipper or consignee even knowing it!

[dehusman]

I'd like to see how digital commerce replaced the 50 ton boxcar.

I wanna see them e-mail me 50 tons of widgets.

Dave H.

[railman]

The article series is very good.

[Anonymous]

Very good. A city literally built on jobs and beer.

The big whoosing sound is jobs going overseas in the name of the dollar. The rest could not afford the products on today's wages if we kept making widgets at a American factory.

I used to run beer. You had to be bright eyed and sharp. Ready to go once your 5th wheel clanged onto that trailer. You would have about 700 miles and just enough time to do it in. No stopping because they need that beer unless it was a sunday.

I am willing to bet that beer trailers did not go by train. The loads of beer had to be accompanied by paperwork related to the transport of Alcohol across state lines or even inside the same state. I dont think they would take the trouble to ship it by rail.

In Baltimore, we had the Seagrams House. Whiskey. Alcohol was brought in on ships from the UK and under extreme control and supervision every drop got transferred to the distillery. They would pack a container with cases upon cases on the glass bottled stuff. Two drivers always went with the load so that no one would be tempted to crack a case. Driving one of these had more liquid by weight than the rig itself so it would "slosh" on you if you shifted it badly.

If there was a way to make digital work for the nation as our workers made the factories run the USA, I would be for it.

[jockellis]

There are certain products which really cannot go by rail because rail just isn't as fast. However, beer could be advertised as "aged" if it did. And speaking of aged and fresh, after a couple of good, stiff belts, no one could probably tell the difference.
Jock Ellis

[Overmod]

I beg to differ -- some of us can tell after quite a number of good, stiff belts -- unless, of course, you're referring to corporal punishment for underage drinking... ;-}

I'm of the opinion that it's much more the vibration and incident heat that cause problems for beer, as opposed to the absolute transit time. What I used to drink, many years ago now, was Budweiser... in heavy brown-glass refillable bottles, provided from the brewery in the (relatively) nearby Newark, NJ region. (You haven't had Budweiser until you've had this, btw.) I was told you could only get this near one of the Anheuser-Busch branch breweries, more I think because of the logistics of the refillable bottles, but partly to ensure the quality of the stuff... and imho it was indeed good quality. The point I want to make is that a given case of this was often several weeks "old" by the time I received it, and I would see no difficulty in its sitting in refrigerated cars for any reasonable length of time en route to some destination... not that different, really, from sitting in the distributor's walk-in waiting for me. Cushion underframes might provide the necessary level of shock isolation in the longitudinal plane... not so sure about typical three-axis freight trucks for suspension, however!

Of course, there won't be enough of a mass market for this kind of product to justify full rail shipping, or (probably) a logistical intermodal solution involving rail. But if LTL mixes of product are possible within a given railcar, the 'good stuff' could ride along, and I don't think a week or two of road and yard delays would hurt it.

Of course, I suspect your point about distinguishing 'aged' from 'new' is valid for "beer" in cans (but then, real beer doesn't come in cans, even Fosters to the contrary...

Shifting to stout, I still think it's a pity I can't get Australian Guinness here in the States... if I didn't KNOW how it tastes over there, I wouldn't be so aware of how the imported product in the United States has suffered. There are a very few places that have properly-shipped Guinness on tap, but even this isn't the magical mix of flavors that the Land of Oz enjoys...

[rrnut282]

As for beer travelling on the rails, rumor has it, Triple Crown regularly dispatches an eastbound out of St. Louis that is almost entirely beer. I'm guessing it gets split up in the Fort for all the TC destinations like Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Harrisburg, Cincinnatti, Atlanta, etc. With TC giving overnight, 2nd day delivery, or 3rd morning door to door depending upon the marke, the freshness or aging is more a function of how long it sits upon the shelf in the store, not shipping.

[mucable]

***,

So what does this reporter expect? Dump a bucket of bits into a box and somehow it magically reassembles itself into whatever it's supposed to be when it reaches the end-user customer.

He probably spells AMTRAK AMTrack as well!!

[UPTRAIN]

All the stupid people, where do they all come from?

[UPTRAIN]

Oh yeah, Bud is avertising that born on date stuff, the beer that is shipped the day before or that day.