I was enjoying a Hershey’s chocolate bar today when I started wondering how the railroads are involved in chocolate production (hauling the constituants and the finished product). The sugar, cocoa, milk, high fructose corn syrup and other stuff has to get to Hershey, PA somehow. [C=:-)]
Cocoa beans can be shipped in boxcars. We used to place boxcars for Cocoa loading at the port. Man did they smell good when loaded. But I haven’t seen one in a few years.
Sugar travels in covered hoppers and the dreaded corn syrup in short tanks.
Nick
Why is the corn syrup dreaded?
Go to Bing.com/maps for an “birdseye” view of Hershey, PA and the Hershey factory. There are all sorts of tank cars and covered hoppers at the plant and in the nearby yard. I also recall having seen several pictures of trains (NS) working the Hershey plant at Railpictures.com. Reese’s is located nearby and brings in cocoa and corn syrup by rail, as well. John Timm
Some people it’s nutritionally suspect…
The cars themselves are extremely heavy for their length when loaded.
Nick
A little history of Cuba’s Railroads; http://www.tramz.com/cu/hy/hy.html Hershey brought railroading to the island…A Sweet Subject!
http://www.seat61.com/Cuba.htm. Parts of the Hershey Railroad still exists in Cuba. The link shows some photos of current equipment as well as a former VIA RAIL Budd RDC, still doing what it was built to do!
Here’s a link to some YouTube Videos of Cuban railroading:
Besides smelling so sweet it hurts?
We had a derailment a few years back with a corn syrup tank and a hopper of plastic pellets, the tank ripped the side out of the hopper, then laid over on a switch stand and banged a hole in the tank…the EPA made us remove 6 plusincjes of sub soil…the ants/ insects were everywhere, and the birds were going nuts eating all the bugs, and some of the pellets.
EPA said that was a no-no also…
We had to have a vacum truck pick up the pellets and MOW removed the soil because the syurp had contanimated the ground…plus that stuff is seriously sticky.
We ship cocoa beans in large covered hoppers to a local chocolatier (Blommer Chocolate, which is responsible for Chicago’s Loop smelling so nice in the morning–I kid you not!).
I recall a load of corn syrup that had steam coming out of the heater coils once–due to some sort of malfunction the load was basically cooked, rendering the car unusable (nothing but a solid lump inside). They tried to blame that one on us, somehow.
Thanks for the insight. I wonder if a covered hopper carrying sugar is involved in a firery derailment but doesn’t spill, will its contents turn into a solid block of caramel?
Hershey actually has 3 plants served by rail in the hershey (Derry Twp.) vicinity. The old downtown plant, and a Reece’s and West Hershey plant, both located a few miles to the west.
And there are actual train crews dedicated to serving Hershey. A daylight shift does all 3 plants, while an evening shift does mainly the downtown plant, as well as a General Mills warehouse nearby. Both jobs are based out of Hershey, with an engine and cabin car (caboose) stationed there for exclusive use.
They used to get beans in, but that stopped about 2 years ago as that is all done off site now. Milk is all brought in by truck. They do get lots of sugar by rail: corn dextrose, regular bulk sugar, corn syrup and fructose. There are also dedicated, captive GATX tank cars that haul chocolate paste from the west hershey plant to the downtown plant. And that’s about it.
Unfortunately Hershey has been sending more and more of its production to Mexico. Because we all know cheaper is better, right? If you notice on their wrappers, they use a lot of words like “chocolate flavor” now. That means it uses… ugh… vegetable oil. [xx(] A real shame… Milton S. is rolling in his grave for what they’ve done to his plant and town.
Quite a few years ago - mid-1980s - we rehabbed a set of tracks off the Amtrak/ ex-PRR main in Sharon Hill, PA - Calcon Hook Road, if memory serves correctly - at the former Saturday Evening Post printing plant. It was being “re-purposed” to handle the bags of chocolate - not sure from where or to where - and sure smelled nice.
Blommer Chocolate also has a plant in East Greenville - north of Pennsburg and Red Hill - in the northern portion of Montgomery County in eastern Pennsylvania, on the East Penn Railway line - originally the Perkiomen Branch of the Reading Railroad.
In the Phoenixville/ Devault area - NW of Philadelphia - about 10 or 15 years ago, I believe that ConRail derailed like 6 tank cars of corn syrup that were destined to the now-defunct American Sweeteners plant there. They leaked, and when the corn syrup was exposed to air, it decomposed, which releases large quantites of heat, so I read someplace that the stuff started to smolder, and then burn - the fire companies had to be called to hose it down until it could be excavated and disposed of properly. True or not - I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I read about it.
- Paul North.
A few years ago 5 box cars of cocoa beans fell off a barge into the East River off of Brooklyn when the barge sunk. There was a chocolate plant over by river in that industrial area, but I cannot remember where or what company it was.
Here is one link that provides information concerning high fructose corn syrup: http://www.sweetsurprise.com/myths-and-facts/faqs-high-fructose-corn-syrup?utm_source=MSN&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=high+fructose+corn+syrup&utm_content=HFCSFacts&utm_campaign=HFCSFacts
Another link tells of a possible danger from high fructose corn syrup: http://www.themoneytimes.com/20090831/heat-forms-toxic-substance-corn-syrups-id-1081949.html
You can also look at the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup
Now for a frightening question: would you take into your body 1-alpha-d-glucopyranosyl-2-beta-l-fructofuranocide? (that’s how I recall it is spelled; it’s going on fifty-three years since I studied sugars). That is another name, which gives the structure of the most common disaccharide, C12H22O11, which we usually call “sugar.”
Johnny
Which is similar to the time my brother told my Dad after hearing of an Ethylene glycol (main component of automobile anti-freeze) car derailment into Crowsnest Lake one fall, “now that lake won’t freeze for the next two winters”.
AgentKid