The Coors article in the April Trains Magazine says that Coors sends a lot of beer out by train. It seems plausible (allthough the article said they don’t) to send beer in a unit train. That made me wonder what other things generally do / or did ship in unit trains? In my part of the country, it’s grain and big pink rocks that ship in unit trains.
Here in Western Pennsylvania most of the stuff I usually see traveling in unti trains are coal, intermodal, and auto racks. Occasionally you see some iron ore one the old Bessemer & Lake Erie and I have seen trains of nothing but gons hauliung scrap metal.
I also remember hearing about the tank train in the southwestern states. It was a famous unit oil train.
Big pink rocks?[%-)]
Sometimes, it’s just best not to ask. I don’t think we need to know about the Big Pink Rocks. For God’s Sake Man, leave it alone!
Anyway, I’ve never heard of beer unit trains. Coors is kind of unique in that they’ve made their brand reputation based on brewing with “Pure Rocky Mountain Spring Water.” So they’re stuck brewing with that water in Colorado.
This means they have to ship water (beer is basically water) from Colorado to Virginia in tank cars.
Other brewers built brewerys close to their markets. They have to ship the grain and such in, but they’re not paying to move water 2/3 of the way across the USA as Coors is.
I wonder just who came up with the idea of hanging the Coors hat on the peg that is now a curse, the use of that “Rocky Mountain Water”.
But, as many of us know - there may be no beer unit trains, but there are Orange Juice unit trains. Unlike beer, which can be brewed about anywhere, OJ needs to come from warm climates where orange trees can thrive. Such a place is Bradenton, FL which originates unit trains of OJ for the New York City area.
Pink Elephant Ballast ??!![}:)]
In Ireland a lot of Guiness is moved by rail in containers which contain several kegs. At off loading points arounded the country the kegs are then delivered to the pubs. In the Irish Republic Guiness have over 80% of the beer market.
They used also to have a brewery in London which was the last brewery here to be rail served but it’s now closed. It would dispatch a couple of wagons loads (again containing kegs) to Scotland.
Many years ago the Guiness plant in Dublin had its own internal narrow gauge locos. These could also be mounted onto special broad gauge converter cars so they could haul broad gauge wagons to the exchange sidings with Irish Rail too. I think at least 3 of these locos and their converter cars survive but the only one in working order is at the Amberley Chalk Pits museum in Sussex near Arundel. This place is well worth a visit as it contains railroad related exhibits in 4 gauges and a lot of other industrial exhibits. For James Bond fans its the location of the mine in “A View to a Kill”.
The Southern railroad used to ship alot of beer in boxcars.I can remember when I hired in 1991 on the NS that we used to ship tank cars full of Coors beer.I had the 142 out of Portsmouth Ohio yesterday that had a couple of tank cars for Miller Brewery in N.C.
You’ll still see beer handled in those distinctive PC&F boxcars on various trains across the country, particularly to and from major metropolitan areas. CSX seems to have more of this traffic than NS out East, for some reason.
Coors does indeed ship beer slurry in tank cars to Virginia for finishing. It moves over BNSF to KC then NS to the Shenendoah Valley. They use local water there to fini***he slurry into beer for distribution in the east.
It doesn’t move in unit trains, but in a good sized block in regular freight service.
Here’s a picture from some years back
The LG Everest quarry in Dell Rapids, SD has a huge pit that quarries pink Sioux Quartzite. Nearly every day, a mile long train of ot heads south to Sioux City, Iowa. (Up until a few years ago, the line went through the parking lot where I work.) The rocks are anywhere from football sized to dining room table sized. The Dakota & Iowa railroad runs the train.
Technically it’s not Rocky Mountain Spring Water anymore. Coors capped off the springs awhile ago, and Anheuser Busch sued that they can’t label it “Spring” water if it doesn’t “spring” to the surface.
As far as I know, there isn’t a beer unit train. After the train comes in from Golden, I think most of it gets added to the DENKCK (if I’m remembering correctly). The glass lined tankers are the easiest way to spot stuff from Coors. They’re white with spilled wort on top of them, and they carry CORX reporting marks.
Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten this month’s Trains yet, so I haven’t had a chance to rea
Good fortune to be onsite for that derailment indeed !!! Naturally the cars got to be emptied before you rerail them !!! Ah yes , the things dreams are made of ! Beer , beer slurry … what ever ! ( actually beer slurry sounds like a short trip to a good time ) hmmm
I heard a rumor that one of the Triple Crown trains east out of St Louis was a beer run. TC will niether confirm nor deny this rumor, but I’ll bet there were a lot of railroaders secretly hoping for a minor derailment.[}:)][;)]
The closest that Coors gets to a unit train are the locals between Denver/Globeville and Golden. Beyond Denver, everything scatters. Been around the wort CORX cars far too often. And then there is what happens to the waste product coming out of the breweries at Golden & Ft. Collins that leaves by pipeline (Ft. Collins) or by Tank Car to KS. (Golden)…When that stuff gets warm in the sun, the bakery smell gives way to …whew!
Olympia Beer (now departed) had as a slogan “It’s the Water, and a lot more.” One of their ads featured a Tumwater, WA firetruck with the slogan on the back bumper…
Those CORX beer cars in TRAINS Magazine come right through here on the NS main line.
En route to-from to the Molson/Coors brewery in Richmond, VA. after BNSF hands them over at KC…
Hic!
One of the more spectacular true unit train operations (train is basically never uncoupled) involves the unit tank car trains (there are a number in eastern Canada) which use a long – 30 to 50 car – string of tank cars which are not only coupled with the usual air and couplers, but with pipes, making it possible to fill or empty the entire string from one point. Interesting operation.
Yep, two kinds, 0000 0010 or in Hex 02 - Had to laugh!
Reminds me of the first time I saw a Chinese Fortune Cookie with a string of
double numbers running across the bottom, and it was like
34 49 15 46 37 25
And I wondered if they ware Hex or Decimal, then my friend said they were lucky lotto numbers! 
The beer train article was good, I drink a few Coors or Keystone Ice cases or 12 packs in the course of a month, and I like the low foam, and sweet taste compared to the beer or Ice beers from Bud or Miller. Was real fond of Rainer Ale and there are some good but expensive beers, outside the usualy $5.99 or less per 12 pack. I think the low foam/head might be altitude, so wonder how the other product differs from what I see or get here in North Central Illinois.
Could drink it faster after opening with less waiting for head to fall.
N Scale supply in Denver had Beer Train pictures on their site a few times when I first started modeling after 2000.
My last visit to Golden, Co, we went to a Micro Brewery for lunch and another downtown.
Sad deal for beer, Miller, A/Busch, Coors, General Brewing has most of the rest.
Brian, one of my favorite trains was the BKDOU unit oil trains. Known as “The Cans” they went from the oil city branch near Bakersfield to the refinery in the LA basin (Carson I think). It stopped running over Tehachapi when they built a pipeline in the late 90’s. Now there is another tanktrain that delivers to the same refinery but now loads up the coast at Wunpost. These trains have sets of 8 cars simi-permanantly attached with a big hose connecting the eight car sets. Here are a couple pix.
This is the empties approaching Woodford sideing just below Tehachappi loop.
The cans were a regular on the Sagus line, but dureing Metrolinks realignment project on that line the cans were rerouted through Cajon. This is another empty almost to Highland sideing at the top of Cajon.
