hello everyone, on my layout im modeling a cannery, the walthers corner stone series. i have looked on the web, but cant seem to find any proto typical pictures as to how one would be set up. i know i need a track for canned goods and pallets and such, but i was also informed that they recieved tanker cars of corn syrup. anyone have any pictures or information? i would really appreciate the help. thanks![:)]
The cannery I hauled out of such as Del Monte and others took produce such as beans, corn and other greens and added water and canned them.
Extreme examples of cannerys included Cambells Soup that would literally create the meal, cook it taters and all and can it.
A cannery is what you want it to be. It can be like a seafood cannery for tuna or a thing of your creating.
You may want to plan loads in such as “Can stock” and printed labels for them. I am not sure what else you would want in a cannery, you seem to be on the right track here.
there are canneries and there are canneries. Your typical regional cannery runs flat out during crop picking season and is shut down the rest of the year from what I have observed. the Campbell soup flagship plant that was in Camden New Jersey received literaly tons of produce from the Delmarva peninsula inlcuding baskets of tomatos in stock cars since nothing else was available. the Deleware RIver south of Philly was where they deposited all the rotten and unusable fruit and tomstos. That was a long time ago. I suspect the variety of soups available reflect an attempt to keep that plant running throughout the year s amuch as possible and they would have received much more in the way of raw materials then a typical little cannery.
Del Monte had a unique seaborne operation in Oakland Ca.: Pineapple shipments from Hawaii were off loaded directly into the cannery, processesd and the finished product moved out by rail. During the slow season they manfactured tin cans and other food storage containers for the retail and commercial market. On ther flip side, small to medium independent canneries located throughout the valley would dispatch canned products to Delmonte for transhipment on ocean going vessels. I have never seen an opertion such as this modeled.
What type(s) of produce is the plant processing and what is the era?
mmmmm produce.
Im sorry, but just had to say it. I have handeled many loads out of the American southwest from Redding CA, San Deigo and over towards Yuma Az and Nogales.
You name it they got it.
If you use images.yahoo.com and enter “cannery” as your search parameter, you can find oodles of pictures of canneries. Copy and paste the link below into your browser. http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images/advanced?ei=UTF-8
I don’t really think there is a “standard” cannery-it’s what you want it to be. I am using the same kit as you on my layout, and all I really care about is utilizing the piping from the boilerhouse to the main building and allowing a box car/switcher to pass under it. It(the cannery) is near the stockyard, so maybe it’s a dog food cannery, or beef stew cannery, but it’s also near the dairy farm so maybe it processes and cans condensed milk. It probably also depends on the era you’re modeling as to the tank cars and unloading facilities. My (tank car loads) stuff still comes by truck in the late 40’s/early 50’s. It’s all what you make it. I am writing an article about building a layout (unpublished) where I did state in it that you can go crazy and sometimes really get frustrated in too many “realistic” details. Be different, make it the way YOU see it in your mind. There is no right and wrong in this area of the hobby. It’s your dynasty, enjoy it!
From what I’ve observed in my area (central IL) canneries are MUCH bigger than the Walthers kit. The ones that operated on my proto line (NKP to Peoria) were all American Can Co factories, which both made cans for other canneries, and for their own use during peak seasons, of which there were two (for the plant in Hoopeston). In the summer, the plant canned sweet corn, and during the fall packed pumpkins.
The building itself is a fairly nondescript three story brick building, which looks like a DPM modular wall kit or the old Heljan slaughterhouse. The plant had a LOT of tracks. The NKP had a main track, dual use passing siding/runaround track, a three track yard just for the plant, and three plant tracks. During the “off season”, the plant was serviced by the local freights through town (usually every day), and during the seasonal rushes, the NKP would assign a 2-8-0 or 0-6-0 to the plant.
Loads out would all be either 40 foot boxcars or reefers (uniced; you want temperature control, but don’t need to heat or cool the cans), and the occasional gondola full of scrap tin (steel). Loads in would be empty cars for loading, cars full of labels (which were printed off site), cars full of glue (boxcars with cans of adhesive), cars full of steel rolls (to be turned into cans), and the occasional carload of coal for the power plant. Produce was all local, and came via truck.
Just one quick word of caution. A siding for the corn syrup tank cars will work for any time frame you choose after the mid-1970s. If you are in an era much before that, your sugar source would be either cane or beet granulated, shipped most likely boxcars. If you are modeling the 1960s and have a large, major canning operation, you might receive granulated sugar in bulk form delivered in a covered grain type hopper.
Dan S.
While there is corn syrup in many tomato products, none of the tomato processing plants around here (and there are some big ones) receives corn syrup by rail. So the product type can also determine if there should be sweetner coming in by rail. Also, most tomato processing plants will ship products out in XM boxcars as well as RBLs.
Don’t forget to bring in carloads of cardboard to stuff all those cans in…
You could definitely do that, but I am not sure if this is common in real life. Box plants (receive cardboard/paperboard by train and/or truck) are fairly common. I would guess most canneries/processing plants probably receive boxes by truck from a box plant that is not very far away. Some tomato processing plants do not produce a finished product, they just make paste they sell to other companies that make the finished product, this usually is packaged in a plastic bag in a wood box. I have seen one company that uses this in advertising itself saying that if a company buys from them, the company’s supplier would not also be a competitor.
Also, when I go by the Hunt’s/Con-Agra tomato plant in Oakdale, CA. (right next to Hershey’s), they usually have a tank car or two there that have “TOMATO PASTE” stencilled on them. I seem to recall seeing a tankcar like this in the article about general service tankcars in the February 1990 issue of Model Railroader.
A lot of canneries and can manufacturing plants purchased their stock from the steel mills in the 50’s and 60’s that was delivered in 40 and 50 ft box cars. Jones and Laughlin Steel produced “Tin Plate” at its Alliquippa Pa. mill down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. The steel industry used “freight equalized” on almost all product and probably still does. “Freight Equalization” was the method of billing the shipping costs to the customer as if it was shipped from the closest competing mill. In other words if a customer in Chicago ordered steel from a mill in Philly or Pittsburgh, and there was a mill in Gary IN that produced that same product, the customer would only be billed for the cost of shipment from the Gary location, even though it originated in PA. Obviously this was good for the railroads since it gave them long distance hauls across country into non-local markets. Thought this might be of interest in terms of raw materials coming into the cannery. Tin plated steel tended to be seasonal hitting its peak at the end of the summer.
Will
I have the game Railroad Tycoon 2, and the cannery generally uses steel, iron, and alumnium(depending on your era) to make cans for produce and coffee. I could get more in depth, but the poeple above seem to have beaten me to it. 
In this area, most processing plants (cannery is somewhat outdated, as more and more of the product is being put in things other than cans) receive their cans from trucks. There are many plants around here that produce cans for the processing plants. There are still some in the plants themselves, although they are usually ran by comapnies such as Silgan or Ball Corportation. Unfortunately, the can plants these days usually get their steel from steel service centers, so they are an all truck operation. During late spring and summer, it is common to see large quantities of flat bed trucks (usually doubles) hauling empty cans to the processing plants. On occasion I have seen boxcars headed to processing plants that are loaded, so these may be bringing in unassembled crates, cans, or boxes.
Opening my CANNERY file. (sorry, couldn’t resist it…)
Del North Canning Co, blt w DPM modular walls Mod RRer Oct90 p.101
Del Monte pineapple canning plant at Alameda Cal Mod RR Planning 2005 p.56
Esmeralda Canning Co, Cincinnati O. pix & condensed model plan NMRA Bull Sept78 p.62
Humbird Canning Co, frame 2-story [Railroad Model Craftsman Jan71 p.36
Krier’s Cannery, Random Lake,Wisc. [Railroad Model Craftsman Apr69 p.20
The summer between high school and college I worked for a canning company during the pea harvest. We received cans in 40’ boxcars. The cans were stacked in neat rows and unloaded with a long wooden bar that had pegs attached to it. We would insert the pegs into a layer of cans and drop them onto a track that ran into the plant. From there the cans were washed, filled with clean water, sent to filling machines, sealed and moved on to the cooking kettles.
The cannery sold mainly to institutional grocers, so much of the product went out in large size cans (I forget the number–it was 40+ years ago). It was shipped in regular box cars, some DF equipped, but mostly we relied on properly securing the loads with a lot of bracing, especially when the sides or ends of the car were bulged out from rough handling. It was hot, hard work, inside a stuffy steel box with both high humidity and high temperatures.
John Timm