I’m in need of some help from my Forum friends finding the right cars/loads for 70s era sugar plant operations in Billings, MT. I have a yard set to the east that I want to add some traffic. I found I have a lot of the needed cars already in my collection or cars that I had been given that I can easily paint and reletter to fit the bill. One open load I need I have figured out how to built. However there are some cars and/or loads I am stumped on.
Here’s the list:
How to make a gondola load of PCC (Precipated Calcium Carbonate). As I have never even seen it to the best of my knowledge, I have no idea where to begin. If worse comes I can put it in a hopper but I have enough gons in my fleet, I probably should use a few of them.
Tank cars for handling H2SO4 (Sulfuric Acid for the layman) and NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide). The only car I find for Sulfuric Acid is too new for my era.
How would I model the equipment riding on flats going to the plant? I have plenty of flat cars I can use.
An accurate eastern road car for coke for powering steam boilers. I haven’t found any that seem to have accurate numbers (or at least according to the car sites I have in my database.)
As usual, any assistance that can be provided would be most welcomed.
You do not want to use an open car for calcium carbinate. If it
gets wet it reacts and releases acetylene gas which is very flammable
Here is my list of products used to process sugar beets and the
products produced.
PRODUCTS USED TO PROCESS SUGAR BEETS
RCV/ CAR HAZMAT
PRODUCT SHIP TYPE NUMBER PLACARD USE
Sugar Beets R Beet Gondola
Lime R Covered Hoppers Remove solids from
sugar solution
Calcium Hydroxide R Tank 1910 8 (Corrosive) Clean sugar mixture
Amonium Bisulfite R Tank 2693 8 (Corrosive) Disenfectant
solution
Chlorine R Tank 1017 2.3 (Poison Gas) Disinfectant
Sulfer Dioxide R Tank 1833 8 (Corrosive) Disinfectant
solution
Sulfer Dioxide R Tank 1079 2.3 (Poison Gas) Disinfectant, inhibit
liquified darkening
Sugar Dust In-House Started for
crystalization
Isopropyl Alcohol R Tank 1219 3 (Flammable Aids in crystalization
As was mentioned before, it would be in a covered hopper or bagged in boxcars.
Equipment would be very, very rare, it would go to the plant before it was in operation and then very limited shipments, once every 5-10 years at best for replacement or upgrades.
They would probably use “pet coke”, coke from oil refineries, that’s what the sugar mills used at some Utah locations, from refineries around Salt Lake City.
Or they would use coal locally sourced. Back when the railroad hauled a lot of sugar beets, I don’t recall ever seeing an eastern car of coal headed toward a sugar mill.
Most by the 1970’s would probably be oil or gas fired.
I think you are confusing calcium carbonate with calcium carbide. Calcium carbonate, CaCO3, is what the sugar plant needs; it is chemically pretty stable. Calcium carbide, CaC2, is used to make acetylene.
One option its to go to Historic Aerials, find photots for Billings, MT in the 1970’s (they have photos from 1976 and 1969) and find the sugar mill, then see what and how many cars were spotted at the plant, or even what facilities they had.
For example at the Western Sugar plant in Billings, the only cars I can see are beet hoppers and some tank cars. The north side of the plant is in the shadows and I can’t see what cars are there. Looking at the street view of the plant today there are some BNSF covered hoppers, of the type used for carrying grain and then there are hopper cars for the beets, no tank cars at all. The tank cars could be for loading molasses or for unloading fuel oil. In the one aerial photo the only cars I can see are the tank cars, so that leads me to think they are for fuel oil, because that would be about the only thing they would need during the off season when the beets weren’t coming in.
caldreamer, I did convert your list into a file that I can read a bit better as I have a small screen on my tablet and found a few loads I didn’t even know about.
From what I have been read/told about the Billings facility, the molasses loads would be inbound as it uses a Steffen process that includes molasses desugaring, so the plant would have tank car loads of molasses from other non-Steffen process refineries.
For the way I am planning to do the cars some of them aren’t going to be needed as they would come from the west or locally. I think I have most of the cars I need except for the tanks for the hazmat materials. I forgot to mention previously that I am modeling HO scale. As I am not an expert on tank cars, any additional help would be most welcomed.
As sugar cane is not a native crop to Montana, are you modeling a sugar beet processing facility?
Sugar beet is an abundant crop in the southeastern part of Colorado.
East of Pueblo, Colorado, there is an old Holly Sugar facility in the midst of the beet fields.
To move the raw beets from the fields to the processing facilities rail cars were often used. These cars had extended sides much like wood chip hoppers.
These were loaded in the fields via mobile conveyors, much like Walthers Old Time coal conveyors.
A rotary dumper could be incorporated into the receiving side of the plant you are modeling for the unloading of the raw beets.
The processed sugar would leave the plant in several forms; bagged in freight cars, in hoppers for larger customers, or liquid via tankers.
Tyco modeled their HO 34-foot operating hoppers; with covers and round hatches, in the Holly Sugar livery.
I run several of these cars, re-purposed, and repatched, to haul rock dust to line the coal mine on my pike.
When you begin to explore rail-served industries it’s amazing to realize how the raw products are received, processed, and shipped.
I’ve designed several projects for the Western Sugar plant in Fort Morgan, CO. I believe it’s the last operating sugar refinery in Colorado. Crushed limestone is brought in using covered hoppers. The “PCC” is a nearly worthless byproduct of the process. It’s historically just been piled up adjacent to the plant. You can still see some evidence of the piles at long closed plants in Brighton, Greeley, Longmont, etc. Because of dust issues some of the piles have been excavated and the material used for soil amendment of acid soils. This has been a result of regulatory pressure - not economics.
Not completely. I’m just modeling the traffic, not the actual facility. I have a rail yard area and want to add the cars to the operations (and use as many of the existing cars I have as possible.)
At least for the area I model, I can get away with some composite side hoppers for the beets. They just need to be lettered. As for the boxcars, I have some Athearn BB 40’s boxes that will be repainted and lettered to match prototypes that might have been used. Two will also get new doors to match a few in the car series.
I was given all of those cars by a gentleman who could no longer model due to age. (I have a good dozen or so other rolling stock from his gift in my operations as well.)
I also have plenty of hoppers and gondolas. (I’m actually getting two more gons within the next few days.)
The only cars that I am having trouble with are the needed tank cars. Unfortunately, tank cars are not my area of expertise. Any help on those is welcomed.
Isopropyl alcohol and fuel oils can be shipped in various “general service type” liquids cars in the ~20,000 gallon range (Atlas ACF 23,500, Atlas GATC 20,700, Athearn Genesis GATC 20,000, Rapido Procor 20,700).
Notes - in the 1970s, some older 8-10,000 gallon general type tank cars could also still be in service.
Molasses and liquid sugars probably in smaller size insulated cars.
Calcium hydroxide is listed as corrosive in liquid solution (high basic pH), so look at something like an “acid” car like the Athearn RTC 20,000 or the tangent cars that represent older, smaller “acid” tanks that could still be in service. (These types of cars with their fittings can be used for corrosive liquids that
If you are modeling the traffic, then keep in mind that it is highly seasonal really kicking into high gear only during the harvest seasons. Sugar beets were a common crop across the western US, and many railroads would leave hoppers or gondolas at load outs scattered across rural areas to pick up sugar beet loads.
This is just focused on Utah, but it shows how some short branchlines were even built into farm land to compete for sugar beet traffic; and I assume the same would apply up in Montana as well. https://utahrails.net/industries/sugar.php
As for the beets themself, it seems any old hopper or gondola would do.
I don’t have a specific time of year for my yard and I have enough cars that I can represent any season I want.
Got some composite side hoppers that I will be using for just that purpose that are prototypically accurate for the area as well.
Also bought the acid cars last night. (Picked up a couple packs of good files and some spray scenic adhesive too. Free shipping was offerred for a certain amount spent and I can use the files and needed the glue for another project.)
I have 35 composite side goldolas, some with plywood others with plank side extentions. I have made loads for them using fennel seeds painted a light brown. Will make a nice train for my Holly Sugar beet plant.
The question I don’t know if you have the answer to is, what did they actually recieve by rail?
There may be dozens of things that going into a manufacturing process, but that doesn’t mean that they are recieved or shipped by rail. A lot of it has to do with volumes of commodity. If they use 1000 gals of sulfur dioxide a year, they aren’t going to be recieving it in 17,000 gal tank cars.
Sugar may be put in glass and cardboard packages, but does that plant package retail quantities or does it just make sugar and ship bulk sugar to another company that packages it for retail sale?
For example if there was a company that made packaging (bags and boxes) for food grade products (mostly dog and animal food) you could develop a list of twenty things that go into that type of production. Unfortunately the company only handled 3 commodities by rail. Paper rolls and plastic pellets in and occasionally a boxcar of bags out.
The reason I bring this up is in the aerial photos and the ground level pictures from Google there aren’t any tank cars or any obvious facilities for unloading them or storing those types of chemicals (acids and sulfur dioxide).
Did you buy tank cars for commodities that the plant doesn’t recieve by rail?
If you look at my list of products used in processing sugar beets you will that sulfur dioxide is used as a disinfectant. Sugar beets are washed, disenfectd and sliced before being processed. They are not skinned prior to processing so they have to be disinfected first. After processing the skins and pulp are dried and sold as animal feed as stated in a prior post. Nothing is wasted.
That’s where modeling a railroad can conflict with the prototype.
As an example:
If you are modeling the 1990s to 2000s the amount of truck traffic that superseded the railroads was significant. Some industries stopped using rail service altogether.
Attempting to accurately model these industries would mean you are modeling truck traffic, not railroad traffic in that era.
Then the question becomes, do you revise the era you model to incorporate more rail traffic?
What do you do with all that equipment that is post your revised era?
Or, do you “proto-lance” to keep or add rail service?
Accurate information helps in making this decision. Too much can lead to analysis paralysis.
Just like the selective compression of buildings and scenery, this is ultimately the decision of the modeler.
I agree. While I’ll be modelling a portion of the sugar beet industry, it won’t include the beet fields or processing plant, as both would eat-up more layout-room than I have.
Instead, trucks will come in from the beet fields, which are “elsewhere”, to a beet loader, where the beets are loaded into drop-bottom gondolas with removeable side extensions.
A train will show up, pick up the loaded cars and drop off some fresh empties, then take the loaded cars to a processing plant, which is also located “elsewhere”.
As has been mentioned, this is a seasonal operation, so I’ll determine when it’s harvest time, which will be whenever I want to run a beet train.
There was a very good 12 page article on the sugar beet industry in the November, 2008 issue of RMC. It included photos of the real operations and drawings for modelling the beet loader, too.
While traveling through Saguache, County in Colorado, I passed what appeared to be a sugar beet field loading operation. It was a weekend so it was not in operation.
There was a conveyor loader adjacent to the railroad tracks. A skirting encircled where the crop dropped off the end of the conveyor.
I had never seen cars quite like the ones the crop was being loaded into.
As near as I could tell, they were cylindrical tanker car bodies with an approximately 10-foot diameter loading cylinder, where the dome would normally be. There was no apparent cover.
The skirting from the conveyor fit inside the cylinder on the top of the car.
The underside of the car had been fitted with two (2) hopper-type chutes for unloading, I presume.
We were traveling down the highway and “She Who Must Be Obeyed” wouldn’t let me turn around to take photos.
I bring this up to provide another type of car that could be modeled in the processing of sugar beets.