Can anyone give me some insight into how railroads interact with the cement or concrete business? I know nothing about this, and can’t seem to find info on this on the web.
Are there “cement factories” that ship out product via rail to local cement facilities, or does all the raw materials just go directly to the local facilities to be mixed and distributed by cement truck? Are cement factories ever located in rural areas or are cement facilities simply a function of being close to the end consumer? What incoming commodities would a cement factory or facility require by rail, and who supplies it - quarries with stone crushers?
I understand that cement is often shipped out in two bay covered hoppers, but by whom and to whom? I have some Trinity 2 bay covered hoppers - are there any other car types that are widely used for cement/concrete freight?
Kinda looking for the business/product cycle of cement so I might add such a facility to my layout…though my layout is predominantly a rural one, hence that question above.
Thank you!
NB: for that matter, what the heck is the difference between cement and concrete? --See what a naif I am about this business?
Portland Cement is produced by firing Limestone and a small amount of Clay in a kiln, this produces an intermediate product called Cement Clinker, this is then ground to a powder which the form of Cement that is sold. Concrete is a mixture of Cement, Aggregate, and Water. Usually Cement plants are located at a source of Limestone, but small industrial railroads are sometimes used as the active portion of the quarry gets further from the production facility. Railroads can bring items like fuel for the kiln (Coal or Pet Coke), Flyash to be added to the ground Clinker to make Portland Flyash Cement (PFC), and also Gypsum and Kaolin (smoothing agents).
Wonderful, and thanks. So it’s plausible to have a cement factory in my generally rural setting, in which I already have a limestone quarry. How convenient! Also good use additional use for my kaolin cars, since I had some to service a paper plant on my layout. How convenient!
So then I take it they produce the cement at the plant, and then ship it out to local concrete facilities by railcar? - those local facilities where they make/mix the cement into concrete and send it to customers by concrete trucks.
Cement plants are usually located local to the source of limestone, but in a few cases are located at tidewater or on navigable lakes or rivers, and the limestone brought to them by ship or barge.
The rule of thumb in the cement industry is each plant has a market radius of about 300 miles, in which it provides all the cement, and competitors are barred by cost of transportation. In reality that 300-mile rule only applies to a base demand, and demand may fluctuate. In years where there is very large cement demand, such as for the construction of an airport, a major highway project, large dam, booming residential construction, then the base-load plant cannot meet the demand and cement is brought in from outside plants, usually by rail. No cement manufacturer wants to build a plant that can’t be assured of running at 95% capacity or better, because if it doesn’t run at that capacity level it probably won’t make money and pay the mortgage.
In years past, much of the cement in a base-load plant’s market basin was moved by rail. Today most of it moves by truck because most concrete ready-mix batch plants do not consume sufficient quantities of cement to justify the higher cost of purchasing rail-accessible land plus the cost of the spur, in return for the lower rail transportation cost. The exceptions are very large batch plants that usually by historic convenience are rail-side located, or plants that are directly supplying a single huge project such as an airport or major highway construction project or dam. Cement that comes in from outside the market basin largely moves by rail. In the West, because of long distances between urban concentrations with few people or cement consumers in between, there is much more cement moving by rail as a percentage of the total cement production, particularly to large projects that are in between cities.
Batch plants consume 10X as much aggregate and sand as they do cement, and any batch p
I take it that a cement plant is a large, sprawling affair, especially if it is shipping large quantities by rail, which from your indication would mean that it is probably serving a larger market than the usual 300 mile “local” reach. After all, it’s no fun to model a plant that ships by truck. [(-D]
The mix-batch plants are the ones that are most “local” then, and a cement plant itself would be fine in a rural type setting. It would be dumb to have a batch plant in the country I assume.
What do they use the Kaolin mentioned previously for, whitening the cement for architectural purposes? The gypsum and fly-ash always move in open hoppers? I know they move sand in covered hoppers, wonder why they don’t need the weather protection for gypsum. Hmmm.
Lehigh Cement in Union Bridge Maryland recieved Cement by Railcar via the Maryland Midland.
I THINK it was National out in Martinsburg WVa and Coplay in Lime Kiln that produced the Cement for Lehigh.
Trucking was a max 250 mile radius from Union Bridge to feed a Ready Mix plant. I think I recall one in Arlington Va that had 5 silos, 6 of us would be preloaded the day before and race to Arlington to offload and about an hour later race back to Lime Kiln or Union Bridge to get more cement. This would go on for the day… sunrise to sunset until the ready mix plant says enough is enough, stop. And then we race to pre load for tomorrow’s delivery.
Sometimes we got Cement out of Grace in South Baltimore by Curtis bay off a Ship next to the Canton Railroad that I think also delivered chemicals and Cement. Also in Baltimore we would deliver to a Lehigh silo for export by ship or transload onto other trucks.
A cement plant that makes cement would recieve Balls for thier Ball Mills for grinding before firing the stuff.
In Arkansas down by Hope we would get Cement delivered only by railcar. They would vibrate the stuff down the chute and up onto the big silo above the scale and we would weight out a tanker load of cement and off to the Ready Mix plant. I recall putting away 400-600 miles per day with a day cab… 9-14 hour days running back and forth feeding two or three of a company’s ready mix in the area.
Once in awhile we dart into a coal fired power plant to dip a load of fly ash and truck it back to feed the ready mix.
Tanker truck tares with a R model Mack and a Heil Three potter or a Butler would be about 23 to 26 thousand give or take and gross at… 77 or so but we dump it to 80K and get around the scales anyhoo. They can measure a truck load to 20 pounds. It is interesting to see the loader watch the scale meter wind up in bigger numbers towards 80,000 gross and slap the off button and watch it stop right at 80K.
Cement plants vary considerably in sprawl depending upon the size of the plant and the cost of horizontal land to place it on. The plant itself, not including the limestone quarry, can be compacted into as little as 5-6 acres, and there are examples of such in urban settings or in canyons where horizontal space is limited, e.g., Salt Lake City (urban) and Devil’s Slide (canyon), Utah. It’s not uncommon for a plant to stairstep down a hillside, e.g., Lime, Oregon.
Cars that would be seen at a cement plant today are:
3,230 cu ft 120-ton (Trinity) PD covered hoppers (286K gross rail weight) for bulk cement. These are usually lease cars.
3,281 cu ft (Trinity) or 3,262 cu ft (Gunderson) standard covered hoppers, 115-ton capacty (286K gross rail weight) see http://www.gbrx.com/PDFtecbulletins/HopperCement.pdf, also for bulk cement. These are usually lease cars.
3,000 cu ft (263K) standard covered hoppers, for bulk cement. T
There is a moderately humongous cement plant at Monolith, CA, which ships in covered hoppers. The eastern extension of the plant’s rail service seems (on satellite view) to be a coal delivery track.
The actual quarry is some distance to the northwest, connected by a long conveyor line to a covered surge pile (very large circular structure) at the plant proper.
At the other end of the spectrum is a small batch plant just north of Ashland City, TN, which also manufactures a variety of sizes/types of block. Some time in the past, it received raw cement by rail, but that line is now abandoned. Not sure where the aggregates come from.
On the north side, they unload sand and gravel, 100 ton hoppers, some 2-bay, some 3-bay. For a little bit they were using ballast cars for the gravel. Usually 15-20 cars a day, when I was working around there. I think they do more unloading now. More track has been added.
The south side is the cement unloading. In the summer not uncommon the shove 20 cars a day in there. The yard is to the west, so multiple runarounds to get everything in there.
Usually, the crew would cut off west of Hwy 51. Run into the pass, pull the empties, shove them east of Sycamore. Go west of 51, pull the cement into the pass. Run around and shove in. If the building was open and clear, shove through it, otherwise shove up the middle track, past the crossover. They had a carmover. Go back across 51, pull the sand and gravel into the pass. Runaround, shove in, over the pit. Then pull the empties into the pass, and hope they fit. Continue eastbound. Quite the operation.
Spent two weeks in the UK near one of the bases NE of London and gotta tell you, the USA is 24/7 particularly in the larger cities.
In rural areas with industry sometimes three shifts a day or more common, two. In trucking we dont stop until the Boss stops getting orders from the concrete ready mix plants which wait for the last of the top offs from work crews laying concrete.
Ice, Snow, Rain… they dont care if it’s night or day. That cement moves. In fact during summer months night ops is much more intense where the crews try to lay concrete without the heat curing the stuff too fast.
Very large projects such as the I-270 corridor between Washington DC and Frederick required much concrete. I recall that they would flood a ready mix plant with tanker trucks faster than the plant can make concrete and load into mixer trucks. Add in the mix of semi trailer dumps and dump trucks running sand, rock and the occasional liquid tanker delivering additives during the workday… the Ready mix plant is a extremely intense, dangerous and active workplace to be on. You will not get bored or sleepy doing this work.
Out west of the USA, they simply ship cement straight to the road being built and made concrete right there over the paved dirt that will be the new Interstate. Distances between cities or rural areas are much greater and requires many trucks to deliver the required product the same day.
Sometimes several companies cooperate to take on really BIG jobs. I think I recall a place near Grissom Texas where about 5 different companies mustered all availible manpower and equiptment to pour hundreds of yards worth of concrete from very large distances away from the job site. If memory serves plants up to about 250 miles away sent all thier trucks to the jobsite.
Finally really HUGE jobs such as the Hoover DAM near the Las Vegas area. That concrete is said to STILL be curing from pours made dozens of years ago and require another dozens of years before it’s all hard. I dont know
No urban myth, concrete can continue to cure for many decades. One memory from my one and only class on engineering materials (35 years ago…) was about some concrete test cylinders prepared sometime after 1910 and dumped into LA harbor. Every few yeas some cylinders would be pulled out and tested, as of the early 1970’s the cylinders were still getting stronger.
The concrete in Hoover is undoubtedly pretty hard, but it is still curing and in need of cooling.
you’d think living with in walking distance (a block away if even) of a rail serviced cement plant i’d be able to help out more. but then again there’s a cement plant that uses all trucks no more than 3 blocks away and i couldn’t tell you much there either. but i do know that a small arce little crap town (you blink you miss it, literally) called Middle Inlet, Wisconsin has a concrete plant. it’s not rail serviced, but it is in the middle of bum frick egypt. and as for the cement hauler guy running around in a Mack R model…dude you just dated yourself haha. i won’t say anything about when they used them, but i’ll make you feel a little younger by saying if you pay attention you can still see some companies using an old R model as a regular rig, usually a dump truck around here. i remember installing a stereo in one of those once [#dots]
Mack R is dated yes. But you aint have fun until you got a hold of a Diamond Reo, Marion or Autocar.
All solid, no suspension to speak of and able to go places that will break today’s pampered rigs just forward of the fifth wheel. Particularly those made on import steel framing.
On really bad bumps and poor concrete (Actually crumbling concrete) roads the dust shaken and raised up off inside the cab presented a hazard to breathing. It would show up years later as Reactive airway for me.
One other thing, if you are inside a cement loading facility that pulls from overhead silos, there are certain sections marked with a red light that you just dont go into. A man can find himself knee deep in the stuff and dust so thick as to absolutely lose orientation in space, sight and feel and a progressively worsening breathing situation. You only have moments to choose one direction (Usually backwards) until you ran up against the wall and felt to the man door to get out.
You never went foward because sometimes there is a grate with a auger below.
At least one urban myth or story tells of workers entombed as part of the bedrock foundation for high rises.
Sprawling??? Let me give you an example. I once did a TV newsreel inside a plant that had a rotating drum for cooking limestone into cement. Rotating, a dozen feet around, glowing red hot like the fires of Hades inside as I looked into it… and almost a quarter of a mile long! Looking into that was…man… awesome!!!
do any of you remember the little steel “awnings” above the car reporting marks used on cement covered hoppers? most of those cars had so much lime wash down over the sides the reporting marks got covered up. Mopac welded steel plates at an angle above the car number to keep the “weathering” from obliterating the reporting marks.
Hoover damn is still curing, at least yet as of bout 5 years ago last time i saw a thing about it on discovery or tlc. now think that’s still curing after…60 years? and they even had an integrated cooling system that flushed water through a pipe system. and as for the body in concrete it is an urban myth. as explained in a show about urban myths, by a contractor that was his business making foundations for skyscrappers, if someone did die in the concrete the body would be taken out because it would weaken the concrete in that area most likely causing problems in the future. after all body’s do decay, the flesh and organs take up space and as the decay happened the not yet concrete would shift to fill the gap felt of the body and then there’s a big problem. and i know someone will complain about that statement so i’ll beat them to it. yes i realize concrete/cement would greatly reduce exposure of air moisture to the body and would slow down the nature process of decompossition. and with that all i haft say is woopee, then you just have the problem of a fully constructed skyscrapper (few million tons) pressing down on these voids.
and autocar. seriously? you used them? next you’re gonna be telling me your’e first rig was a kenny diamond T. i like the older Pete 379’s personnaly. saw pics of one once with at least a good 70" high rise sleeper and 3 axles. no taggers either just 3 driven axles. i love driving down the highway and pass by an oversized load truck and count the axles. 4 on the trailer, 1, 2, solid axles on the rig along with a pair of taggers. ok i got way off track. sorry
You may want to check out history of now defunct Lehigh and New England. One of its branches was largely focused on the what was called the Cement Region. This branch left either the main or another branch at Cement Junction in Bath, PA. and served several large cement plants such as Nazareth Cement, Lone Star, and 3-4 more. See Lehigh and New England by Crist and Krause, published by Carstens,
