Wow! I just found this Trains article from 2006 all about the Coors rail operations. I wanted to find out how covered hopper silos were used. This is a great ariticle. I had no idea that Coors receives coal hoppers for their onsite power plant. Crazy!
This is how I will run the operations on my new layout.
Silver Bullet by Rail" by Mike Danneman, Trains, April 2006
Food has been shipped by train almost since railroading’s inception. Beer in bottles or cans has moved in boxcars for generations, but it has only been in the past 20 years that one brewery has been moving it by the tankcar load.
Every day, a fleet of white tank cars moves batches of beer from the Coors Brewing Co. plant in Golden, Colo., to a second brewery in Memphis, Tenn., and a packaging plant in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, near the town of Elkton.
But the connection between Coors and railroading doesn’t end there. Like many other brewers, Coors receives ingredients by rail, and it even operates its own in-plant railroad at the Golden brewery, the largest of its kind in the world. The brewing connection carries over to the BNSF locals that serve the brewery at the end of the 16-mile
I remember a thread about the Coors mansion, and I looked it up and it was yours. I thought you actually did build it, but I couldn’t find that thread. If you did, show us the pics, please.
What has changed is. They don’t brew the beer with Rocky Mountain spring water exclusively in Golden. They have several different breweries around the U.S.now, and they add minerals to get the same effect, with same taste.
Another thing I learned is they don’t transfer the final product in the beer tankers any more, they ship out final product with insulated box cars and trucks. Apparantly some distributers don’t have boxcar loading docks any more.
Also they can brew to a step before its fermented called “werton”. Then they use the beer tanker cars to transfer the werton to other brewries where its fermented and final product.
I could probably have my entire layout Coors, and have fun running all these ops.
Speaking of Coors, I just finished the first building. This thing is huge, its 21"x12". This is the Walthers paper mill kit. More buildings will be cold storage warehouse, grain elevevator, storage shed.
My neighbor was cleaning out his deceased fathers’ garage. Steamer trunks piled to the ceiling stuffed with magazine and stuff. Halfway through gold and silver coins started falling out of the pages of the magazines. No telling how much made it to the dumpster.
Water that comes in to Coors comes from Clear Creek which has its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains. It is not connected to the Colorado river.
Coors has some of the oldest water rights in the state and basically has first dibs on water from Clear Creek.
A large portion of my layout is dedicated to the Coors Brewery. Operations will included coal for power plant, grain car transfers from the the McIntyre Grain Silo, Boxcar loading, and tank car loading
It is by far the largest industry on the layout and requires two full time operators.
The hardest part so far has been find the switchers of appropriate era. Athearn put out a RTR model of a SW-1200 that Coors repainted in the 2000’s. I happen to find one in a now-closed LHS. At club I belong to, however, had two older athearn BB units that some one custom painted. They were going to sell them at the local swap meet and one of the other members chimed in knowing I was modeling Coors and the club sold me the pair for $20. The drives weren’t any good but the shells were in great shape. I did install a P2K drive under each of them. It took a little work but I think they came out ok. I still haven’t brought myself to modify the hand rails to match the prototype. So now I have a fleet of 3 switchers. I want to get a few more as backups but I’m having a heck of time finding decals. I thought about doing them myself but printing white is whole other level of work. I will probably had to get them professionally printed somewhere.
From what I hear in their ads, original Coors “Banquet” is only brewed in Golden…Coors Light is brewed at the other MillerCoors facilities across the country (such as Irwindale, CA-which is also BNSF served)
From what you wrote, it seems that Coors uses local water sources and masks the taste from the Colorado River.
Water that comes in to Coors comes from Clear Creek which has its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains. It is not connected to the Colorado river.
Coors has some of the oldest water rights in the state and basically has first dibs on water from Clear Creek.
A large portion of my layout is dedicated to the Coors Brewery. Operations will included coal for power plant, grain car transfers from the the McIntyre Grain Silo, Boxcar loading, and tank car loading
It is by far the largest industry on the layout and requires two full time operators.
The hardest part so far has been find the switchers of appropriate era. Athearn put out a RTR model of a SW-1200 that Coors repainted in the 2000’s. I happen to find one in a now-closed LHS. At club I belong to, however, had two older athearn BB units that some one custom painted. They were going to sell them at the local swap meet and one of the other members chimed in knowing I was modeling Coors and the club sold me the pair for $20. The drives weren’t any good but the shells were in great shape. I did install a P2K drive under each of them. It took a little work but I think they came out ok. I still haven’t brought myself to modify the hand rails to match the prototype. So now I have a fleet of 3 switchers. I want to get a few more as backups but I’m having a heck of time finding decals. I thought about doing them myself but printing white is whole other level of work. I will probably had to get them professionally printed somewhere.</
The problem is that Coors logo is White and printing white is difficult. Printing on a white sheet is not that simple either. I searched microscale for Coors decals and came up with nothing.
yes, that is Clear Creek running through the Brewery. I’m going to start on the temporary buildings (Foam Core board) here shortly as placeholders until I can get all the real ones built. If its anything like the refinery it’ll take me about 3-4 years to get all the permenant buildings constructed.
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