Ed,
Looking for info on tank cars and refineries. Take a look at this thread and anything you might be able to help with would be appreciated.
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/899476/ShowPost.aspx
Thanks in advance.
Mike in Tulsa
Mr Hadid has most of the info you needed.
Feedstock is the stuff they use to make the products…the chemicals needed to produce gasoline, like the additives.
We have just about one of everything in the way of refineries.
Phillips makes plastic pellets…Dow, Auto Fina and Solvay make PVC products, from powdered PVC to Pellets.
Shell Deer Park, the largest refinery on the Gulf Coast, doesn’t make gasoline, but instead refines the products most other refineries needs…from LPG, (liquefied Petroleum Gas) to butadiene and so forth.
BP Petroleum makes gasoline, and nothing else.
I think for modeling purpose, Lubrizol would be your best bet…they make specialized lubrication products, from automobile engine oils to super fine lubricants.
They have a small “yard” inside their plant, three sets load out racks, and their own siding off our main.
They get a variety of tank cars, from the 8 axel rail whales to the tiny EDCX tank cars full of anti knock compounds…and the occasional covered hopper with a phosphor product.
As was pointed out, most transportation fuels travel by pipeline to distribution points, then trucks locally to retail outlets.
ICT, Inter Continental Terminals, is just such a distribution point.
They receive
Refineries have a constant rolling thunder. I dont know if you ever drove past the ones on the gulf coast at night but they are absolutely the noisiest places.
One of the reasons they seems to be grouped together around the nation in faraway places like the Gulf probably because the USSR would have difficulty reaching them “Over the pole” should the Cold War turn hot and deadly.
Reasons for the refineries being here are several…
Most of these places are old, been here since the 20s, when Buffalo Bayou was dredged out to make the Houston Ship Channel from Galveston Bay to the Port of Houston.
Access to a deep water port, and natural protection from the ocean storms are two, plus access to the intercostal waterway.
And the close proximity of the East Texas oil fields make it a natural fit.
Type Kilgore, Texas into your search engine, then get ready to be freaked out by a city built around a thousand oil well derriks, they even have one in the middle of thier high school!
The cold war was not a issue when these places were built…Crown Petroleum is one of the oldest refineries in Texas, it and Shell were built in the 20s, when crude oil arrived up Buffalo Bayou via wooden barges.
And of course, the cities of , and just about gave them the land and tremendous tax breaks to locate here…these places are the major employers around here.
Add in the fact that is a major rail hub on the , and the fact that most of these places need to be interconnected, and it make sense that they all locate in a specific area.
Ed, not to detract from your great response, but SDPR does produce a lot of gasoline. I was involved in a new low sulfur gasoline unit that they installed there in 2002-2003, and that was just a small part of their overall gasoline slate. From their website:
[i]
Products made in the refinery are the types most people think of when they think of an “oil company,” such as gasoline, aviation fuels, ship and utility fuels, and furnace oil/diesel fuels. |
|---|
- Gasoline: Regular and premium unleaded gasoline used in passenger cars. The refinery produces reformulated and conventional gasoline for domestic and international markets. [/i] In fact, the O.P. may want to check out the refinery website to get some more info on the full range of products and units there. On the main page, under “About Shell Deer Park”, click on ‘Deer Park Refining’, then go to ‘Products and Uses’ or ‘Processing Units’. Of course, it’s too huge to model. They sure had a lot of rail activity within the plant, especially with the lines effectively dividing the plant into a north section a a south section. www.shell.com/deerpark/ Regards Ed |
Ed,
Your right, I was re-reading my post, and realized the mistake…it is the Mobil and Phillips plants I was thinkg of…both names assocatied with gas stations, and both of their plants here dont make a drop of the stuff!
Were you down here working, or doing so from a distance?
Our main line runs dead center through the Shell refinery, and that place is huge, bigger than some of the rural towns and cities around here.
Ed
[quote user=“egmurphy”]
Ed, not to detract from your great response, but SDPR does produce a lot of gasoline. I was involved in a new low sulfur gasoline unit that they installed there in 2002-2003, and that was just a small part of their overall gasoline slate. From their website:
[i]
Products made in the refinery are the types most people think of when they think of an “oil company,” such as gasoline, aviation fuels, ship and utility fuels, and furnace oil/diesel fuels. |
|---|
- Gasoline: Regular and premium unleaded gasoline used in passenger cars. The refinery produces reformulated and conventional gasoline for domestic and international markets. [/i] In fact, the O.P. may want to check out the refinery website to get some more info on the full range of products and units there. On the main page, under “About Shell Deer Park”, click on ‘Deer Park Refining’, then go to ‘Products and Uses’ or ‘Processing Units’. Of course, it’s too huge to model. They sure had a lot of rail activity within the plant, especially with the lines effectively dividing the plant into a north section a a south section. |
If you are wanting to model a refinery, the Salt Lake City area has several small compact ones. Use maps.google.com and look up Woods Cross, UT. At the intersection of interstates 215 and 15, there is a small refinery on the NW corner and a slightly larger one on the SW corner. If you look close, the NW refinery is 4 tank cars spotted at their loading rack. The Houston area refineries may load that many trains a day.
dd
We actually did 5 very similar units, one for each of 5 Shell refineries, with slightly staggered schedules. We had Port Arthur, TX, Convent, LA, Norco, LA, Anacortes, WA, and Deer Park. I was the project construction manager, so I worked out of the home office (in Houston) and had to visit each site on a regular basis. Probably got out to Deer Park once every week or two, depending on the stage of the construction. That was my last project and I retired after that and moved down here to Mexico.
Yeah, I know it well. I was the only person on the project who didn’t get upset when we had to wait for trains to clear the crossings inside the refinery. First time I had seen PTRA locomotives. For a model railroader who had spent a lot of time in and around Houston, I was pathetically ignorant of the 1:1 railroading situation around town.
Regards
Ed
Yeah,
Theres more rail in Houston than most cities have freeways…
We got LA smoked!
Looking at my AEI map, I can count 10 main lines/subdivisions into the city…and if you live or work on the east side, you are going to see some trains…lots of them.
Ed
Ed, I would be thoroughly fascinated by your area–the industries and the freight equipment!
The BNSF mainline goes through the middle of the Big West Oil (Flying J) refinery in Bakersfield. Of course it used to be three different plants.
My wife jokes that I went railroading to get information and photos for my model railroad…she has no idea how close to right she is!
I got into engineering because of my interest in industry. I spent my free time during the first couple of years in college researching refineries so I could build a realistic one for my layout, plus it would not hurt to know about them if I got a job at one. The product mix and methods of shipment will be somewhat unprototypical because I want lots of tankcars there. I am planning on have a crude distillation unit, hydrotreaters, a hydrocracker, catalytic cracker, catalytic reformer, alkylation unit, and a delayed coker. If I have room, I will also put in a vacuum distillation unit. Since it seems like the cokers usually get their feedstock from the vacuum distillation unit, I really should fit that in there. Also, do you usually see petroleum coke (non-calcined) in open or covered hoppers?
I was thinking the same thing myself. If I ever make it to the ISA Expo I will have to get there a couple of days early or stay afterward for a couple of days.
Eric,
We pull the ARCO coker unit twice a day, run the stuff over to the north side to the Bulk Material Plant where it is loaded on ships or barges…they have a dedicsted set of ECRX SD40-2s and close to 100 severly used open hoppers, also ECRX.
And we get a Martin Lake train of coke every other day alsol, but with a little better set of car…they have a bunch of slightly newer car, also open topped hoppers.
If you make it down here, email a day or two in advance, I will give you the dime tour of the PTRA.
Ed
Thanks, Ed.
I have a couple of questions. I used to occasionally see a GATX 300398-300452 series tankcar on BNSF’s M BARRICs and M RICBARs. They were unusual in that they have a 36’ length. I have not seen any in a while. It seems like they are, or were, leased to Lubrizol and went to PTRA on the eastern end of their trips. Have you seen these? Are they still around?
Not as often as we used too.
I will look today and see what is in the Lubrizol track at North Yard when I get to work.
Used to see the shorties all the time.
Ed
Great info. I guess I can do what ever I want. I do plan on having a plant switcher to spot the cars from the plant “arrival track” to the various loading areas and back to the “departure track”. I went by the refineries here in town and the refracting towers are quite aways from where the loading areas are. So I think I can concentrate on modeling the loading racks and sheds and put one or two of the the towers in the background and throw in lots of piping and I should be in there.
The main reason I was wanting to know what was in the tank cars is because I use car cards and waybills for realistic operation and there is a field for contents. Just wanted it to be factual.
What I hear everyone saying is…
…products used in the refining process arrive by rail, not crude
…products resulting from the refining process depart by rail, not usually gasoline
I appreciate everyone’s help on this.
Mike in Tulsa
Remeber, many gasoline refineries are now receiving ethanol by rail as it does not ship well by pipeline.
dd
I have never heard of a refracting tower before. Are any of the towers actually called this?
They are “fractionation” columns or towers. From separating the crude oil into its ‘fractions’, like gasoline, kerosine, etc. Of course, not all towers you see at a refinery are fractionation columns, there are other high vessels.
For anyone interested in a very basic look at the refining process, here’s a good link:
http://www.cheresources.com/refining.shtml
Regards
Ed