When I worked at a port on the West coast, a ship that visited frequently was a bulk gypsum carrier. It brought the stuff up from Mexico (I believe), and discharged it to a large cement plant at this particular U.S. port.
The question I have is, does much gypsum go by rail in the U.S., either imported by ship or mined in domestic quarries? It’s something I’ve never read or heard a thing about. Just curious.
Thank you.
I see loads every once in a while–seldom more than one at a time. Used to get them out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, but haven’t seen that in a while. Now we send some empties back to the area around Eagle Grove, Iowa. They’re smaller-cube cars (around 3000 cubic feet) with PD unloading–nothing like soda ash.
Why all this interest in white powders? [}:)]
Colorado & New Mexico have Wallboard Plants built next to the mines. Loaded railcars sent to other plants are rarely seen.
The Wall board plant in Bernillo (near Albuquerque) is served by truck from the Gypsym mine near San Ysidro, a distance of aobut 25 miles along US 550 (used to be New Mexico 44).
Doesn’t the mine at “Plaster City” (west of El Centro, CA) ship gypsym by rail? Looks like it is on the San Diego and Imperial AND the U.P…
Raw gypsum is too low in value (average FOB mine price in the U.S. for crude ore, 2005, $7.31/metric ton) and too widely dispersed in its sources to tolerate rail shipment, unlike, for instance, low-sulfur coal, which is highly localized in its occurance. Typically the wallboard and plaster plant is built as close as possible to the mouth of the mine. The major shipment of crude gypsum by rail is to cement plants, where it is blended with portland cement typically 2% to 6% by weight to retard the cement’s setting time, and as a soil conditioning agent. There are also a few private mine railways that ship raw gypsum from a mine to a calcining and wallboard plant, notably the 20.5 mile U.S. Gypsum narrow-gauge railway serving that company’s wallboard plant at Plaster City, California.
Curiously, synthetic gypsum is produced as a byproduct of a number of industrial processes including sugar beets, electric power plant acid rain neutralization, and titanium dioxide production, and 8.7 million metric tons of this was sold to wallboard plants last year. A substantial quantity of synthetic gypsum called phosphogypsum was produced as a byproduct of phospate fertilizer production, but this cannot be used for wallboard because it contains radionuclides and emits radon gas (phosphate ore commonly contains trace amounts of uranium, radium, etc.)
Total use of uncalcined gypsum in the U.S. was 3.1 million metric tons for portland cement in 2004, and 1.03 for agriculture
S.
On your last sentence, aren’t wallboard plants rather widely dispersed to the point that the most of the wallboard movement is within a 300 mile radius and thus not that attractive to rail? Otherwise, and assuming the weight of wallboard out is about equal to gypsum in, 300,000 carloads of business would be something worthy of note.
Somewhere around 33 million tons of GWB and plaster was manufactured last year, and yes, while the industry is broadly dispersed there are some areas with little or no production (Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas), areas where regional production isn’t sufficient (Texas, Arizona) and areas with a large manufacturing surplus (Washington, Wyoming).
You’d have to look at the 1% waybill sample to get a picture of how much of this moves by rail, and mine is in the office. The relevant STCC codes are:
14911 Raw Gypsum
32754 Gypsum Wallboard
S. Hadid
The Us Gyp plant at Plaster City gets its gypsum from a mine about 25 miles to the northwest, over its own narrow-gauge (3’) line. The plant has expanded, requiring the old SD&AE line to be routed a couple of hundred yards to the south around the addition.
Plaster City is the west end of what SP kept when they sold the SD&AE line to some of our foolish politicians (we have plenty, thank you, please send no more) in the late seventies.
It looks like USG still ships out a few carloads of product, but I don’t think they ship much raw gypsum if any at all from Plaster City. I would guess that in the past 20 years or so, most of the product has left the plant on trucks.
On further review, I checked out Plaster City on Google Earth and counted almost three dozen centerbeams on several of the tracks at the plant, two-thirds of them unloaded, it seemed. There is also a large tractor-trailer parking lot on the north side of old Hiway 80 (now Evan Hewes Highway) where the old employee ball field used to be a long time ago.
Also, at present, in the Google Earth imagry, there is a 20-car train heading south about two or three miles from the mine with nice white loads of gypsum.
Anyway, my estimate that most product is leaving on trucks is maybe not correct. Maybe I can get down that way for a first-hand look, now that it’s getting cooler again.
As far as I can tell, all the wallboard/Gypsum outfits along the East Coast use ships to get the raw gypsum. Most comes from the maritime provinces of Canada, while some comes from Jamaica. USGypsum has had it’s own fleet of ships since pre WWII, and the current vessels, built in the '70’s are getting a bit long in the tooth! Several other outfits charter Canadian Lakers to run down to the East Coast, while there is one American owner who has been in the business since the 1950’s and who registers his ships under a FOC and uses a Taiwanese crew.
Where it is available, water transportation is much cheaper for moving raw gypsum.
For a number of years there has been a gypsum walboard plant at West Memphis, Arkansas. A division of Temple industries [Temple Gypsum] it is land locked, and seemed to receive all its gypsum in covered hopper cars. The paper came in by truck in very large rolls, as a back haul; the finished goods seem to all go out by truck. Although some years back, I recall that there were a few flat cars loaded out there[?]. It was located on the Frisco, originally.Then BN, and later serviced by BNSF
The largest gypsum mine in the world is located in Milford, Nova Scotia, 2 trains per day make the 47 mile trip to wrights Cove where it’s loaded on ships to the U.S. go to Google earth to see sat. photos.
Fort Dodge, Iowa, down the track about 15 or 20 miles from Eagle Grove, is where the Gypsum plants are. Gypsum and products manufactured from it was at one time a big traffic source for the Fort Dodge, Des Moines and Southern Ry which the CNW aquired in 1968. The UP has one yard engine left at Fort Dodge and it switches one of the remaining plants, although I think CN/IC gets the lion’s share of the remaining rail shipments out of Fort Dodge.
Jeff
Bernalillo (Actually Algodones, I helped lay out the track serving the new building and also dealt with the old building and track at Albuquerque/Hahn not far from the Albuquerque Journal Plant)
The San Ysidro mine is also served by the original main track, now bypassed by the 1976 line change. It rarely ships cars, usually receives an occasional machinery car.
I see about a dozen FURX and CEFX center-beams loaded with US Gymsum wallboard heading north frequently. I will also see these headed south empty frequently. I guess US Gypsum wants dedicated cars and not have to rely on back hauls.
Thanks for the info to the forum Capt Bob
sometimes I feel like the only seaman who posts here.
Kurt
The Windsor & Hantsport Ry. in Nova Scotia operates from two gypsum quaries to the port on the Avon River which is located off the Bay of Fundy. Ships have to arrive, be loaded, and depart within 3 to 4 hours or they will be grounded by the low tides and have to wait till the next day or so when the high tides roll back in.
There is a gypsum mine/wallboard plant at Sperry, Ia. They used to be served by Rock Island and Burlington Northern (CB&Q). BN accessed the plant via trackage rights over RI. When RI shut down the line was abandoned, but some wallboard is reloaded onto railcars by Burlington Juntion Railway at Burlington, about 10-15 miles away.
According to a Burlington Bulliten, they also used to ship bulk gypsum in hopper cars. I know that wallboard and plaster has to be kept dry, but is it OK for bulk gypsum to get wet, or would this have been covered hopper cars. If bulk gypsum has to stay dry, how does it stay dry in the ground before it is mined?