In trying to justify my use of Hooker Chemical tank cars, I’m trying ti find out if there were Hooker Chemical facilites/installations/locations in the south. I believe there was one in Columbia, TN, and wonder if there were others.
Additionally, when did they start with the orange scheme on their tank cars?
Thanks-
Mike
I thought I could look in my Official Railway Equipment Register for April 1954 and see what locations were considered home points for Hooker cars. Most private owner cafrs have a listing for home points. But-- no luck this time.
You might try looking in a Moody’s Industrial Guide for the time period you model. I found old Moody’s Guides in my city library.
My Hooker file—
Hooker Chemical
distant pix (artist rendering) of carfloat carrying Hooker
tankcars of chlorine and caustic soda in inner passage for
use in paper pulping in . Hooker says it provides much of
the tank cars did not necessarily go to another hooker plant. i assume they shipped their chemical products where ever there was a demand. little seems available on google since all they want to talk about is love canal and the epa.
charlie
Occidental Chemical certainly has plants in the South. You might try researching these plants to see if any are former Hooker plants.
http://www.oxy.com/OurBusinesses/Chemicals/Pages/ManufacturingSites.aspx
It looks like Hooker was painting its tankcars orange by 1959, unless they were using another light color.
Lot of chemical plants in the south. Camp Croft in Spartanburg SC for example was a tank car paradise at one time. It was a pipeline terminal so there were several different oil companies had tank farms there, as well as at least two chemical plants. Also one of the biggest chemical users in the south were the textile and fiber companies. Celenese had an enormous plant outside Greenville seemed like a mile long.
All these plants had a huge appetite for tank cars and covered hoppers. A single plant could easily be a focus industry filling a 4x8 layout with multiple spurs if you wanted that sort of thing. As an example, where I work (aerospace though, not chemical) was once rail served (rails are still in place). The plant had it’s own yard and engine house. There were several spurs to outlying buildings, but the most interesting part, from a modeling perspective, is the main plant had a loop of track circling it with spurs coming off and entering the buildings. From the air looks just like something a modeler would create.
If it is shipping liquid chlorine it could be going to any city with a water treatment plant, any place that makes something that uses liquid chlorine, bleach, paper, or textiles. There are likely others such as companies that make products for swimming pools.
i have seen their cars US side of niagara falls near factories there. rambo1…
Growing up just S of Niagara Falls in the 70’s, I saw tons of Hooker cars and maybe some Carborundum cars for the plants in Niagara Falls