Hey All,
Just wondering if you all could refer me to a site or book with info on hoppers of the 1940’s and 1950’s (maybe a few old ones from the 1930’s too)… I need to start looking to purchase some. I have to use them to supply my bottlemaking factory (quartz I suppose in them) that will then support my beer factory. Anway, I can’t seem to find a good site on this… Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions.
Brian
Brian,
Most glass seems to be made from sand - I think you will need small 2 bay covered hoppers in the 50t-70t range to service your bottlemaking operation. Atlas/Kato/Kadee & Athearn(MDC) all make nice HO cars that will fit into your 40’s/50’s era operation.
Jim
Thanks… yes, you are correct… sand it is! Exactly what I needed regarding the hoppers. Thanks again, Jim.
Brian
A few years back Kalmbach published a soft-cover book titled "The Model Railroader’s Guide to Freight Cars’. Walthers has it listed in their 2006 catalog; #400-12450; your local hobby shop can order this for you. There is within a whole chapter on hoppers; should be just what the doctor ordered.
ShadowNix, I will be the first to admit that you may well be endowed with far superior knowledge than I in regards to this topic of brewing but I do know something about economics and I have a rather stupid question for you regarding your post; what brewer are you going to model who is going to maintain his own bottle works? I am sure that any brewer will find it cheaper to procure its supply of bottles from an independent source than to dissipate its assets into such a venture.
Back in the early '70s I was stationed with the Air Force in Germany and enrolled in an economics class through the University of Maryland; our instructor frequently used beer - usually Coors - as the material to impress profound economic principles upon the class. One of my fellow students was an Army draftee who had, at the time of his induction, been employed at a (beer) bottle factory somewhere deep in the hallowed heart of Texas; during a discussion on the Law of Diminishing Returns he reflected about his pre-service job and about how more than half of this particular factory’s output was shipped to Adolph Coors Brewery to satisfy their need for bottles; the remainder went somewhere else, the Premium Brewery (JAX Beer) in New Orleans, I believe, got a substantial portion of the remainder. Anyway, he mentioned that this factory dispatched dozens of freight cars daily to Golden, Colorado; a switch crew serviced the plant twice a day to drop off GONDOLAS of sand and empty boxcars - the plant also received knocked-down, sectionalized, pre-printed cardboard boxes to ship the empty bottles out in. Only cardboard was mentioned so I guess by
The E&J Gallo winery in Modesto, CA (origin of the wine train) has its own bottle plant. According to the article in Trains magazine (“Juice Train!”, March 2000), the Tropicana plant in Bradenton, FL also has its own bottle plant. I do not know if they are still owned or operated by Gallo and Tropicana respectively, however it seems likely they once were or were at least built for those plants.
rpoteet and ericsp, thanks for the comments.
With regards to the brewery making its own bottles, that was not my intent, so sorry for the confusion. I was planning to have a bottle making factory at one end of my layout and the brewery towards the other. Sand, labels, hops, malt, etc. was going to come in from staging. (maybe cans now too, but I like bottled beer darnit!!!); anyways, a local branchline/shortline would then transfer the bottles to the beer factory (as well as another yet to be determined business on the short line as well – perhaps a milk supplier-- he could use the glass too…hmm). I hope that clarifies… seems to make sense to me, but I am new to this, so I look forward to your comments.
As for the exact beer maker, it is a fictitious one. I have a dozen and a half beer cars from all over Europe (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) when I lived there and travelled there as a kid… While your points about supplies getting there by truck are great, well, in my romantic world of railroad I plan for them to arrive by train. Perhaps not truly prototypical, but close enough for me. Although, some of the smaller loads could be transferred from my freight station in town if necessary. As for the gondolas…hmmm… interesting… hmmm… anyone else seen sand gondolas? Very interesting…
Brian
ericsp wrote " every beer bottle has a cap and a label. You’re brewery might very well have located a local supply of labels and they would likely arrive by truck, even in the 1940s or 1950s; bottle caps might be a horse of a different color".
When I was a kid back in the 50s/60s my Dad had links to a gent called Norris whose wife had inherited the patent rights for Crown Bottle tops… those crinkle edged things you get on most beer bottles. How many of those do you reckon get binned every day?
Mr Norris’s train shed was about 100’ x 50’ with all hand built 0 Gauge in it. He could afford to retain his own loco and carriage (passenger car) builders. All on the royalties from bottle tops!
Incidently, that explanation of glass production from a rail point of view is really helpful… thanks!
I would guess that glass making would occur at least close to where the suitable sand(s) (and other minerals in tiny %ages to give properties such as colour) were quarried and fuel supply (coal before oil) were on hand… allowing that moving glass is itself an interesting issue.
Similarly… as all the brewers will tell you… brewing always occurs on the most suitable/best water to which they bring all the hops, grain, sugar etc… Now there’s three distinct car loads…
What form are the hops moved in? On the branch / vine or dried? In boxcars?
Grain is covered hoppers. Sugar seems to vary between covered hoppers and airslides???
Hey! What a good combination… model trains and beer! (The real trains and beer are very segregated).
[EDIT. Grain is covered hoppers in the modern era… would have been boxcars with grain doors fitted inside the ordinary doors before. Similarly sugar would have been in boxcars - bagged - I know that sugar used to arrive bagged in the London Docks… it received one of the highest premiums for unloading beca
David,
Thanks for the great ideas…
" I would guess that glass making would occur at least close to where the suitable sand(s) (and other minerals in tiny %ages to give properties such as colour) were quarried and fuel supply (coal before oil) were on hand… allowing that moving glass is itself an interesting issue. "
Industrial silica (fine quality sand) is/was mined here in WA state (Pacific region = 9% of total in 1999, still looking for mid 20th century data); larger deposits are in the Midwest and California. I am still deciding whether to place the silica mine on my layout or off in staging. I do have a nice lil corner…
“Similarly… as all the brewers will tell you… brewing always occurs on the most suitable/best water to which they bring all the hops, grain, sugar etc… Now there’s three distinct car loads…”
As for the water, I have that covered. Look at my above post on Weekend Work… Nice river with fresh mountian water 
I plan to have it near this (still deciding on level 1 vs level 2). Great idea, I forgot about sugar…more loads…mmmmmmm.
“Grain is covered hoppers in the modern era… would have been boxcars with grain doors fitted inside the ordinary doors before. Similarly sugar would have been in boxcars - bagged - I know that sugar used to arrive bagged in the London Docks… it received one of the highest premiums for unloading because the bags/sacks were big and heavy and would have been compacted into a solid mass by the journey. prising the load out ripped up the stevedores hands while the sugar dust made absolutely every part of the body sticky and caused sore flesh… nothing like the “good old days” is there? Just moving to palletised bags of sugar must have been a great improvement”
EXCELLENT ideas/information… Oh oh oh ( <— excited!) I see a scene… bags or sugar, perhaps one broken open… Thanks, mate! I would assume the hops w
An airslide - covered hopper - is a specific 2 bay covered hopper which uses air pressure to force the load out (as distinct from gravity flow, suction and PD – Pressure Differential - which is a low pressure system of pushing the load out used for stuff like plastic pellets which lack the weight to unload by gravity but don’t need the push that material like sugar needs – Airslide cars are short for the dense load, PD cars are long for the light load… unloaded through a single tube linked to all the bays -)
Walthers do both Airslides and PD cars (not sure if these are current) so you can see examples in their catalogue.
Another thing about airslide cars… because they are sealed for unloading pressure they can keep the load more free of contamination. In a sense they are a rectangular tank car with clamped down hatches.
If you look you will see that a lot of both tank cars and covered hoppers are stencilled with instructions for the hatches to be open before unloading commences. I have pics of cars that this hasn’t been done on… they are crumpled - collapsed inwards - like a crushed coke can… would love to know how to model this… would probably have to make a car body out of thin metal tube between the regular ends and then distort it… PD and Airslide cars do not have this.
If you model a split bag (especially of sugar) don’t forget to model the supervisor telling the worker to clean it up… surrounded by blue air. Spilt sugar is NOT left laying around. Then again… if a bag on the edge of a pallet gets nicked a trail of sugar gets poured along the route taken by the fork lift…
RATS!.. are why spillage is cleared up.
Another post recently has quoted airslides as starting from the early 50s. Before that bags in box cars. If you use forklifts the car doors need to be wider… to avoid those nicks and trails. Before forklifts bags would be slid down planks where possible rathe
“If you put that supervisor on a stick through the baseboard you could drive the bottom of it with a cam and have him/her jumping up and down[}:)]”
THAT would be hilarious… OMG! Anyway, thanks for the info… lots of books/reading for me to still do!!
Brian
Hi Brian;
In addition to the ones Jim listed above, Bowser offers an extensive line of covered hoppers for sand service:
http://www.bowser-trains.com/hocars/2baychop/2baychop_closed.htm
http://www.bowser-trains.com/hocars/2baychop/2baychop.htm
In the 1930’s ACF introduced a new covered hopper which would allow bulk shipments of dry materials. Previously these were packaged and resulted in hand loading and unloading. These commodities included cement dry chemicals, flour, grain. sand, sugar and many others. The first cars where shipped in October 1936 and had a capacity of 1958 cubic feet. These where soon to become a railroad standard and received AAR designation “LO”. They were 35’ 3" in length had 2 bays with 4 discharge openings, 8 square roof hatches and 70 ton weight capacity. Through the years they were copied by several other manufacturers with very few visible changes. In time many railroad purchased or leased these cars, including roads such as ACL, C&O, CB&Q, Clinchfield, DT&I Erie, Great Northern, Nickel Plate Road, N&W, Santa Fe and many others. Many private owner cars also existed. Between 1936 and 1957 more than 21,000 of the ACF designed cars were built some of which still can be found in company service on various roads.
Sorry, but I never wrote that.
[oops] Sorry! It wasn’t you. It was rtpoteet1. [oops] Credit where credit is due for a brilliant piece of information [bow]
[:P]
Don’t know for sure but I think that most breweries get their water from wells… usually drilling down to aquifers where the water has come trhough rock for a few thousand years or so and so comes out both extremely clean and slightly mineralized. Surface water gets leaves, dead skunks, all sorts of pooh and anything else around in it. YEUK! [xx(] This is why you often find breweries in strange places away from river banks. the river is only useful for dumping waste (back then).
I can’t recall exactly but I’m sure that I’ve seen a boxcar or a covered hopper labelelled/sign written for a yeast supplier… not sure of date. No yeast… NO BEER [:O][banghead][:O] Don’t forget… in your era there was money back on empty bottles and both the empty bottles and crates went back as “returned empties”.
[In the days of the Raj young ladies sent out to India to find a match who failed and returned home were also rudely known as “returned empties”. Definitely not PC].
Here at least there were also “fish empties” and “egg empties” I have 1903 waybills for both. Somewhere.
Don’t know for sure but I think that most breweries get their water from wells… usually drilling down to aquifers where the water has come trhough rock for a few thousand years or so and so comes out both extremely clean and slightly mineralized. Surface water gets leaves, dead skunks, all sorts of pooh and anything else around in it. YEUK! [xx(] This is why you often find breweries in strange places away from river banks. the river is only useful for dumping waste (back then).
I can’t recall exactly but I’m sure that I’ve seen a boxcar or a covered hopper labelelled/sign written for a yeast supplier… not sure of date. No yeast… NO BEER [:O][banghead][:O] Don’t forget… in your era there was money back on empty bottles and both the empty bottles and crates went back as “returned empties”.
[In the days of the Raj young ladies sent out to India to find a match who failed and returned home were also rudely known as “returned empties”. Definitely not PC].
Here at least there were also “fish empties” and “egg empties” I have 1903 waybills for both. Somewhere.
[:P]
LOL… thanks for the info on using aquifers…that will actually make placement easier. As for yeast, of course I will never forget the most KEY ingredient! True, I have never seen a car with yeast on it…you find it, let me know who makes it.
Brian