I was watching Modern Marvels on History channel today and the show was about ACIDS. Maybe some of you saw it also. But at one point they were talking about how gelatin (sp?) was made from using hydrochloric acid in the process. What I thought was amusing was when they brought a hopper full of cattle bones in that were already broken down into small pieces. Once they were unloaded at the plant the bones are sifted by size as they go through the grate.
I thought that might be a good industry to model, a gelatin factory. Bringing in tankers of acid and hoppers full of bone and box cars full of Jello out. LOL
Wait until you get a tour of a manufacturing plant that makes cooking Shortening. Lard comes in tank cars. Pig bones and fat are ground up as a start. And I don’t take food plant tours anymore.
Did they provide you with a spring clothespin, or were you supposed to bring your own?
On a more serious note, both Modern Marvels and How It’s Made frequently include some useful ideas for modeling. Of course, the one idea that comes across loud and clear is that manufacturing and processing plants are BIG!
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with a big colliery and a modest sawmill)
I don’t think the central ingredient in gelatin has ever been much of a secret. The most popular brand, Knox, long had a cow on the package.
When I was a boy there was a small gelatine dessert factory in my home town of South Milwaukee WI. It was on a C&NW spur line and in the 1960s the back of the plant showed signs of a loading dock on the tracks although by that time it was no longer rail served. The building was too small for them to do the actual rendering there, I suspect. The general area had slaughter houses, meat packing plants (that shipped tallow in tank cars), sausage factories, tanneries for the hides, a shoe factory for the leather, a glue factory for the bones, and a fertilizer plant for the blood and “fleshings” (don’t ask), Most of these were rail served. I suspect there were factories that made felt from the hair, too. As they say, when it comes to cows they use everything but the moo … When the wind was right the combined odor of these various businesses was , um, pungent.
