Well I don’t know whether or not this has been done before, but I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread about industries, a place to ask question, post new things seen, etc. Do you guys like the idea?
I have one of my own: what would a glass industry receive/ship?
A glass industry would at the least recieve sand in probably covered hoppers, it would probably also ship out finished product in boxcars.
A glass producer would receive a number of materials, all by covered hopper. The largest quantity would be silica sand. Also you can expect to find soda ash, limestone, dolomite, alumina, nephylene syenite (Don’t think I spelled that right.), feldspar, sodium borate, and several others in smaller quantities. The glass manufacturers are also required to use cullet (Crushed glass) in certain quantities to recycle, which would also come in covered hoppers. All the materials come in cars from all over the country and Canada too. Private owner cars and railroad owned cars, so you get a nice mix of cars.
A larger glass manufacturer would get all these by rail, while a smaller one might only get sand and maybe soda ash. The others would be brought in by trucks.
The outbound finished product would go by either boxcar or mostly by truck. There could be cardboard boxes brought in by truck and rail too.
When the railroad drills the glass plant, they are basically setting up the batch for the customer so there is additional drilling to be done. It isn’t just pull the empties and spot more loads.
It’s a good industry to model. You could do a building flat with the batch house and silos being the only real buildings with a siding through the batch house. Or add a warehouse for the in and out of boxes and finished product.
Mike
I honestly didn’t think about the Soda ash, I knew it was needed in the process, but I figured that it would probably be more brought in by truck than rail, but I can always be wrong.
Folks:
Glass plants are a neat industry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an uninteresting glass plant. My favorite is Glenshaw Glass in a hollow near Pittsburgh…at present it’s Kelman Bottles LLC, having been (I’m inordinately pleased to report) fairly miraculously snatched from the jaws of the ever-ravenous real-estate sharks, who wanted to turn it into yet another stupid mall. They make beer bottles.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/class_3glenshaw_glass_2.jpg
Don’t forget the fuel. Most glass plants are probably using gas now, but before the 1960s or thereabouts, that would mean coal or fuel oil, and lots of it. It takes a lot of heat to make glass. You’d probably also be hauling ashes out now and then.
I think a lot of us don’t realize, nowadays, just how many places received coal back in the steam era, now that it’s mostly a cargo that heads to steel mills or power plants. John Nehrich has some snippets of old records on his site, and it’s not so unusual for some plant to receive several carloads of coal a month. Many large plants had their own powerhouse or even a heating plant.
Oil was common, too. My employer, a forge shop, now burns gas in its furnaces, but they used to burn fuel oil - we have two detrucked tank cars, old even in the 1940s, that held this oil.
Great idea about the glass industry. What areas of the U.S and Canada were or are they common in? I don’t reacall seeing any here in the U.S southeast. I’m wondering if they would be concentrated in areas where there is clean sand in abundance, such as the Western and Southwestern U.S?
I’ve always been interested in feed mills. Here in Tampa, up until the early 1980s, there was a Purina mill that was served by the SCL. I often saw 54 ft. centerflow hopper cars parked behind the mill. The siding came directly off the mainlinek splitting into 3 tracks with one leading to the mill’s overhead chutes. I remember the scent of the grains hanging in there. For modeling purposes I wonder if these types of mills would also use other types of freight cars. I plan on modeling one.
Antonio,
I’ve heard that Morgantown, WV was a major glass producer at some point up until the recent past
Interesting resource is the OPSIG (Operations Special Interest Group) web site, where they among other things have databases of stuff typically recived and shipped by rail for quite a few real (named) industries:
http://www.opsig.org/industrydb/
Smile,
Stein
PPG once had a significant plate glass plant in Cumberland. They specialized in larger sheets for sky scrapers and what not. Outbound materials went in gondolas specially fitted with glass racks, and also in open top truck trailers which were supplied by the railroad.
Lee
Glass in gondolas? I assume the glass was covered in some way? That would be a prime target for vandals…
get on the web and read about the muncie and western railroad. it was in muncie indiana and was known as the “ball line”. the ball brothers glass company was located there. their box cars were painted yellow and had a glass jar logo. it is part of csx today.
as for carload traffic in and out of glass plants, when i worked on the nyc in the late 60’s, hillsboro glass at hillsboro illinois was a major shipper on our line. actually hillsboro was a joint big four/cei agency so some of the traffic was to and from the chicago and eastern illinois which had trackage rights on the old big four between e st louis and pana il. the nyc did all the switching at hillsboro with a yard engine job there. inbound loads were covered hoppers of sand and occasionally soda ash. i don’t recall any fuel loads like coal but i think most glass plants preferred to use natural gas anyway they also received knocked down cardboard boxes by the box car load. i think the glass plant was a wholly owned subsidiary of hiram walkers. it was originally the schram glass co. but i don’t know the full history of the plant. all they made when i worked in the area was whiskey bottles. the outbound loads of bottles were shipped in cardboard boxes to one of several destinations, all distilleries. three that come to mind were walkerville ontario (across the river from detroit) crawfordsville indiana and pekin (peoria) illinois. some of the box cars were in assigned service and returned mty to hillsboro from canada.
grizlump
Cumberland Glass Works is another industry to look at. There are a number of variation in thier names over the years.
Baltimore had a specific glass factory that made blue containers and another that did lead based drinkware and other types of glass.
Molten Tin baths to float glass is the way it was done back then.
They run 24/7 and never allowed to cool down or stop production. Very expensive to get going all over again.
Compression will be in order because a full bore glass plant will take up an entire bedroom for just the table.
Course we are capable of turning nations into glass. Just wait for radiation to go away and go over and harvest it.
Thanks everybody!
The thread needs a bump.
I’m planning on having a very large glass industry, something 2’ long, 1’ wide, 9" long. It will also go into the backdrop, with covered unloading areas for hoppers and loading docks for boxcars. Sound ok?
Grizlump-
Do you remember where the covered hoppers of sand would have come from?
The other thing that would be interesting to know is whether the bottles went north to Chicago-area roads, stayed on the NYC, or went east to the Wabash. I could see Walkerville-bound cars going via NYC, C&EI-Wabash, or via connection to the C&O or GTW across Michigan.
Given that CN served the distillery in Walkerville, I’d suspect that the GTW might have gotten a piece of the traffic.
that was about 40 years ago so my memory fails me. since sand is a heavy, cheap commodity it was never shipped any farther than necessary. i would guess that the sand for hillsboro came from up around ottawa illinois. there is good quality silica sand for glass making in that area and several glass plants were located west of chicago north of morris illinois. schram glass, the original operator of the hillsboro illinois plant had large operations in oklahoma near suitable sand deposits. another factor in favor of the oklahoma location was availability of natural gas.
grizlump
i don’t remember how much action the c&ei got out hillsboro glass but they were involved in a couple of other industries at that location. Eagle Picher and American Zinc. as for the Canadian loads, i am not sure but i think walkerville is within the windsor ontario switching district so NYC likely got the entire road haul with CN being paid for a switch/delivery only.
any cars that were billed for the cei were switched into and out of the hilllsboro industries with a bill for switching charges only presented to that road. their traffic was set out and picked up from our yard by their road trains originating mostly from Mitchell Illinois. (north of e st louis) or Danville Illinois.
for some reason, the name Penn Glass Sand sticks in my head. (along with a lot of other crap) they may have been the supplier of sand for the glass works but i don’t remember the shipping point.
did you look up anything on the Mucie and Western or Ball Line?
grzilump
i googled penn glass sand and found that they are now known as US Silica. they have sand pits at ottawa illinois and pacific mo. pacific is just west of st louis on the old mopac and since the c&ei was a wholly owned subsidiary of that railroad that may have been a source of the material for the glass plant at hillsboro.
grizlump
[:D]
Hello
I don’t know if I’m on the correct thread but here goes. I have a small layout with a small industrial area. I use dull greenish paint under my grass etc. In the industrial area I’ve tried several colors to try to get dirt and gravel look to no avail. The paint that is there now has very fine sand in it. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
[bow]
Lee
Hey guys,
any opinions or information on feed mills serviced by rail?
We’ve got two feed mills in my local area, both are serviced by rail, they take in corn and other feed stocks in covered hoppers (typically 55’ ACF covered hoppers), and normally either ship out by truck, or sometimes ship back out in covered hoppers. I haven’t seen any boxcar loads coming in or out of either of them, but I’m sure that some of them do have packaged feed in bags that go into boxcars.