Modeling a sugar refinery

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I have been thinking about modeling a sugar refinery for some time and now I 've allocated some space and have some covered hoppers.My time period is 1950-60’s. Anyone out there who has done this or has ideas…I’d appreciate your comments…Will probably ship the finished product to a bakery ,a candy plant or a cereal concern. Those are for later

2

Here is a website with some good links regarding sugar beets.

Here is a good look at the refining process in a plant on your side of the border.

3

Domino Sugar plant, 1100 Key Highway, Baltimore, Maryland. http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9eXAuMTEwMCtrZXkraGlnaHdheSUyYytiYWx0aW1vcmUlN2Vzc3QuMCU3ZXBnLjEmYmI9NTMuMjk0NjQ1MzkwMjk0MSU3ZS00NS43MDE2MzcyNjglN2UyMy41MDgzOTQyOTUxNDM2JTdlLTEwNC41ODgzNTYwMTg=

Zoom in and pan around and you’ll see the car unloading area. Looks like it is under cover. If you go and take a walking tour, just don’t ask to see the part of the plant where they make Equal.

4

Reposting the above with a shorter URL http://tinyurl.com/357p2om

5

There was a Sugar Refinery on the Vancouver waterfront. Both these websites have 1000s of photos of everything. You might want to check them out. Search out Railroad photos while your there. A Canadian RR photo treasure.

http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-1B643A0/index.htm

http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/archives/index.htm

Brent

6

Walthers has (or had) a kit for a small sugar refinery (Greatland Sugar, I believe) that could be a good starting point. (I have the unbuilt kit somewhere, and intend to use it as a cigarette factory [:)]) Dave’s links should provide you with enough info to make it an operational part of your layout.

I’d suggest, however, not shipping the end product it to a particular on-layout industry. There’s certainly nothing wrong with including such a destination, but you’ll then have at least two industries on your layout using the same car types. Why not ship, instead, to bakeries and candy factories located “elsewhere” (off-layout) via interchange? This will free up that layout real estate for an industry that uses a different car type, say reefers or gondolas, allowing a wider mix of interesting rolling stock.

Even if our layout is a room-sized one, the distances between towns and industries is, by necessity, overly compressed, making both shipper and receiver on the same layout less believeable. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do it, but you’ll get more use out of whatever layout space you have if you don’t.

Wayne

7

Thanks for the great info guys…I had the Walthers kit, built it and then didn’t use it. I was going to use the main building of the Heljan brewery kit as it is large enough to be a sugar refinery type of building. The jury is still out though as my shelf space is quite limited. It may have to be some sort of a background building.

8

The purpose of this photo was to document the weed sprayer, but in the background are large circular bins at a former sugar-beet refinery in the central coastal area of California. Only these bins remain: the refinery itself is swept away, gone. The beet dump is beside the bin on the left (now used for locomotive inspections), so I presume the two large bins were to store unprocessed beets. I wonder what the smaller (rusted) tank was for. Perhaps for some powdered chemical or whatever used in processing the beets.

Mark

9

Until the latter part of the 1950s, granular sugar was shipped in bags loaded into boxcars if not in trucks. Also, some of the product was in liquid form (sugar in solution and molasses) and would be shipped in tank cars if in bulk.

You’ll be missing out if you don’t model the incoming shipments of sugar beets and whatever such as coke/coal and limestone used to make sugar. Railroad beet shipments were mostly made using drop-bottom gondolas.

Kalmbach’s The Model Railroader’s Guide to Industries Along the Tracks 3 has a section on sugar beets and the production of sugar. The section discusses prototype and modeling aspects.

Mark