What cars would be dilevered to a small paper mill? im looking for stuff other than the basic 50’ high cube boxcar. What sort of tank cars? what structures are in production tha would look right?
Thanks
GEARHEAD426
[8]
EDIT: the building can’t be a lot bigger than 10"x10".
Kaolin clay and chemicals in tank cars, wood chip cars, and possibly open log cars would be the primary ones delivering supplies to a paper mill. Whether or not it would receive logs would most likely depend on the location and type of paper produced. It may also receive paper in closed boxcars for recycling.
I was just thinking about this question earlier today.
As I understand it some small papermills received the ingredients for paper from larger plant(s) and “rolled their own”. As cacole helpfully says theyb received clay, chemicals and woodchip… the question is… for the smallest mill… what sort of car numbers and what sort(s) of chemicals?
I assume that the woodchip cars would be the drop bottom kind… a small plant wouldn’t justify the cost of a tipple… BUT I think that cars could be emptied by vacuum???
What cars before the huge special woodchip cars?
If your space is limited to 10"x10" I would suggest that you only model the outside wall of the mill and the loading/unloading arrangements.
Thanks for the question and for all help.
I model a large paper mill and it receives both would chips as well as pulpwood logs that would shredded into wood chips on site. Both of these are by products from a yet to be built sawmill at the other end of my mainline. Right now they come in on an interchange track. Athearn makes RTR pulpwood cars with log loads in several roadnames and they look good. Atlas makes a similar car but the load looks artificial to me. My paper mill is a background industry and the wood chip and pulpwood cars disappear onto hidden track that runs behind the plant so I don’t actual model the unloading facilities. The mill also receives chemical tank cars on a covered loading dock on the front of the plant. I also have an open loading dock for shipping the finished products.
It depends on the era that you are modeling but I am putting a coal trestle in mine for coal to supply the boilers in the plant. My wife’s father was a superintendent of a Riegel paper mill. I took photos of it. It had deliveries like box cars, etc. on one side and received coal on the other.
My first church was in Covington, VA where WestVaCo is. One of my deacons ran the Allied Chemical facility that was on the paper mill property and served the mill. I’m almost sure that there were tank cars there daily with acid or other strong chemicals.
The local roads were constantly clogged with trucks hauling wood. I don’t remember if any wood came by train. But it’s your rr and you can haul what you want there!
It was the Allied facility that got me hooked on chemical cars. My main industry is a chemical plant. All this was back in 1966-69.
For more realism you can spray awful smelling stuff around your layout.
Oil deliveries as well, if the boilers aren’t coal fired.
The November 1998 issue of MR had an article on modeling a paper mill.
ok i think ive got it worked out now-- bottom dump wood chip cars, clay/chemical tankcars in, and the occasional tank car for oil. Boxcars with paper out.
I just set up a spur on my layout( its just sectional track on plywood with no roadbed yet) and ill try to get a hold of a walthers modulars building with a door for cars to go into. would the wood chip cars just dump into a trap door inside the building, or could i get away with putting it outside?im thinking some window screen to simulate a steel cover over a pit between the rails.
Thanks
GERHEAD426
[8]
Titanium dioxide, calcium carbonate, starches, clays, fuel oil, acids, alkalines, bleaches, and chlorine, hydrogen come from rail and truck to paper mills along with the lists above. This I am absolutely sure about!
David, I looked up your bio. If you would have answered first, the rest of us wouldn’t have had to clutter up the site! It is great to hear from one who is there!
Thanks. Walter
Don’t forget lime rock for pulp liquor lime recovery operations. Relatively short covered hoppers are commonly used to transport lime rock. Boilers are often fired by hog fuel, solids from lime recovery, and other fuels.
You can unload drop bottom chip cars over a concrete conveyor pits. Chip conveyors transport the chips to storage piles, silos, screen rooms, or to spill areas for wheel loaders to move the chips to storage piles. Wood chips are always stored in piles by tree species. It takes a lot of wood chips to make enough paper to take to market.
If it’s a mill that produces product with recycled content, you would also bring in boxcars loaded with bales of recycled paper and old corrugated carton (OCC).
Here’s a link to the St. Regis paper mill in Bucksport, Maine. It’s got all kinds of links on the site to describe what they do and how they do it.
To Walter Clot, yes I have an inside track if you will, but even today a papermill facility encompasses many definitions, it could be napkins, paper towels, book publishing, diapers, commodity papers such as computer paper, nonwoven mills such as hospital gowns, tea bag paper, cigarette paper, specialty colors like contruction paper used in schools, prospectus papers for stock information, newsprint and the list goes on. Each facility is usually unique in the area of product they produce, as each process requires different machinery. Currently in this area of the country the paper market as a whole is dying due to overseas competion and high energy costs. Currently my facility is closing in June along with 2 other companies here to close by the end of 2007, and two that closed last year. For the model train hobby numerous box cars, tank cars, log cars, wood chip cars are quite common here, along with coal cars for energy use. Coal has actually increased in its use here for energy. So a great variety of cars come through here daily, with 40 to 50 different trains. This is now a Canadian National line and about a mile away is a medium size rail yard.