I have search the web on this can’t find any good info on Plastic Factories ,so I hope that someone out there knows some info . First I know you need Plastic Pellets ,what kind of Covered Hoppers are used to haul them ? Second I’m not going to model the whole Plant it self just mainly the shipping and receiving part at the most . Third any other info would help and this plant is set present time in New Mexico Thanks
Plastic pellets usually are hauled in large 4 bay covered hoppers with pneumatic discharge.
Jim
I don’t have it in front of me, but MR did an article a few years ago about building a plastic factory, including storage tank unloading area for the pellet hoppers.
What do you mean by a “plastic factory”?
Are you looking for an industry that makes plastic pellets? (that is actually a chemical plant or refinery)
Are you looking for a factory that makes plastic products or uses plastic to make products?
The two are very, very different.
Your right Sorry I should of clarified a factory that makes plastic products.
Thanks for the info so far .
You may also consider,how large the facility is, to be rail served,most smaller factories,trucks deliver their raw materials…
Cheers,
Frank
Normally those factories have some sort of enclosed building (brick, metal, concrete) with several silos alongside the building to hold the plastic pellets. If they get more than one type of pellets they will have more than one silo. There are thousands of different grades of plastic pellets and resins. the industry needs silo capacity for every car they will have spotted. Theoretically if they have spots for three 5700 cu ft covered hoppers they would need 18,000 cu ft of silo storage minimum.
Along the tracks where the pellet cars are unloaded will be a large diameter (6-8") metal pipe with large diameter flexible metal hoses that are or can be attached at various places along the pipe. The pipe is a vacuum line that vacs the pellets out of the cars and then blows them up into the silos. The other spots can be for boxcars carrying product out or inbound materials in. They are normally rollup doors.
Meet General Plastics Inc.
This company receives plastic pellets in gaylords(large open cardboard shipping boxes) and plasticizer in tank cars…
The pellets is made from reclaim scrap plastic and shipped in gaylords instead of covered hoppers.
Try searching “plastic pellet transloading” in google. You’ll find all kinds of good stuff.
From our host’s Magazine Index:
7 matches for plastic pellet
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Product Reviews: Walthers HO scale 64-foot plastic pellet hopper |
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That list is nice if one has all the back issues or buys every Kalmbach book that comes along.
There is more in depth study on line if one uses Google…
From original post:
"I have search the web on this can’t find any good info on Plastic Factories ,so I hope that someone out there knows some info "
While there is lot of information about industries is on the web, it is usually scattered across many sites and, much of it not relevant to making a model. It is thus often difficult to gain a coherent picture of an industry and its facilities and operations.
Google maps (aerial and street views) and Bing maps (aerial and Birds Eye) can be very useful in determining the current appearance of an industry.
Another place to check is Google Books. to find books and articles. Many can be purchased for reasonable prices If one models around 1900, many of the books can be read on line and often downloaded free. Some of the info in the older books is still relevant today.
A very compact plastic factory in South Milwaukee WI that is rail served (by the UP, formerly the C&NW) is Luetzow Industries. They make all manner of plastic bags, from dry cleaning bags (how they got their start in fact; they were originally a dry cleaner themselves) to big bags for the funeral industry.
They have a useful website http://luetzowind.com/ that has an historical section with photos of the plant in the 1950s as well as today: http://luetzowind.com/history.html
The photos show their first ever pellet load and it might be a P-S type covered hopper lettered for Dow Chemical (it also somewhat resembles an Airslide car), but for years they got their pellets in ACF center flo hoppers not unlike the Athearn model. The ones I remember seeing as a kid were lettered Rexall or El Rexene but there were others, and my recollection is that they were lettered to be returned to Texas when empty. In more recent years the center flow hoppers just had reporting marks and no commercial name or logo on them. I have recently seen the flat sided covered hoppers there as well.
The interesting thing is that the track and their unloading tubes are across the street from the factory. Google satellite views has a good aerial overhead. The historic aerials website has a 1963 Milwaukee County aerial shot that is a bit fuzzy but shows the factory footprint as it was. Again the building is quite compact and in that sense, perfect for modeling.
By the way years ago I found a small pile of pellets that had been spilled as part of the unloading process. They were about the size of aspirin tablets and translucent, not clear, even though the bags are clear.
Dave Nelson
I Google satellite view a couple and found some good info from there and here . Thanks
Here is a photo of one that used to be in Anderson IN.
I worked at a plastics plant that made PVC pipe fitting for a summer when I was in college. The plant received pellets by rail and stored them in silos on the property. Each rail car had a different color of pellet. There were four colors: white, beige, orange, and grey.
The plant also recycled there sprues from the molding process. After the fittings were cut, the sprues were ground up and re-used in the molding process.
Dont know if this is useful for you but there is a company down the street from me that manufactures plastic film. They recieve 4-5 hoppers of pellets at a time don’t know how often though. They ship their product by truck but you could easily add a track so they could ship by rail. Not a big building although they have another location in the country that is much bigger. Company name is Dana Films. Google earth 5 Otis Street, Westborough MA. Can go on their site for the other location
Ok, here is the followup on he photo that I put in some time back.
One thought - Walthers makes a Plastic Pellet Transfer kit. There’s a very similar set-up in Bloomington MN near where I used to live; it’s currently served by Progressive Rail on the ex-MN&S “high line” that was featured in Model Railroader a few years ago. There’s no industry directly connected to it, it’s on it’s own in an area near a strip mall and residential housing, but there are several business within a mile or two that I think use pellets. It appears large covered hoppers drop off the pellets at the transfer station, and trucks then move the pellets to the industries that use them. It would be a nice operation to model, it would take up very little space on the layout.
Pictured below is the unloading rack at Southeastern Container Corp. for plastic pellets. They manufacture liter bottles for Coca Cola.
The plant itself looks pretty much like any other plant.
Bob