Due to my “career” I wish to model a cement mill and a precast plant on my layout, neither of which will be fully accurate. I know that cement is hauled by rail and have seen instances of precast concrete products hauled but only when the products were needed for the railroad. I’m wondering if the is a “national register” of sortswhere I can determine if and whattypes of precast was delivered by rail on a consistant basis. My era is modern deisel (roughly 1970 and later) and for this purpose locale is something I can fudge.
What do you consider “precast”?? I haul a lot of precast-- mostly buildings, pipe and bridge spans. Another precast product I’ve hauled is steps and decorative stuff like “cultured stone”. I’ve not seen any of it go out by rail, but thats not to say it doesn’t. Also. I’ve hauled it for some distance. This is one product that is too costly to haul by rail. Explaination: The casting plant would have cranes to load the product on, let’s say flat cars, the same crane that loads a truck. So far same cost. Now the cost sky rockets because at some point another crane will have to be hired to transfer it to the truck which is hired to deliver it to the job site. We’ve now paid transportation cost to the railroad, paid a crane company to transfer it, paid a trucking company to haul it again. This is not even taking the time involved into consideration. Some large casting plants have cement and aggrigate supllied by rail and truck. Ken
Face it - its YOUR railroad, and you can do whatever you want! Perhaps the precast plant has a huge order for a giant skyscraper or other development that requires components in larger numbers than trucks can handle, so they ship by rail. Maybe right to the job site? Make something up, its your railroad!
Seems to me, what you need is a freight rate list. Those things break down what the specific cargo is and what the rate is to ship it. Different cargoes can go in the same van and have different rates applied. Ex. container trees go as nursery products but bales of peat moss go as nursery supplies and a different rate than the previous. Just like a pre stressed span would go at a different rate than say bagged cement.
I consider precast to be poured at one location and installed at another location. I know in real life that normally cost would prohibit transporting crane sized loads (tee beams, box beams, bridge spans) on rail, however smaller forklift sized items (say 20,000 lbs each and less) could be handled somewhat effectively. Items like this could be manholes (not the metal ring and cover that you see on the road but the structure underneath), box culverts and storm drainage structures. Another prohibitive factor would definitely be physical size of the peice. You can’t chain a 50’ bridge span to a flat car with out considering that the car will flex more than the concrete will, so a pivot block is required on one end of the span.
Having said that, I recall seeing a documentary quite a few years back that a railroad needed to reach a certain location to handle transportation logistics for some government project (a dam or something. The problem they had was that the ground was swampy/marshy an
I think the biggest question here is How realistic does this have to be?
I too once worked for a precast company here in Gap, and in my experiance shipping, by rail, any of the products that we produced would be out of the question. All the jobs that were bid on, and ended up being produced, were well within truck shipping distance, and almost always inaccessable by rail. Also, it seems to me that these facilities in general are very common, and hence, so close to the job site that long distance shipping would not be realistic. One last thought on this, I have seen that in the case of very large jobs, a precast plant is actually built right on, or very near, the job site, specifically to eliminate the whole Logistics nightmare of shipping such large items.
All that being said, it’s YOUR layout. I see no reason that you could not use creative licence to model the facility as you see fit. Maybe the “company” you model could be a specialty plant that only casts certain parts for jobs that it does nation wide - such as the double T shaped “floor” sections of parking garages. This item would be a good fit for 50 foot flat cars, you could have a spur going into the building to be loaded by overhead crane(empties in-loads out through a back drop, like some do with Coal loads), or an out door gantry crane system if your track plan does not permit the former. Such a large “plant” would also justify having Cement, Stone and Sand delivered by rail. The “plant” could spot cars with a large front loader, from a small yard (2 tracks, 4-5 cars each) that would hold empty and loaded flat cars so that all the parts shipped together, or in batches. The Aggregate deliveries could be handled by the “local freight” crew, as sand and stone could be off loaded fairly quickly. An additional spur for 2-3 AirSlide cars for Cement, located right beside the storage silos.
I think my last post addresses the first part best, shipping small parts would be totally unrealistic because of the large number and location of the manufacturers.
Also, the second part above, I don’t know that I agree that you would(in 1:1) need “pivot blocks” as you stated. Most times these Long or Large parts are shipped by truck on Extended trailers, which flex A LOT, much more than a rail car would, and they do not have special blocking under them.
NOW, if your interest is to highly detail a few loaded cars, By all means, go for it !! I think such a project would be really neat, something to talk about while showing off your trains at holidays and such.
I am slightly confused by what it is you really want though…you’re a little confusing on whether you want the industry “no-matter-what”, or want to justify it with reality, and your modeling 1970’s/modern diesel/America, but are try’n to justify with scenes from the 40’s/Europe.
Regardless of what or why you want it, I think you’re on the right path to having a prototypical industry with freelanced freight. Like I said in my first post, I don’t think that shipping small ite
Would that happen to be Dutchland concrete on rt 41? Thats about a 45 minute drive for me!
For now, we can agree to disgree on the matter of structural concrete strength versus the structural steel strength of the means of transport.[:-^]
I guess I was not real clear on my plans. I WANT a cement mill that receives raw material via rail, processes it thru a twin rotary kiln setup with ball muellers and ships the finished product rail. A customer of this mill will be a precast plant (another WANT) that I WOULD LIKE to ship their products mainly by rail, limiting truck traffic. The precast plant receive sand and stone via rail along with the occasional load of rebar and wire mesh. The I AIN"T SURE part is what the precast plant produces. This question will impact the layout design in how the product gets loaded (bridge cranes inside/truck or crawler cranes outside/travel lifts/or just plain big 30T forklifts for the large stuff or “standard” forklifts for the smaller stuff).
Perhaps I’ll just lay a turnout of the main and worry about that section a little later…
Dutchland…Yes indeed. I worked there about 10 years ago.
And, I don’t know that we actually disagree, but I do agree, we’re both right…[swg], Although, I was speaking more of Physics than strength. Certainly the Concrete product would be stronger in the respect of the load it ws intended to bear, but once it is chained down to a more flexiable trailer, the trailer takes on the rigid properties of the concrete load.
I thought I misunderstood, and I was infact mistaken, but not to be confused, the Cement Mill is your FOCUS, and the Precast facility is secondary…Gotcha. I can’t help much with the Mill, all the cement I’ve dealt with was, well, cement - not raw materials to be “milled” into cement. One “keep in mind” I can think of though, your Cement Mill will produce far more cement than your Precast Concrete plant can use…Do you have an Interchange? or Staging? for all the “other” loads out of the mill? Or maybe a few Dry Bulk tractor-trailers to place in a “parking area” at the mill to “represent” the truck traffic, without modeling a bunch of trucks and roads?
It’s been almost 8 years since I left Terre Hill Concrete…still playing in the “mud” though ever since. LOL
I’m sure you have heard of a certain precast operation in Denver Pa that produces double and triple tee beams? They are HIGH up on the list of large operations in the local precast CONCRETE arena. (read between the lines)
They ship all of thier tee panels by truck and special racks that angle a 12’ wide panel to fit on a 8’ wide trailer (a bit more than a 45 degree angle). Anyway, the rack on the rear of the trailer is rigid and the chains are tightened directly to the trailer. The forward rack (above the 5th wheel) becomes the pivot block. It essentially is not locked thereby allowing the panel to remain at the same geometric plane as the rear rack. The front rack is bolted and chained to the trailer and the panel is chained to the pivoting section of that rack. They also throw a chain over the front of the panel and SNUG that to the trailer. Doing it like this removes the stress of an uneven road from both the panel and the next weakest part- the 5th wheel assembly.
Yes, the main focus of my layout will be the cement mill but I also wanted to have a staging yard of precast products at the nearby plant. Eventually I WISH to motorize the kilns to spin to add some activity. As for interchanges, I’m hoping to work in a healthy length of mainline that goes under the hill that one of the facilitys will be located on. That length will allow a consist to disappear from site and reappear as emptys returning for a refill. I might even do a twin mainline hidden and use the one as a holding track while the other materials are unloaded.
I appreciate your appreciation of my acknowledgment of your assistance[swg]
I too, now see your thoughts here, Ken, I think?? So here’s my thoughts. The raw material could come into the mill on side dump ore cars. Maybe a narrow gauge line would supply this from a mine. After processing it would leave in covered hoppers and some could leave in box cars if your mill produced bagged products. Now also, those kilns need to be fired. So a supp