I am thinking of adding a Coca Cola (or generic soft drink) bottling plant on my layout (set in the 1940s-1950s) and have some questions about how it might be rail served. Beyond boxcars bringing in bottles and possibly hoppers delivering coal for the steam power plant what other commodities would be delivered? At this time would sugar be delivered in bags inside boxcars or would covered hoppers be used? Also the flavoring syrup used to make the soda; was that delivered in bulk by tank cars like modern day corn syrup deliveries or some form of drums loaded in boxcars? Finally how was the carbonation handled at that time, an on site plant or was CO2 delivered? I have looked on line for answers and have not really found any, even looking at the Coca Cola website. If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.
Wesley
Sugar in boxcars.
Syrup in boxcars (drums).
Carbonation on site.
Palletised or man-handled plus sack barrows? From what I recall of journals of the era forklift trucks would not be prevelant - so there would be a lot of men and a lot of barrows.
Sacks of sugar in ships or freight cars packed down with the pounding/vibration of movement so that they had to be prised out from a pretty solid mass - without ripping the bags. This made for hard, sweaty work in a sticky environment and raw hands by the end of the day. It could also mean premium pay if you were in the correct union.
I thought that the bubbles were shipped in bags? [:-,]
[:P]
I think the use of high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks (“sodas”) is relatively recent, so I am not sure tanks cars would have been involved much back then like they would be today. In the 1950s they used real sugar. Possibly shipped in short covered hoppers (you’d have to push your era a bit to use an Airslide) but sacks in a 40ft boxcar are also likely and maybe more probable. Flavorings likely also came in sacks but perhaps not in boxcar lots. Most bottling plants for the major brands were fairly local and I am not sure how much outbound rail service would have been involved in the 1950s. For example Coca Cola had a large bottler here in Milwaukee that pretty much took care of local needs for the product.
Shipping the sheet metal for canning (typically printed off site) was probably done in boxcars. I have seen it shipped flat. Years and years ago a friend and I came across several sheets of aluminum or tin for beer cans (maybe Pabst?) along the C&NW and I assume an open boxcar door allowed part of the load to escape. We were too young to even think what a flying sheet of metal could have done to us had we been trackside when it went flying.
Don’t forget the reusable bottles. There was a high mortality rate for the bottles and a very large soft drink bottler would like fill up a hopper with broken glass (“cullet”) from time to time. Back when Milwaukee had the Schlitz brewery certain tracks glittered like diamonds – bits of broken glass the leaked from the hopper cars. You’d see the same sparkle between the rails at glass plants where they took in the cullet. Broken glass might well have been the most common outbound railroad shipment from even a large bottling operation.
Dave Nelson
Thanks everyone for these replies. For the most part you’ve confirmed what I had thought and had been able to find out. Now to start putting it all together on the layout.
Wesley
Medium to large size bottling plants (say 3-4 million cases a year) would have used “liquid sugar” brought in by tanker truck (or if next to a rail line) tanker cars. Flavorings and colorings were in drums or sacks (it depended on what). You might want to add an external well for ground water (used for cooling the vats of syrup). This is how it was done in a plant in Brooklyn in the 30s to 70s.
Alan