The automobile assembly plants receive parts in 86 foot auto part cars from subsembly plants and in some cases sub contractors.
As far as Road Railers those are “rubbered” in from the nearest Road Railer yard.
BTW…Auto parts are hot shipments because most are just in time shipments.These auto part trains may have empty auto racks in the train’s consist as well.
The GM body plant in Ontario,Ohio has a decated switch crew and storage yard.
This company, http://www.setterstix.com a few town over from me, makes sucker sticks (lollypops, etc). last I knew they would have one or two boxcars parked outside their plant once a month or so. I imagine it is for paper delivery. I don’t know for sure if they get deliveries that way any more. Cuba Cheese, in Cuba, NY (near me also) ships by rail. There are usually two reefers either coming or going from the yard in town
There’s a kitchen cabinet company in Teutopolis IL that gets part of their lumber in boxcars. Then ships finished products out in boxcars to warehouses.
A friend of ours that retired from CSX last summer was telling us of some of the things he’d hauled;
Washers, dryers and other appliances.
Wood stoves, wood pellet and corn stoves.
Bagged wood chips, fertilizers and other products for gardening and landscaping. Also 50# bagged wood chips for livestock and pet bedding.
Cat litter and pet foods
Bagged Livestock supplements and feed
Herbicides and insecticides for farming.
Military equipment and supplies
And there’s a lot more to that list he gave, plus some more I can think of and have seen.
inch
One of the plants I looked at was GM’s Lordstown Assembly plant in northeastern Ohio. There are a few places where you can see old spurs that go nowhere (they end alongside the concrete pads of what used to be buildings) or the doors are now being used by trucks. One building has roll-up doors that are open, with tracks going inside so they’re probably still being used for something. Bird’s Eye View on Live maps is great. But the only things around are scrap gons and hoppers full of something white. There’s some coil cars and covered hoppers in the adajecent yard though.
But down at the Nissan plant in Canton MS, the only thing that’s not a sea of autoracks is a lone track that goes into some sort of loading building. All gons, full of scrap metal, poking out of that building and a bunch of empties further down the track. Canton’s a much larger and more modern facility than Lordstown. Same situation at their Smyrna TN location.
Those were the only three I could remember looking at. I see Lordstown in person all the time (my brother lives out that way). I was curious where a rail served plant was so that I could study it but was discouraged when the plants I did find were almost exclusively truck served.
The Ford parts distribution center in Manteca, CA (formerly in Richmond, CA) gets parts in 86’ boxcars.
Around here (SF Bay Area) we have a C&H sugar plant. They use lots of boxcars for their finished products. Cases upon cases of sugar, Also use the boxcars for palletized bags of sugar too. Fiberboard products & Raw spools of paper ship via rail also. Hope this helps.
First off no question is stupid if you don’t know the answer. Ignorance would be not asking question.
Food products, auto parts, packaged goods, lumber, paper products, tires, beer, wine, soft drinks, water, etc.
I currently have an auto assembly plant, which serves 86’ boxcars and other shorter hicube boxcars. Products could be tires, fenders, frames, seats, motors, etc.
I have a gypsum manufacturing plant, which makes packaged gypsum cement products and wall board (drywall). This wallboard goes into double door or all door boxcars. The Chili and Produce plant that I have handles insulated cars, reefers, and boxcars for the can goods and fresh produce. I also have a Pepsi plant that has boxcars for finished product outbound and ingredients and packaging inbound-paper products, pallets, plastic bottles, Al. cans, etc.
My other industrial areas consist of a feed mill which handles boxed products, a beer dist., mixed foods, frozen foods and even a refinery and steel fabricator that handles inbound loaded boxcars for supplies and parts needed to maintain the facilities.
I used to work for a railroad in Chicago as a Special Agent (Railroad Police) and my job was to inspect every load that came in. I have seen just about everything carried in a boxcar. I have seen boxed cereal in 86’ boxcars. The railroad carries just about anything.
You can check out some information on OPSIG list or any waybill car forwarding software programs. They have many commodities listed with what types of cars that they would be most likely used for that particular item. The program that I use is from Shenandoah Software. They have a sample program on the Internet that will show you some of the commodities and which cars the products that would most likely be loaded into.
Hope this helps some.
Len
To continue the auto plant sub discussion, I just took a peek at the Google sat photos of two plants in the St. Louis area - the GM assembly plant in Wentzville, MO, and the Daimler-Chrysler plant in Fenton, MO. I’m no expert, but a distinct difference jumped out at me. I see nothing at the Chrysler plant that looks like an active spur into any of the assembly buildings, just spurs for loading finished autos and hauling off scrap. Also, the place is crawling with semi trailers, clearly visible in the photos. In contrast, the GM plant has at least 4 spurs to assembly buildings, a switcher on site just southwest of the spur for the coal-fired power plant, and very few semi trailers present. Both of these plants are final assembly. So, maybe the rail traffic depends a lot on the particular manufacturer?
A few of the posts have mentioned loads of bagged, granular products such as salt or sugar.
I worked in a candy manufacturing plant for a short time in the early 70’s, and they received bulk sugar in 40’ boxcars. It was coarse brown sugar, and at first glance it looked like light-brown rock salt.
The insides of door openings would be closed off with half-height, kraft-paper-and-strapping grain doors, and the sugar would go up to the roof at both ends of the car. I’ve never seen a loaded grain boxcar, but I’m sure those and the sugar loads were very similar.
A spur ran right into the plant building so the sugar could be unloaded out of the weather. It was on a downward slope coming into the plant so that when the box cars were spotted, the floor of the plant was level with the floor of the car.
They would also receive tank cars of corn syrup on that same spur inside the plant. I believe they may also have shipped boxed cases of candy out, but I’m not certain of that.
HTH,
Steve
<><>As an engineer for the NS (in ex-Southern territory) I can possibly offer you some insight. On my seniority district alone, we use box cars for the following (assuming we are NOT talking about refrigerated boxcars):
Auto Parts - General Motors in Doraville, GA receives all sorts of body parts, transmissions, motors, electronics, tires, glass parts, etc. in 50 and 60 foot boxcars. (Although it is not on my division or district, the old Ford plant in Hapeville, GA received plenty of boxcars, mostly 60 foot and longer…that plant closed a couple years ago…and the GM plant in Doraville is scheduled to close supposedly sometime this year. For a few years we had an industry called “Android” which was somehow affiliated with GM, and they’d receive boxcars full of GM components which required some “re-manufacturing” process, and were then forwarded to both our local GM plant and plants in Mexico and other parts of the US. We also had a place called “Magnasteer”, which received transmission parts (for what I don’t know), in boxcars.
Paper Recycling - There are several industries on my seniority district that receives empty box cars and loads paper scrap into them to be sent off to a recycling plant. One industry receives some loads of scrap, which they cut into smaller pieces and reload, as well as empty cars which they load as well.
Bricks - We also have a few brick yards on our route, who receive pallets of bricks loaded in box cars. Of course you could model the reverse and have a brick making plant loading empties.
Paper Rolls/Products - There are several industries on my district that receive large rolls of paper. Georgia Paci
NittanyLion wrote:
Where is there an example of such a plant? I’ve looked at all the auto plants I could think of on google earth or live maps and all of them seemed to only use rail for shipping out finished cars. A few of the older ones I could find where spurs used to be but they were long out of service.
General Motors in Doraville, GA is still active and served by NS, atleast until near the end of this year…they are supposed to be shutting down at the end of the year. And they receive almost exclusively box cars, 50 foot standard and 60 foot mostly hi-cube box cars. They are loaded with racks full of various auto parts from stamped steel body and frame parts, to motors, transmissions, electrical systems, auto glass, tires, etc. Until recently there was a Ford plant in Hapeville, GA that received mostly 86’ Hi-Cube box cars. It shut down a few years back. Ford did load finished autos in Tri and Bi-level racks, also. GM did years ago, but it’s been a long time, as they contracted with CSX to load them elsewhere, and they are trucked across town to them.
The box cars are loaded somewhere and shipped to Georgia. The empty cars are sent back to various locations such as Parma and Belvue Ohio, as well as Meridian, Mississippi (and probably forwarded to Mexico on the KCS) and a few other locations. So it’s obvious that plants in those areas load parts. I’m sure some cars are sent to Detroit as well
Unfortunately Google Earth images are not all up to date. For instance, the picture of my house and surrounding areas shows a pair of cars my wife and I haven’t had for over 5 years. Kind of sad, considering the money Google has - why
NittanyLion,
Try the Chrysler assembly plant on the southwest edge of Belvidere, IL. Granted, 90% of the rail traffic is finished autos, which includes pickups, SUV’s, etc., even though they aren’t assembled at this plant. It’s a transshipment location for highway transportation, so finished product is both shipped and received from this location. Late last year I watched UP switching gondolas at the NE corner of the complex; empties in, scrap out. There is also some boxcar traffic, but I didn’t see any being moved that day.
As of 1995 the general motors parts plant in Oshawa, Ont was shipping parts both by rail and truck. The shipping track was indoors, as is the receiving tracj at the car and truck assembly plants in Oshawa. I know, I retired in 2004, and two of my brothers in 2007. GM uses a lot of dedicated cars, to be returned to a given parts palnt, with empty racks or baskets.
[:-^]
Hi There Bagdad FireFighter,
Your question has been answered fairly well, however the finite answer really depends on what era you are modeling. For example, lets take the product of “flour”. It came from the milling facility in bags and lots of it still does, shipped in box cars and semi trailers depending on where it is going and if the receiver has a rail spur. BUT, starting in the 60s bulk flour users such as the large bakeries started receiving their product in hopper cars with belly dumps and then later when it became more politically correct to provide more sanitary conditions it changed again to centerflows and pressure aided hoppers that blows the product from the railcar or tanker truck into an enclosed piping system to the facilities storage sylos. There are still some shipments going out in 100 lb bags, but not anything like it used to be. Now the same scereno goes for bags of cement and again it is over that same time frame.
So if you give the guys and gals here a time frame and ask the question again you’ll find you get a more precise answer.
Johnboy out…
All of the boxcar and flatcars are off loaded on the back side of the plant. I live in St. Louis and actually worked for the BN when they had the contract with Chrysler. There is a small yard that comes out of Valley Park and goes up the hill behind the plant. The railroad does not operate it anymore, a private RR does. There is a run-through NS/CR train that leave the BNSF Lindenwood Yard and returns with loaded product and empty boxcars and frame flats for points east.
Len
I want to take the time to thank every one for your help I have read all your replys and will keep them for refence. Now I have to find some of these I can condence down and still make real looking to fit in a small 8x10 area My little girls want daddy to set up his trains again. And it is hard to say no to them.
My grandfather worked for a corrugated cardboard container manufacturer until about 1980. I believe they received large rolls of craft paper in boxcars. Starch, to glue the plys of paper, was originally shipped in bags, but later in covered hoppers. The factory’s output was mostly shipped by trucks, but IIRC, but some very large customers received their containers in boxcars.
During the 1970s and 1980s, my father worked for a manufacturer of styrofoam cups. IIRC, they sometimes shipped cartons of cups in boxcars. (The cartons I’m thinking of were meant for foodservice and institutional sales, or for large distribution centers.) At various times they may have received styrene pellets in gaylords. (Imagine a large cardboard box, about a yard cubed, with a cover on top and a pallet underneath. When they were emptied, the cardboard box folded, and the empty gaylords, carboard, cover, and pallets were stacked up and shipped back to the supplier for reuse.)
One time my Dad came home from work, and gave us each a copy of a seventh-grade social studies textbook on the history of Texas. AIUI, he found these in an empty boxcar dropped off for loading at the factory.
By the mid-1980s, the styrofoam cup plant had given up on rail service entirely. Part of it was dissatisfaction with rail service, and part was due to the expense of maintaining the siding that serviced the plant.