Anyone have any idea as to what thisis apicture of and what cargo would be unloaded / loaded here?
I have no idea, do you know where this is? It may help someone. It looks like an interesting scratch project!
From the color of the ship I would guess it is a cement transfer facility. That is the color I have seen on the cement and limestone ships. All the ore carriers are oxide red for the most part. There are probably 150 cement plants in the Chicago vicinity and a lot of it comes by ship from Wisconsin.
I see no tracks, how is this model railroad related?
This in Chicagoon Lake Calumet. I was looking for Chicago industry for ideas. I know thier are no tracks to this location, but who says thier cant be? When I saw this, I didnt know what this was and thought the intellengent people here on the boards could help.
Just because there are no tracks in the pic, doesn’t mean there couldn’t be. It looks like a great subject to scratch build - as earlier stated!! Cement seems right to me, but I’m no expert on marine shipping. If it is cement, Walthers has silos, conveyers, etc to make an easy kitbash, and some track & cement hoppers would completye the scene!![:)]
I can’t imagine shipping cement in bulk/loose form in a marine environment which tends to be wet. How do they do it? Perhaps it is some other non-metallic mineral.
Mark
I see no tracks, how is this model…ooooooooh shush. That particular business may not have rail service, but that doesn’t mean squat. Here’s why. The light color brings 3 things to mind. One has been said already, cement. The other two are lime and calcium. How do I know this? Because I live in Green Bay WI and there are two big companies that recieve material by ship, one gets ship loads of calcium, and yup, you guessed it, the other gets ship loads of limestone. They also have rail service. There is also another limestone place that isn’t close to the river and gets hoppers of lime. I will get pics tomorrow (possibly tonight) and post.
Now I will tell him a secret. Just because an original post may not be inentinally model RR related, such as a post about late model Grand Marquis, it can be one, such as that post about Grand Marquis turning into a post about modeling one and eventually going over to any late model cars that are scaled down to fit our model RR scales.
Because it is rather small though I would guess it would be more along the lines of something being shipped out by rail. The facilities I mentioned are huge…hold on…ugh I just found out more than I wanted too, and yes I am going to share all. It will also make it a “model RR” subject.
Great Lakes Calcium Corporation is in the first panel. In the midle panel, at the top is St. Mary’s Cement Company, and at the bottom (the big white piles) of the middle panel is
According to this 1984 map by the US Army Corps of Engineers, slip 3, industry no 47 was the Cement Transit Co Terminal back in 1984.
According to the list of tenants for the port of Chicago/Calumet, this facility may now be owned by St. Mary’s Cement.
Smile,
Stein
Here on the Mississippi we have a lot of concrete plants that directly abutt the river, precisely because the sand and gravel they need is shipped in by river barges Not sure how the Portland cement arrives though.
As for this location, an alternative explanation to cement would be some sort of grain-processing facility. The lack of trackage to service the facility puzzles me greatly though. Both grain and cement are commodites that are routinely transported in bulk by rail. Why not in this case?
St. Mary’s did have a plant listed in Chicago. Also in Manitowoc and Milwaukee. Plus they had another plant listed as “other” in the Chicago area.
There is a road through the silo for loading cars. I’d say it is a local distribution center. Cement arrives by boat, is distributed to sites where they need cement in the Chicago area by truck.
Smile,
Stein
Had a look at the website you found (you forgot the http:// in front, btw, so the forum mangled the URL) - the site on Lake Calumet (at 12101 S. Doty Avenue) is listed as the Chicago Terminal of St. Mary’s Cement - ie a transload/distribution center, not a manufacturing plant.
Smile,
Stein
I was trying to leave some stuff out so the post wasn’t a mile long. [D)][oops] I didn’t know the forward slashes mattered. Oh well, it wouldn’t be the first (or second or fourth or seventh) post I did that got messed up.
Funny story, we had a kid back in high school we used to call “Steiny”. Dunno why though, I think it was just one of those things some one started. Ha, the football coach used to say he ran like he had a corn cob stuck up his…[:I] I am totally not going to finish that story. But it was a friggen huge inside joke with over half the team. Our coach grew up in the olden days and was coached as Packer under Vince Lombarde, I think that is enough said to explain about him.
Wow, I can’t believe the response! Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply to this post. Cement plant it is! Or distribution facility… As far as no railroad… if you followed the road away from the plant, you see some railroad tracks near the mail road. Their couldve been railroad tracks at some poit in this buildings history.
No doubt! [(-D] By that logic, we would have to run a siding to every store, home,office and gas station on our layouts!