True.
I’ve never seen more than a few Bentonite cars on any train here.
Thanks for the heads up Paul!
RWM Pretty much covered everything.
I do have a few fun facts though.
Soda Ash
There are 5 mines in the area. Solvay, usually shoves 75 cars across the interstate to the mainline every day. FMC Westvaco is the Worlds Largest Trona Mine. FMC Granger uses solution mining, and due to the high operating expenses and the recession, was mothballed a few years ago. General Chemical also has a Church and Dwight manufacturing plant on site and they supply them directly with soda ash. Church and Dwight produces Arm and Hammer products. They load their product into containers that are trucked to Green River where they are loaded onto well cars. A Riverton, Wy. based trucking company is owned in a partnership with BNSF and like RWM stated they haul soda ash over south pass and transload it at Shoshoni, Wy. about 15 miles east of Riverton.
Coal
Coal from the Black Butte coal mine near Point of Rocks only ships coal to the Jim Bridger Power Plant.
NGL (Natural Gas Liquids)
Most of the Fractionated NGL that is loaded on rail is LPG like Propane (C3) and Butane (C4). Most of the Lighter Liquid (Ethane (C2) is shipped in a pipeline, as pressurized transportation can be dangerous due to its high Vapor Pressure. Liquids heavier than Butane, are generally trucked and pipelined to refineries as the Natural Gasoline (C5) and Condensate (C6+) can easily be refined into gas and diesel. In fact, before fuel injection, many of the field operators used to take the heavier liquids off the wellhead separators and use it in their trucks as fuel. I work at one of the MANY processing plants in the state, an
FYI, Most of the benonite from Colony and Belle Fourche does indeed run east from Rapid and into Minnesota; probably 30-50 cars per day on average. The totals through Crawford are much smaller, though some goes that way as well, including big blocks for export through Vancouver, B.C. Butch, all those gray 4-bay CHs with blue DM&E lettering in the 49000 series are bentonite service. Most of the cars with reporting marks like NAHX, CEFX, GCCX, CRDX, etc., are bentonite service as well. It’s a mix of standard CHs and pressure differential cars. But it’s a very substantial portion of the business you see on DM&E’s mainline trains.
Best,
I had no idea. There’s a few Bentonite hopper cars around so I just assumed they had there own fleet, and most of them went through Chadron.
Hey Andy. How do I get my home town back under my lack of an avatar?
I’m not Andy…but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn last night…[:o)]
Butch- click on your screen name under your non-avatar. When it jumps to the next page, scroll down a ways, and look for the box on the right hand side that mentions cvhanging profile information. Change the info there.
-Norris