Coors Brewery


Motley

Active Member
I decided to dedicate a nice area for the Coors plant.

Here is my updated trackplan for my new layout. The lower right section.

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Took my new camera and went over to Coors last week for some photos.

I created a panoramic photo, and I will have it printed on some vinyl photo paper. The backdrop will be 24" H x 90" W.

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The Coors family mansion is right in the middle of the plant! Crazy, but cool. I'm having one of my friends scratchbuild the mansion for me (because I don't have the skills for that). Its gonna be 16" x 10".

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Coors has their own switchers. They own two of them, they are SW1500s. Athearn has the Coors SW1000s, so I will get two of them and add DCC/Sound to them.

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The Coors railyard....

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I remember when we had to smuggle 6% Coors into Nebraska - only 3.2% was allowed to be shipped into Nebraska and Iowa! Shows my age.

That's a really neat complex, but too modern for me. Keep us posted as the complex progresses. I love looking a layout photos of any era.
 
Michael , have you found any "close enough " structures you will be able to use or is this going to make you an official scratch builder? It will make a nice project.
 
Kevin - Liked your smuggling tale and it reminds me of one as well. I had a buddy who was going to visit in-laws at Christmas in New York back in the 70's. They didn't sell Coors up there then and so he loaded his pick-up truck full, intending to sell it at a profit. Aside from it freezing on the way, he also noted that one reason no one drove a pick-up in NYC was that folks were removing cases of beer from his truck every time that he stopped at a red light in Manhattan! He couldn't get out and give chase as they disappeared into the crowd very quickly. After a few stops, his wife reluctantly climbed into the back of the truck and sat on top of the remaining cases until they got to Westchester.
Willie
 
That is quite a facility there. Back in the 70's before I moved back to Montana, we were in Montana for vacation and ended up getting a great tour of the brewery. One of my old Navy buddies dad was vice president for marketing. Now had shut down I-70 and we had time to kill so we made a call and really enjoyed the tour. We went places where the normal tours didn't.

The building are quite the story. If you look at the third and fourth photo, you can see the concrete walls. These walls are actually concrete panels that can be removed to move large machinery in an out of the building.

I also did a bit of smuggling like Kevin. At the time, Coors was only available in Colorado and when we were finally able to get moving, we had 32 cases in th ecar. My highway patrol buddies back in Florida were some happy people.
 
Interesting track plan and great photos. Keep us posted on your progress.

Greg from near the Milwaukee area, beer town capital.

Thanks.

Greg
 
Another aside - The Coors plant in Golden it the largest brewing facility in the world. Their railroad roster has 11 locomotives in it, more than many short lines. Coors has always been an innovator of product packaging and were first to use the two piece aluminum beverage can. They invented the push tab top. They might have made more money from the soda companies for that invention then they did for beer. The aluminum business was spun off about a decade (?) ago.

Another smuggling story. My father worked at Beech Aircraft. In the 1960s and 70s the planes built in Wichita KS. and Boulder CO. to send to the distribution centers back east, Washington, Oregon, or Montana were often loaded up with Coors.
 
Coors shipped their beer cold in RBLs (insulated boxcars) but don't see any spurs for loading them. Used to see 4-6 RBLs at the Coors distributors Irvine CA. The cars were mostly in western RR RBLs.
If you're doing the modern diesel era a turntable isn't needed. Use that space for more diesel servicing facilities. Besides your plan has a wye for turning locos.
Why not have the layout ends one over the other. There could be shorting problems if you're not using DCC w/ this plan.
BTW was "weaned" on Coors 1964 in CA!
 
A lot of the buildings east of the original brewery weren't there when I visited in the mid 70's and the family hadn't been living in the mansion for some time. The Coors family moved out in 1921 to California to start the Coors Porcelian CO. The building was sold to a local banker during the great depression.
 
Michael , have you found any "close enough " structures you will be able to use or is this going to make you an official scratch builder? It will make a nice project.

For the Coors family mansion, I can't scratchbuid. So a friend of mine is going to build it for me. Right now we're working out the details.

The other buildings, silos, etc. I have the Walthers Ethanol kits that I will use for this facilty.
 
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Thanks everyone on their info and insights, very entertaining stories!

I'll keep y'all posted on the progress. I still need to finish building the benchwork. But the Coors facility will be the first structures completed after all the tracks have been laid.
 
It would be interesting to see photo's of the Coors brewery in the 1970s and 1980s, my period of interest. I do have around 15 RBL beer box cars by Eel River and ExactRail which were frequently seen at the head end of hot shots across the system.
 



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