Industries That Share Unique Combinations of Freight Cars


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GuilfordRailman

Well-Known Member
I was observing my plethora of rolling stock, more than I need for my small layout and I began to wonder about industries that use unique combinations of freight cars. Are there any industries that use both covered hoppers and centerbeam flat cars?
 
Covered hoppers and center beams, not that I know of.
I have a large bakery that receives vegetable oil in tank cars, flour and sugar in airslide covered hoppers and packaging materials in boxcars; and ships out finished goods in boxcars. Similarly, my flour mill receives grain in covered hoppers and loads flour into airslide covered hoppers as well as palletized bags of flour in boxcars. The spent grain (hulls, stems) leaves in much larger covered hoppers to be used by feed processors. My ethanol processor (not yet built) will receive corn in covered hoppers and ship ethanol in tank cars. All of these industries can also receive occasional deliveries of equipment in boxcars or on flat cars.
Just to name a few.
 
Darn! I was hoping some magical industry existed where the two could be used together. Oh well! Since I’m building a micro layout, I’m only modeling two industries. They are a mattress factory and small bakery complex. The mattress manufacturer receives supplies via boxcars and ships out in boxcars. The small bakery receives corn syrup in tank cars, flour in hoppers and ships products out in either reefers or boxcars (not sure yet…) but that’s it. I have various freight cars such as bulkhead flats, center beams, and gondolas I was hoping to incorporate too even if I had to change the industries to make it work. Unfortunately, with micro layouts they do limit what you can do. Still love em tho:)
 
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Depends on the size of the covered hopper, but a drywall plant will take in shipments of gypsum in covered hoppers and ship drywall in boxcars or centerbeam flats. Of course the drywall needs to be wrapped in plastic if it's loaded on an open car.

Typically gypsum is handled in smaller covered hoppers but not always. A regional gypsum shipper near me uses older 4427cf and 4650cf covered hoppers patched for their reporting marks with the old lettering intact.
 
RCH said:
Depends on the size of the covered hopper, but a drywall plant will take in shipments of gypsum in covered hoppers and ship drywall in boxcars or centerbeam flats. Of course the drywall needs to be wrapped in plastic if it's loaded on an open car.

Typically gypsum is handled in smaller covered hoppers but not always. A regional gypsum shipper near me uses older 4427cf and 4650cf covered hoppers patched for their reporting marks with the old lettering intact.
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A drywall manufacturer could make for an interesting industry on the layout!
 
There is always the Transload Industry for modern layouts or a team track for older era.

Either could accept any type of car and unload it. I can see the local lumber distributor ordering a center beam car of dimensional lumber, drywall or plywood sheets. Unloading those loads is done by fork lift.

As for the Covered hoppers you would probably need a pit and a auger that would move the load into a waiting truck/trailer.
 
They use the covered hoppers for frac sand. In North Dakota, these would sometimes be parked on small sidings near the wells that they were completing, fill the trucks with the sand there and send them off to the well.

Looks like you need a lumber mill or retailer, wholesale or warehouse for the centerbeam flats.
 
logandsawman said:
They use the covered hoppers for frac sand. In North Dakota, these would sometimes be parked on small sidings near the wells that they were completing, fill the trucks with the sand there and send them off to the well.

Looks like you need a lumber mill or retailer, wholesale or warehouse for the centerbeam flats.
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Frac sand was one commodity that I had considered early on in the design phase.

I had an idea with regard to my current mattress factory industry. I could have lumber shipped in via center beams for the box springs, tempered coiled steel on gondolas for the springs, and the rest of the building material/ packaging via boxcar. Obviously the final products would ship out via truck, and/or train.
 
GuilfordRailman said:
Frac sand was one commodity that I had considered early on in the design phase.

I had an idea with regard to my current mattress factory industry. I could have lumber shipped in via center beams for the box springs, tempered coiled steel on gondolas for the springs, and the rest of the building material/ packaging via boxcar. Obviously the final products would ship out via truck, and/or train.
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It's been awhile since I spotted this industry, but there's a mattress manufacturer a few miles away from the yard near a steel beam and specialty shapes manufacturer. We would spot the steel plant daily or every two days (usually coils, sheet and plate steel loads) but the mattress manufacturer would only get a car about every two to three weeks. It was a loaded 20k gallon tank car placarded 3082, if I remember correctly, which is hazmat but doesn't really require special handling. Anyway, rather than unload the car after we spotted it, they would unload it as they used the product, so the tank car functioned as their storage. You could fit two or three tank cars on the spur at a time. And that's exactly what we would do sometimes considering how infrequently we'd spot that industry. As far as the other components of the end product and the finished mattresses themselves are concerned, trucks handled that side of the business. Only the liquid polyurethane resin that made up the foam was shipped by rail.
 
RCH said:
It's been awhile since I spotted this industry, but there's a mattress manufacturer a few miles away from the yard near a steel beam and specialty shapes manufacturer. We would spot the steel plant daily or every two days (usually coils, sheet and plate steel loads) but the mattress manufacturer would only get a car about every two to three weeks. It was a loaded 20k gallon tank car placarded 3082, if I remember correctly, which is hazmat but doesn't really require special handling. Anyway, rather than unload the car after we spotted it, they would unload it as they used the product, so the tank car functioned as their storage. You could fit two or three tank cars on the spur at a time. And that's exactly what we would do sometimes considering how infrequently we'd spot that industry. As far as the other components of the end product and the finished mattresses themselves are concerned, trucks handled that side of the business. Only the liquid polyurethane resin that made up the foam was shipped by rail.
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This is really great information! It never occurred to me that tank cars would be used in a mattress manufacturer. I might just have to include a few 20k gallon tank cars in my rolling stock collection.

Maybe I’ll sell my center beam and bulkhead flat cars and order some tank cars…
 
Here's a bird's eye view of that industry so you can see how simple it is:


A drywall plant, which would allow you to use both covered hoppers and centerbeam flats, is usually much larger in comparison. The examples I can think of off the top of my head can spot dozens of cars. And the supporting structure is large and imposing compared to the small dock at the mattress factory.
 
RCH said:
It was a loaded 20k gallon tank car placarded 3082, if I remember correctly, which is hazmat but doesn't really require special handling.
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So since the liquid polyurethane resin is hazmat but doesn’t require special handling, would it be used in general purpose 20 K gallon tank cars? Or is there a special type for that product?
 
They were pretty run-of-the-mill tank cars, just regular 111A100W1 tank cars. I think the Athearn RTC 20,900 gallon tank or even the Atlas ACF 23,500 gallon tank could work.
 
RCH said:
They were pretty run-of-the-mill tank cars, just regular 111A100W1 tank cars. I think the Athearn RTC 20,900 gallon tank or even the Atlas ACF 23,500 gallon tank could work.
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Would 17,360 gallon tank cars be prototypical as well? Or is liquid polyurethane resin usually transported in 20,900 and 23,500 gallon tank cars?
 
GuilfordRailman said:
Would 17,360 gallon tank cars be prototypical as well? Or is liquid polyurethane resin usually transported in 20,900 and 23,500 gallon tank cars?
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That really depends on your era. Liquid polyurethane resin weighs 11 lbs/gal. A 17,360 gallon car would hold about 190,000 lbs, good for pre-1980's in a 100 ton car. 20900 gallons weighs 230,000 lbs and the 23,500 gallon car would weigh 258,500 lbs. That would require 130 ton cars with 36" wheels. That is if you wanted to be strictly prototypical.
 
Thanks for doing the math, Willie!

I am just going on memory as far as the size of the tank is concerned. Modern tank cars are 110-ton capacity (143 tons gross), so the car would have to be right at 20k gallons if it was a modern tank car. Tank cars are so specialized that even the decent variety of types available in HO scale hardly scratches the surface of types and sizes in the real world. So choosing a stand-in is probably the best you can hope for.

For the late 60s until recently the Atlas ACF 17k gallon tank could be close enough. Most of those cars have hit their 40-year limit and must be scrapped, unless they qualify for the extended life program and get rebuilt, then they can last fifty years. I don't really model the 110-ton car era, so I'm not very familiar with what's available.
 
santafewillie said:
That really depends on your era. Liquid polyurethane resin weighs 11 lbs/gal. A 17,360 gallon car would hold about 190,000 lbs, good for pre-1980's in a 100 ton car. 20900 gallons weighs 230,000 lbs and the 23,500 gallon car would weigh 258,500 lbs. That would require 130 ton cars with 36" wheels. That is if you wanted to be strictly prototypical.
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Modeling the 90s. Hoping to stay (mostly) prototypical, or try to haha. So either 20 K or 23 K would work?
 
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