HOW CORN SYRUP FLOWS

This time we'll look at a beverage company that receives tank cars of corn syrup. 

The track layout is very simple.

Here we are looking north.  The middle track is the main.  To the left (west) is the appropriately named "west siding".  This double-ended siding serves as a storage track for loaded cars and can hold about 26 tanks.  The track on the right (east) is where tanks are actually spotted for unloading.  This track is also a double ended siding (switches at both ends).

The east siding has three spots where tank cars are actually unloaded.  There is room to store six more cars between the unloading spots and the north switch.  

 

Tank cars move in a continuous, conveyor-like fashion from the interchange, to the west siding, then across to the east siding for unloading, then back to the interchange. 

The cars show up at the interchange in spurts.  One week will see four or five cars arrive; the next week twenty will come in.  It all depends on the ebb and flow of the plant's ordering process.  Tanks are taken up the line based on tonnage, i.e. how many cars the locomotives can pull up the grades, factoring in such things as snow, leaves, wet rail etc.  

Like water flowing to the sea, all tanks eventually make their way from the interchange to the west siding at the plant.  Crews try to keep cars on the west siding lined up in date order...with older cars at the north end and newer cars to the south..but this is not always possible.  
 
The track here is on a grade. On a good day, the locomotives can pull a dozen or so tanks out the north end of the west siding.  Remember this track holds just under thirty cars, so digging out the oldest cars can make for some interesting switching.  For instance, sometimes the oldest cars will be on the south end of the siding, buried behind a dozen newer cars.  The simple move would be to pull everything out of the siding, set out the old cars on the main, then place the newer cars back into the siding.  The problem is, the locomotives can't pull all those cars out of the siding.  So instead, the block of old cars is shoved out the south end switch onto the main, the locomotives will then pull the remaining cars back into the siding, cut off, go out the north end of the siding, then back down the main to couple on to the cut.  See what I mean about interesting moves? 

Two geeps dig in to pull a heavy cut of corn syrup tanks off the west siding track.

It's not unheard of for the local to shove tanks ahead of the locomotive from the previous town, so that day's newer cars can be placed on the siding from the south switch.  This avoids having to pull too many cars uphill out of the north end when getting them in order.   All of this would make for interesting scenarios on a model railroad, keeping crews busy and on their toes. 

When a crew arrives at the plant, they check a mailbox located near the east siding.  In the box will be paperwork telling the conductor which cars are empty.  It could be one, two or all three cars.  After pulling chocks and making sure all steam hoses are disconnected, a conductor will couple all the cars together. 

Cars on spot are separated by about five feet, sometimes less, depending on how the car's manway lines up with the walkway platform.  Once coupled, the cars  are shoved down to the south end of the siding.  The empties are set out here for pickup later in the day when the crew comes back south through town.  Once the empties are set-off, the crew pulls north again to respot/spot the loaded cars.  

Views of the gangways at the unloading spots.

The plant always unloads the three spotted cars from south to north.  So say two cars are empty and the northern-most car is not yet fully unloaded.  The crew shoves everything down to the south end of the siding, drops the two empties, then pulls back north with the partial load and it becomes the new southern-most car.  Two new cars are then spotted for unloading above it. 

Remember that the east track can hold nine cars total: three on spot and six more stored above them.  After several days, all nine of those cars will be unloaded and the crew brings another block over from the west siding.  And so it goes.

The crew comes off the north end of the east siding (unloading track).  They have just shoved today's empties down to the south end and then pulled back north spotting the new loads.  Once all the cars on the east track are empty, nine more will be brought over from the west siding.   

The steam unloading facility is quite simple and would be easy to model.

 

Cars are spotted on a pretty good grade, so a smart conductor will spot the car so the manways align with the plant gangways; close the angle cock on the car ahead; then walk back and put the car into emergency by opening the angle cock on the rear of the car he just spotted.  After reclosing the angle cock, he'll place the chocks; tie up the handbrake; then cut away and spot the next car.
 

 












When switching is completed, plant personnel replace their blue flags and reattach the steam lines.

INLAND CONTAINER

I always enjoyed switching Inland Container in Biglerville, Pennsylvania.  I  decided early on to make such a facility the main industry on my industrial switching layout.  Thus my entire railroad is based upon this design element.  

Inland manufactures raw paper into various types of cardboard packaging material.  The manufacturing process is quite interesting.  Read more about Corrugated Cardboard Manufacturing and have a look at the video below.




Paper rolls arrive at Inland via a steady stream of boxcars.  Corn starch, an ingredient in the adhesive used in the manufacturing process, arrives in covered hoppers.  Finally, Inland reloads several empty boxcars per week with scrap paper to be recycled by the paper mills.

There's always a virtual kaleidoscope of boxcars at Inland.  Switching the plant is complex, despite the simple track arrangement.

Here is an AERIAL VIEW of the plant.

Track consists of a mainline, two storage sidings and two spurs serving the plant.  The storage tracks hold loaded cars off-spot until needed by the plant.  (Often one siding is used to store Inland cars and the other used to store corn syrup tank cars for another industry).

Here is a simplified schematic of the plant:

Looking south down the mainline.  Two storage tracks are at left.  The Upper Dock spur curves off the main and continues upgrade into the warehouse. 

A closer view of the upper dock (warehouse).  Note the boxcar spotted outside the door for scrap paper loading.

Looking northwest at the lower dock.

 

Up to four cars may be spotted at the lower dock and four more at the upper dock (inside the warehouse).  The plant typically unloads four to eight boxcars of paper per day. Often, one or more boxcars are only partially unloaded and need to be respotted.

The plant unloads one or two hoppers of starch each week.  Due to the location of the starch silo, the hoppers must be placed as the next-to-last car on the upper dock spur. These starch cars usually take two days to unload.

Finally, the plant reloads previously emptied boxcars with scrap paper.  These reloads are spotted on the upper dock spur, outside of the warehouse.  Inland will specify which empty car(s) are to be respotted for scrap loading.

Here are a couple video clips from our locomotive:

Inland is usually switched daily, and sometimes twice per day.  The plant often requests cars from the day's inbound interchange as well as off the storage tracks.  Crews will drill cars into spot-order using the storage tracks and main.  Once the spots are in order, crews will pull empties from the plant.  Lastly, the crew will spot the inbounds.  Switching can get complicated respotting partial loads back into the plant, respotting empties for scrap paper loading and digging specific cars off the storage tracks (classifying them for either the upper or lower dock).  

On some days Inland requests only cars from the inbound interchange.  Other days, all requested cars come off the storage tracks.  Most days it is a mix of both.  I suspect that Inland is really unloading the cars in date order based on when they were initially loaded and released from the paper mills.  With different mills across the country supplying Inland, boxcars show up on the interchange in very random order.  I believe that the seemingly random car spotting requests is Inland sorting the inbound loads by mill and date shipped.

My 1/48 scale Packaging Corporation of America plant captures most of the operational elements of Inland Container.  I'm having a ball operating the layout!  No two days are ever the same, just as on the 1:1.  You'll notice my layout has only one storage track to hold cars off-spot, instead of the two tracks on the prototype.  However, as mentioned previously, the second track at Biglerville is often used to store cars for other industries along the railroad.

For more information, see my OPERATIONS and VIRTUAL SWITCHING pages.

SCENIC INSPIRATION

My New Castle Industrial Railroad is set in a generic location.  However, using ideas from prototype locations helps me immensely when planning layout scenery.  Although I pull mini-scenes and details from many different geographical locations, there is no substitute for using an actual area to achieve the overall layout atmosphere that I'm after.

My scenic inspiration is a Norfolk Southern industrial branch located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The "North Side" industrial lead is located just east of NS' Dillerville Yard.  The branch diverges from Amtrak's electrified Harrisburg - Philadelphia mainline at Cork Interlocking, crosses Manheim Pike, then meanders northwest to serve several industries...including Packaging Corporation of America and RR Donnelly.

Google Maps View:


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Bing Map



The photo below (taken in 2006) looks west from the SR 72 bridge.  The North Side is the track at far right, curving behind the Lancaster Malleable Castings plant toward Manheim Pike.   The huge facility at left is the Armstrong Flooring plant.  That's NS local H23 and its actually backing east out of Dillerville yard.  The train will reverse through Cork Interlocking, then cross over to the westbound main.  The local will travel a short distance west, then shift the Alumax plant before making a run up the Lititz Secondary.   Sadly, all the industrial buildings in this photo are gone today!

This Google Street View below looks south from Manheim Pike.  You can see that Lancaster Malleable Castings is gone and the North Side runs through the remaining debris field.  Catenary in the background is Amtrak's Keystone main.
     

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Of course on my New Castle Industrial, the Ann Street overpass takes the place of Manheim Pike.

Across the street, McMinn Asphalt batch plant makes an interesting scene.  I am modeling McMinn's equipment storage yard on the layout. 

 
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The North Side continues across Dillerville Road and on to RR Donnelly, at Steel Way.  On my NCIR, the end of operable track at Commerce Street will mimic this view:


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My NCIR is an independent operator that purchased industrial trackage cast-off by a Class I railroad.  Interestingly, this scenario almost played out on the North Side before the Conrail. split.  Apparently the sale fell victim to associated moratorium on line sales prior to the takeover by NS/CSXT. 

So, the prototype North Side serves my scenic purposes pretty well.  The area will offer plenty of  ideas to copy from!

THE REAL DEAL

A SMS Rail crew prepares to drill inbound cars at the Pureland Industrial Park in Swedesboro, NJ.  Photo by Carl Perelman courtesy of railpictures.net.

Below is a video I shot in 2009, showing an SMS Rail crew switching within the Pureland Industrial Park in Swedesboro NJ.  

Trackage at this end of the industrial park is very simple, nearly identical to the New Castle Industrial Park plan.  There is a mainline/interchange track, a siding used to store cars, and a warehouse spur (in this case the Home Depot Lumber Distribution Center).

A Conrail Shared Assets local shoved inbound cars onto the interchange track from the east.  The video opens with the SMS crew rolling up to the interchange from the west to classify and spot the cars.  The video follows the crew as they drill the cars via switchlist using the mainline and siding. 

As you watch the video, you'll notice a few interesting things:

• Watching a savvy crew shift railcars can be fascinating.  Note how the conductor and brakeman work efficiently as a team.  One is making cuts and hitches, the other tends the main switch.  Later, the brakeman rides a few carlengths, then drops off  so that he is in a position to make a cut after the conductor makes the hitch.  Using similar practice, even small layouts like the NCIR can provide three people (engineer/conductor/brakeman) with an hour or more of fun. 

• Notice how the crew begins by making the "big pull", then effectively builds two trains by dealing cars into the siding and  interchange track.  This method is much quicker than "cherry picking" individual cars, yet the shifting still takes some time.  And sorting the interchange was only half the day's work.  The crew still needed to pull the Home Depot spur, sort out empties vs. cars to be respotted, then shove the new loads and respots back into the warehouse.

So without further adieu:

SMS Baldwin 9069 from Jack Hill on Vimeo.

My goal is for the O Scale NCIR to give operators and viewers the same perspective as seen in the video.  The track is near eye level, resulting in a view like that of a conductor on the ground.  My main track and siding are on a convex curve, so I have to "walk the train" to find car numbers and make cuts.  The size of 1/48 scale locomotives and rolling stock nicely captures the mass and inertia of the real thing...i.e. sometimes I really do need to put slack on the pin to uncouple!

Until next time...

STRETCHING A SIMPLE SPUR

I appreciate all your comments and feedback regarding the blog. It seems that a lot of folks are interested in prototype operations that take place on simple track arrangements. That being said, let's look at a transload facility that offers a lot of switching potential on a small amount of track. The company is FMC. The commodity, soda ash (Sodium Carbonate to be proper).

PPG operates a glass plant, located along Norfolk Southern and served by an NS crew. NS delivers and spots all sand and limestone necessary for glass production. PPG needed more capacity for receiving and storing soda ash, the third ingredient in glassmaking. Rather than rebuild their existing rail infrastructure, PPG and FMC Chemical worked out a unique alternative. Hoppers of soda ash, loaded in Wyoming, are delivered to our railroad. We deliver the hoppers to a spur near the north end of the railroad, just a few miles short of the NS interchange. Here, the soda ash is transferred into highway trailers and trucked the final miles over to PPG. All of the soda ash comes to us via CSX, so perhaps PPG/FMC are saving additional money through the non-NS routing.

The rail infrastructure needed to pull-off this endeavor is quite simple:  

Aerial Photo

FMC leases a spur track, which holds 4 three-bay hoppers, as well as the former railroad depot that serves as a job office. Surrounding the spur and depot is a gravel lot. Soda ash is loaded into trucks with a self-propelled conveyor unit. This unit moves from car to car, placing its low-profile horizontal belt under the individual hopper bays. Semi trucks make round trips from the spur to PPG’s plant, where the soda ash is stored in silos. PPG goes through a lot of soda ash, so anywhere from 1 to 4 cars are spotted per day here.

FMC spur and leased railroad depot

Just north of the transload spur, the railroad constructed another spur that holds 5 hoppers. Loaded hoppers are stored here, waiting their turn to be unloaded down at FMC. There is also a runaround track here, since we often turn at this station if there is no work to be done farther north.

Left to right: storage track, run-around siding and mainline.  The FMC spur is in the far background.

Track-level view looking south

Looking railroad north toward the run-around and storage track

Transloading equipment

OPERATIONS

Spotting hoppers at the FMC spur entails a lot more than just pulling four empties out and shoving four loads in.  For example:

The soda ash hoppers are spotted in date order and come in several series: 1000; 40,000 and 50,000 numbers.  Due to nuances in car height (1000’s bays are lower than 40,000’s and 50,000’s), FMC requests that the second car from the switch (the #2 car) be a 40 or 50.  The elevation of the spur rises slightly here and FMC has difficulty getting their unloading conveyor beneath a 1000 series car at this spot.

So say that FMC has two empties today…the first and second car from the switch.  You have two hoppers in your train (a 40,000; followed a 1000).  If you simply pull the empties and shove in the two loads, you will have placed the 1000 car in the #2 spot, where FMC can't unload it.  Instead, you need to make some extra moves to swap the order of the two cars in your train.

Also, FMC usually begins unloading the car nearest the switch and works their way back.  Sometimes the car at the end of the spur gets neglected and will not get unloaded fast.  When that last car has been sitting loaded for a while, you might shuffle it so that it becomes the first car nearest the switch (thus getting unloaded the next day).  Little details make shifting a siding interesting! 

On some days, the storage track is full and you will have no hopper cars in your train.  Thus you dig loads out of the storage track for spotting at the unloading spur (minding the location of the 1000's remember:-) )  Other days, one or two cars in your train will get spotted on the unloading spur and all others will go to the storage track.  Some days loads come from your train and from storage.  As conductor, it’s up to you to figure out the most efficient way to get cars where they need to be.  The cool thing is that by modeling an industry like this, you can make life as simple or as complicated as you’d like, depending on how much time you have for an operating session. 

We'll end with a real-life example:

FMC has the first two cars on the spur unloaded.  The third car (still loaded) hasn't been there that long. However, the 4th car at the end of the spur was spotted a week ago. It is also a 1000 series car.   There are three loaded hoppers in our train and two more are on the storage track.  The cars on the storage track are older date-wise than the ones in our train.  So, we need to (1) pull the two hoppers from storage and spot them on the FMC spur; (2) move the #4 car to the #1 spot so that it will get unloaded next;  (3) place the three loads in our train on the storage track; and (4) take the two empty hoppers back south to the CSXT interchange.    

Here's how I went about shifting that day.  The sequence itself is interesting enough but the real point is just how many moves it takes to simply pull 2 empties and spot 2 loads:

1. Drop the three loads in our train on the main, leaving room for 1 more hopper before the fouling point.
2. Go in and grab all four hoppers off the spur (2 empties and 2 loads).
3. Set the #4 car (the 1000 car) back against the three cars sitting on the main. (This is why we left headroom when we cut away from our train in step 1)
4. Cut away with the 2 empties and 1 load.
5. Spot the load (the original #3 car) as the new #4 car, leave the two empties coupled to it for now. 
6. Pull ahead with just the locomotive to clear the switch. Tie onto the cars on the main. You now have the engine, the 1000 car and the three loads you brought with you (in that order). 
7. Pull everything ahead to clear the switch. 
8. Back into the spur and grab the 2 empties. 
9. Pull out, leaving the switch lined for the spur behind us. Keep pulling north until the last car clears the south run around switch.  Throw the south switch for the siding, since we are right beside it. 
10. Tie handbrakes on the 2 empties, cut them away from the rest of the train.  Note, making a cut here saves from walking back to do it a bit later;-) 
11. Now cut away from the 3 loads that were originally in our train, keeping only the 1000 car we picked up on the FMC spur. 
12. Go into the storage track and grab the 2 loaded hoppers there.  
13. Pull them out to the main, then shove ahead to couple to the 3 loads we dropped on the main.
14. Place the 3 loads on the storage track.
15. Now shove south with the 1000 car and 2 loads we picked up on the from the storage track.
16. Shove down and spot these three cars on the FMC spur.  (Note that, because we left the FMC spur switch lined and also lined the south siding switch in step 9, our engineer does not need to stop the heavy train for us to line them now.  Anytime we can save our engineer a little grief the better).
17. After spotting the cars at FMC, pull ahead so the locomotive is between the switches for the spur and south run around. Throw both back for the main. 
18. Now we'll couple to the 2 empties that we're taking back south, perform an air test, then depart. 

For our wheel report, we remembered to record all car numbers; the time we spotted all cars; and the track numbers that they all went to right?

WILBUR CHOCOLATE

This is the Wilbur Chocolate factory in Lititz, Pennsylvania.  Wilbur receives inbound hoppers of sugar from NS.   I really like the way the terrain slopes uphill, both to the rear and left-to-right.  The building itself just begs to be located at the corner of a shelf layout.  

I notice more subtle details each time I visit and photograph the factory.  Check out the truck dock between the main and the spur.  There is just enough lawn and landscaping to give the hint of late fall.  Also, the variety among the buildings themselves is terrific.   

 

AERIAL PHOTO

GOOGLE MAP IMAGE

MICRO SHORTLINES

Here are a couple real-life examples of neat industrial rail operations:

The first example is located in picturesque Manheim, Pennsylvania. Manheim is in the heart of Amish country in Lancaster County. Here, the Manheim Industrial Railroad operates a mile of former NS track.  The Manheim Industrial is a division of East Penn Railroad, LLC. When NS couldn't give Ferrellgas the service they required, East Penn stepped in to handle switching of inbound lpg. A classic minimalist shortline.

Here is an Aerial Photo

Ferrell is located on the former Cornwall RR. The former interchange with the RDG was just south in Manheim proper (where the wye is located). Today, a Norfolk Southern local shoves cars of lpg past the wye, dropping them north of E. Steigel Street. East Penn uses a trackmobile to drill loads and empties in and out of Ferrell. Up to 9 or 10 cars may be dropped by NS. Ferrell can unload three cars at a time, so switching gets complicated quickly!



Ferrell Gas siding, looking south down the main. NS Interchange is past the crossing ahead.




NS local shoving lpg loads onto the interchange.




Backing in loads to be dropped north of the wye. There were some neat trackside industrial buildings in Manheim, but they were all razed in 2006.




Picking up empties. View is looking north from E. Steigel Street.

Now let's travel from PA to MI to look at another small classic: the Lapeer Industrial Railroad. Owned by the Adrian & Blissfield, the Lapeer Industrial operates 1.34 miles of former GTW rails to serve a grain elevator and a manufacturer of adhesives. Here is an AIR PHOTO of the line, which branches off the GTW main near the Lapeer Amtrak station. Note how all switches are trailing point, so there is no need for a runaround. Click HERE for an interesting article about the railroad.