L&N Industrial Rail Spur

[Mike Kieran]

Actually popsicles are a product line of ice cream companies rather than candy companies. The fruit found in dry cereals is dried like raisins rather than fresh, so they would not need reefers. Much of the "fruit" in cereal is simply food coloring and fruit flavoring rather than actual fruit.

Very good points Russ. Justin's message is a good example of why I made the statement that many model railroaders will stretch the bounds of believability in order to justify some types of cars at a particular facility or "make up" products that really wouldn't be coming from or going to a certain facility. Nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want to do, but I just prefer to try and find out what a particular industry would receive and in what type of car to make it believable or to duplicate what I've seen or observed at an industry that I want to have on the layout.

Incidentally, while I'm thinking about it; the type of facility that Lance Mindheim and others (including me) tend to call a food processing facility is actually a food products distributor. They don't process anything, unless you call unloading vegetable or corn oil from a tank car and putting it in containers with your own brand label, "processing". These facilities receive various bulk type shipments of food and food service items and then distribute them to restaurants, schools, etc. They might receive frozen meat and fish, sugar (in bags), corn and other meals (in bags), name brand cereals and even produce at some such facilities. Each of those products would have originated at another industry. In some cases they might repackage various commodities under their own labels and other times, they are simply a wholesale distribution center for existing brands.

On Lance's Downtown spur, he has two such facilities, Trujillo & Sons and Family & Son (which he incorrectly has labeled on his track plan as Family & Son Produce - they don't handle produce). One of the largest such companies in the US is Sysco, with facilities all over the country, many of which are rail served and they are often quite large facilities. There are other such companies scattered all over the country.

Felt like I needed to clear that up as I've noticed that many people seem to get the impression that these facilities are actually producing food products of some type and often will have such a facility receiving commodities in certain type cars that they really wouldn't and shipping out products by rail. For a good example of the products distributed by such a facility, have a look at the Family & Son web site http://www.familyandson.net/Family_english/home.html or Sysco's web site: http://www.sysco.com/

They do make interesting facilities to model because you would see reefers, box cars and 25,000gal+ tank cars spotted at many of them. One reason that I wanted to include such a facility on my layout.

Actually, a food processor would add ingredients to the food like preservatives, corn syrup, fillers, etc. Justin has a point, just an incorrect example as well as Lance Mindheim's example. While they may distribute these foods, the foods are actually processed at a central location. The averagae chicken nugget has only 50% chicken meat in it. Guess what the rest of it is. Hint - it comes in in covered hoppers and tank cars.

Just read the ingredients in say, a can of Chef Boy Ardee. If you want to horrify an Italian, open a can in front of them and pour the can out, and watch them recoil in horror. I remember a brand of cookie called Grandma's Cookies. When you looked at the ingredients, you realize that Grandma was Madame Curie. You have hundreds of chocolate chip cookies for a reason.

Americans have poor diets eating these bad for you processed foods, but it works out to a cornucopia of freight cars going in and out of these businesses.
Soup companies are a prime example. A soup company would have reefers for meat and some vegetables (for example, potatoes); tank cars for corn syrup, oils, and other food type products; covered hoppers for preservatives, flour, rice, etc.; box cars for packaging; hoppers for a coal fired steam boiler (if you so choose, and maybe even coil cars for canning (some companies produce their own cans).