Bourbon Whiskey Distillery

[FCIN]

As a former employee of the Frankfort and Cincinnati and L&N Railroads, I spent a lot of time switching cars at some of the distilleries in the Frankfort, Kentucky area. They varied in size from the single spur 21 Brands Distillery on the L&N to the massive Schenley (Ancient Age) distillery on the F&C. Most of these operations would make a layout in themselves and the traffic variety is great too.

I've attached a schematic diagram of one of the smaller distilleries that was located along the F&C Railroad - Buffalo Springs at Stamping Ground, KY. This one is what I'd call model railroad size, but would include all of the "typical" traffic that existed at all of them.

In the late 1960's and through the 1980's here is the type of traffic you'd have at the distilleries:

Inbound:
1- Coal in twin or triple hoppers for the power plant
2- Grain in covered hoppers (and every now and then in 40 foot box cars)- 80-85% corn / 10-15% rye / 5% malt - depending on the formula each company used
3- Empty box cars and/or covered hopers for loading with spent dried mash (feed). Bagged in box cars, bulk in covered hoppers. Sometimes, the covered hoppers that delivered the grain were re-used to load the dried mash, but not often.
4- New Oak barrels in 50 foot box cars
5- Empty 50 foot XL box cars for loading the finished product in cases.

Outbound:
1- Box cars or covered hoppers loaded with the spent grain mash (feed)
2- Box cars loaded with empty used barrels. Bourbon whiskey barrels can only be used once so these were shipped out to Canada or Puerto Rico where they could be reused. Some even were shipped to people who cut them up for use as furniture!
3- Sometimes you'd have box cars loaded with the bourbon in barrels for shipment to other distilleries owned by the parent company
4- Box cars loaded with cased bourbon whiskey
5- Empty coal and grain hoppers

On the attached diagram - this would be a typical days traffic in and out of this small distillery:
1 car of coal - 1 car of grain - 1 or 2 cars for loading cased bourbon - 1 car of new barrels which could be reloaded with used barrels and finally 1 car for loading the dried mash.

Hope this inspires someone to model a distillery. If you need more information - just let me know.

Ed

[MountainMan]

You need at least one bar somewhere on that layout to represent the consumer end of things!

[nachoman]

You need at least one bar somewhere on that layout to represent the consumer end of things!

Just make sure you aren't in a dry county!

[tetters]

I was thinking the boys would just throw a barrel on the edge of a dock and fill up tin cups right there on the spot.

[Sumpter250]

Just make sure you aren't in a dry county!

Oh! That has to be the saddest commentary on the human experience.......a "dry county"

[MountainMan]

Yep. There's always folks that don't appreciate the finer things in life. 8-)

[Brakie]

Ed,Thanks for the information.

My thoughts on a building in N Scale would be to use Walther's Superior paper for the main buildings and for the warehouse and scratchbuild the warehouse using DPM or Walthers modular structure parts...

I lived in a dry county once but,the county seat was wet and if one wanted a cold one he/she would have to drive to the county seat or cross the river into Ohio.

I had a bootlegger as a neighbor(5 houses down).No,this wasn't a redneck neighborhood...His family would go to Ohio and buy beer,whiskey and wine and sell it out of his house...Every time the cops would show up with a search warrant he would be listening to gospel music and the cops couldn't find his stash...Finally the cops showed up by surprise and caught him red handed.He was arrested,fined and went back into business as nothing happen 2 weeks later...He was busted 2 or 3 times more with the same results..Then one night he was gunned down by a drunk over $2-3.00 in change...It came out in the trial that the bootlegger had raise his prices and the guy had the correct change...They never did find out how he got his information on the police raids.

[Sumpter250]

"Every time the cops would show up with a search warrant he would be listening to gospel music and the cops couldn't find his stash..."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but.........There are enough stupid laws on the books of this land, that a child has broken at least six of them, at the moment of his/her conception!!

"and nine rings were given to the race of men, who, above all things,
desire power" - prologue to The Fellowship of The Ring

[nachoman]

I had a bootlegger as a neighbor(5 houses down).No,this wasn't a redneck neighborhood...His family would go to Ohio and buy beer,whiskey and wine and sell it out of his house...Every time the cops would show up with a search warrant he would be listening to gospel music and the cops couldn't find his stash...Finally the cops showed up by surprise and caught him red handed.He was arrested,fined and went back into business as nothing happen 2 weeks later...He was busted 2 or 3 times more with the same results..Then one night he was gunned down by a drunk over $2-3.00 in change...It came out in the trial that the bootlegger had raise his prices and the guy had the correct change...They never did find out how he got his information on the police raids.

Getting slightly off topic here - but my grandparents lived in a dry county, and my grandfather hypothesized that the bootleggers stayed in business by paying off the politicians, who in turn did their part by keeping the county dry. I know many distilleries are in dry counties - they can make it there, but they have to ship it across county line to consume it. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Jack Daniels is that way.

[BR60103]

I think there were a few places where the distilleries required the railways to continue using steam or electric railways to service their plants as they feared diesels would affect the taste.
I always felt that the distillers took something (grain) with a neutral smell/taste and split it into one part with a wonderful aroma -- which was then sold as cattle feed -- and the other half -- which they sold to people.

[sgtcarl1]

Jack Daniels is indeed in a dry county! Met a fellow in the army whose father was a taster for the distillery. Couldnt swallow the stuff, because that would be considered drinking it, and besides, he'd get too drunk to be able to do his job. Or so I was told!!

[Londoner]

Ed thanks for this, which has got me looking for more information, particularly how the buildings looked. So far found this which has some pictures

http://www.abandonedrails.com/article.asp?id=315

The fallen flags website has pictures of one of the GE 70-tonners and an Alco S-2, both available in HO so this has plenty of potential for a small switching layout.

The equivalent line over here in the UK was the Great North of Scotland Railway which served a whole series of malt whiskey distilleries - and their stations also bore a paasing resemblance to U.S depots - but I digress, I now model U.S so lets concentrate on Buffalo Springs.

Ed, one question - the pictures on the abandoned rails site show buildings made of limestone - do you remember what the grain elevator was like?

Best wishes

Ken

[Londoner]

Ed, you have told us about the types of cars you switched at the distilleries. Please tell us about the roads they served, this will be useful for modeling.

1, Were the coal hoppers L&N?
2. Were the grain hoppers from Mid-West roads?
3. Were the box cars L&N or did they vary according to what they carried?
4. Were short PS-2 covered hoppers used to collect the mash to be used for feed?

Looking forward to hearing from you

Best
Ken

[FCIN]

Ken;

Will try and answer all your questions as best I can.

Yes, the main distillery building at the Buffalo Springs Distillery, was built of stone. I've been trying in vain myself to locate some good photos of this distillery, when it was still in operation, or in 1969 when the distillery was in the process of shutting down. But haven't found much so far. I've attached a very poor photo that I cleaned up as much as I could, that shows FCIN GE 70 ton No. 101 (in the Pinsly paint scheme) getting ready to pass the distillery in route to Frankfort. This photo would have been taken around 1962.

As for the grain elevator, the photo on the left on the page you reference <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.abandonedrails.com/article.asp?id=315">http://www.abandonedrails.com/article.asp?id=315</a><!-- m -->
shows the small elevator and you can see that the 4 small silos were constructed of some sort of brown colored block, as was the head house. There was a steel grain leg on the track side of the elevator where the grain was loaded into the silos.

As for the freight cars:

All coal received for any of the distilleries on the F&C or the L&N was in L&N twin or tripple hoppers.
Pretty much all of the corn received came off the L&N in Louisville, KY, would have been loaded in 40 foot box cars at first, then later covered hoppers. And the PS2CD could certainly be used, although L&N 200,000 series Big Blue covered hoppers became the norm when I worked for the FCIN the first time in 1969. I remember also receiving a lot of corn in PS2CD covered hoppers that were lettered for Indiana Farm Bureau Co-Op, but can't remember the reporting marks for those. Cars of malt or rye, did come in in mid-west road covered hoppers and sometimes 40 foot box cars. We'd see a lot of SOO Line "Color Mark" covered hoppers, CNW, BN, and even RI covered hoppers showed up now and then.

Box cars that were used for shipping out case or barrel whiskey were actually of a pretty wide variety. Several railroads had 50 XL type box cars in pool service here in Frankfort. The L&N had a fleet of new 400,000 series Dual Air-Pac 50 foot box cars. Other railroads that had pool cars assigned for whiskey loading included: MP, TP, UP, SLSF, C&O and B&O. All of these cars were 50 foot cars equipped with one type or other of load restraining devices (DF, DF2, Car-Pac, Spartan Easy Loader, etc.) and all had cushioned under frames or end of car cushioning. Some had standard sliding doors (8-10 foot width) - some had plug doors.

Depending on the era, the dried mash (feed) was shipped out in box cars and then later covered hoppers. Some of the box car shipments were actually bagged (although I doubt this occurred at the Buffalo Springs Distillery). In 1969 it was about a 50/50 mix between box cars and covered hoppers; then through the 70's and 80's, most of the feed was shipped out in covered hoppers. National Distillers had a fleet of leased ACFX center flow covered hoppers that were used for this purpose (SHPX reporting marks). These would have been the early model center flow type cars, not sure who if anyone makes models of the correct type car. But to answer your question, yes the PS2CD would be perfect for this.

As a side note: In almost no case were covered hoppers that had contained corn, rye or malt be reused to load out the dried mash. Foreign road cars especially. There were a few instances when L&N covered hoppers were reloaded, but we had to get permission from the L&N to reload these.

The last move that was ever made out of the Buffalo Springs Distillery, was a shipment of 20 box cars of whiskey in barrels. All these cars were brand new Southern 50 foot XM box cars (think "Southern Gives A Green Light To Innovations"). These cars where shipped out 2 at a time. We'd pick up 2 empties at Georgetown from the Southern and spot them on the way back to Frankfort. The following morning on the way to Georgetown, we'd pick up the 2 loads by shoving them out of the siding with a push pole so we wouldn't have to shove them to the Stamping Ground siding. We'd then couple to the cars and take them to Georgetown and repeat the process, until all 20 loads were sent out.

Hope this helps

Ed

[FCIN]

Look's like the photo didn't make it - so I'll try again!