TastyBake ISL

[eje]

Hey Mark - That's great! I like your choice of industry. I'm working on a mini based on the HEB regional grocery's moderately big bakery on Agnes Street here in Corpus Christi, Texas served by KCS. This bakery only gets flour by rail; the truck docks on the other side of the plant are busier. The covered hoppers are switched oddly using one of those forbidden switchbacks, the lead being provided by track that ceased serving other industry years ago. The unloading tracks are side-by-side, and it looks like the facility can take ten cars. It gets switched almost every day. Mine is going to have a track for corn syrup and vegetable oil tankers. This size bakery is a good fit for a small layout in my opinion. I really like the way you have arranged your plant. Have fun! Ric

[Southern Tuxedo]

Hi Ric,



Thanks for the compliments.

My first layout, years ago, had a bunch of small industries that would receive various cars. Most of them were too small to really justify any rail shipment and switching ended up being more problem solving then fun. So I started thinking what type of industry could actually receive a variety of cars, to keep things interesting, and also be fun to model and operate. That’s how I arrived at a bakery.

Even though this will be a fictional layout, I want everything to be plausible, so there will be a story behind everything that happens on the layout. For instance, after Bing mapping your bakery in Corpus Christi, Texas and seeing all the trailers, my idea…ah, err, I mean the management’s idea…of using a yard tractor to move the trailers around makes a lot of sense. It looks like there might even be one or two on the HEB property.

Thanks for mentioning the bakery to me and for everyone else who wants to see it…

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?where1=Agnes+Street+here+in+Corpus+Christi,+Texas&FORM=HPNTDF#JnE9LjEwMSUyYk1jY2FtcGJlbGwlMmJSb2FkJTI1MmMlMmJDb3JwdXMlMmJDaHJpc3RpJTI1MmMlMmJUWCU3ZXNzdC4wJTdlcGcuMSZiYj01Ni44MzYyOTMyMDE1MTI2JTdlLTI5LjQxMTUwNjY1MjUlN2UyMC40NDY0Njk5MjQwNzA3JTdlLTExOC42MjA0OTEwMjc1">http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?w ... A0OTEwMjc1</a><!-- m -->

Mark

[Russ Bellinis]

Mark, it looks like you are off to a great start. You don't need a "story" to explain a "yard hustler." A busy industry will have one of even two or three "yard goats" to shift trailers around. Trucking companies won't pay drivers to sit at a customer's yard and shift trailers around for them. Typically, the truck driver will wait in line to get his trailer to the dock to load or unload, but really busy warehouses will have dozens of trailers parked waiting to be loaded, and they will use a warehouse owned tractor to move those trailers around. You can also have trucking company tractors and trailers around. Typically, the trailers that are shuttled by the warehouse driver will be empties waiting to be loaded, with a few that are loads waiting for unloading. For a bakery, most of their product will be shipped out by truck because the product is perishable and a truck is faster than the train because the driver can take it directly point to point without having to send it to a yard, have it switched into a train and then sent to another yard to be switched into a local delivery. However most big bakery complexes will receive flour in covered hoppers to be loaded into a silo. They will receive corn syrup in tank cars to be loaded into a tank (usually a vertical tank to save space), and assorted packaging and incidentals may come in in boxcars. In other words, your bakery could receive most of it's raw materials by rail, but would ship out it's finished products by truck.

[PhilM]

Like it !
Especially as I have been thinking along the same lines for my main industry. I dont want to hijack the thread but any tips on what model tank cars would be appropriate for vegetable oil for a layout set in the last 20 years?

[FCIN]

...any tips on what model tank cars would be appropriate for vegetable oil for a layout set in the last 20 years?

The Atlas Trinity 25,500 gal tanks are perfect for vegetable oil. May not be currently available but here is a link to the model on the Atlas web page: http://www.atlasrr.com/HOFreight/ho25500tankcar1.htm. You may be able to find them on some of the Internet hobby shop web sites.

Suitable road names would be the ADM, Cargill, GATX, IPBX, and PLMX. If you can locate them, I'd go with any models that carry only reporting marks as they could serve multiple uses.

I managed to get about 7 of these for vegetable oil shipments to my food processing facility. They are beautiful models, but you'll want to replace those terrible Accumate couplers.

[Herc Driver]

Welcome!

I like the overall design of the layout...it makes sense...plus, it gives you opportunity for some really nice scenery ideas.

And being a fellow Southern Railway fan, that GP30 is the prettiest engine ever! I'm guessing that one is the LifeLike GP30 from a run a few years ago? (I've bashed two of those GP30's together in Nscale recently and would be excitedly amazed if someone is now building them in Nscale.)

[Gary S]

A belated welcome to the forum, SouTux!

You're doing a great job on planning, with the mock-ups and such. Good to see another dedicated modeler on the forum. I look forward to more progress.

[Russ Bellinis]

Like it !
Especially as I have been thinking along the same lines for my main industry. I dont want to hijack the thread but any tips on what model tank cars would be appropriate for vegetable oil for a layout set in the last 20 years?

Look for tank cars labeled for food service supplier such as ADM, Cargill Foods, etc. The same type of tank car would be used to carry vegetable oil as would carry corn syrup, both of which would be used by a large industrial bakery. Usually food service tank cars will be stenciled for specific food products such as vegetable oil, corn syrup, etc.

[Southern Tuxedo]

Hi Russ,

Thanks so much for the information on the yard tractors. You filled in a lot of blank areas for me. Originally when I started the design I thought that it was improbable that you would find these yard tractors anywhere other than intermodal yards. The more research I do on the subject the more I see other mid to large industries using them too.

You said,

For a bakery, most of their product will be shipped out by truck because the product is perishable and a truck is faster than the train because the driver can take it directly point to point without having to send it to a yard, have it switched into a train and then sent to another yard to be switched into a local delivery.

Ok, this makes sense to me, but what if the bakery also produced dry cake mixes like Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker. Would it then make sense that they might also use the rails for some shipments?

PhilM,

Thanks and welcome to the forum. In addition to the Atlas 25,500 gallon tank cars, Walthers also has/had some 23,000 gallon funnel flow cars decorated for vegetable oil service that show up regularly on eBay. You can see them here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.walthers.com/exec/search?category=&scale=&manu=walthers&item=&keywords=23%2C000+vegetable+oil&words=restrict&instock=Q&split=30&Submit=Search">http://www.walthers.com/exec/search?cat ... mit=Search</a><!-- m -->

I got a couple of these Athearn Genesis tank cars and I’m not sure whether they would be used for vegetable oil in real life, but I’ll be using them for it on the layout. The detail on these cars is incredible and I got a really good deal on them. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATHG96505">http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default ... =ATHG96505</a><!-- m -->

Hey Herc Driver,

I was hoping that you were going to stop in. We share a couple of things…first names and a love for the Southern Railway. LifeLike? Nope, it’s a brass Oriental Limited engine from the late 80’s if I remember correctly. I remember seeing them advertised in Model Railroader magazine. I scored it on eBay a few years ago. It runs ok, but I will need to do some work to the trucks to make them look and run better. It’s a project for future and I’m sure I will be asking for some help here.

Gary S,

Thanks for the compliments. I only hope that I can get close to the quality of your work. Your layout is truly amazing.

Mark

[Russ Bellinis]

Mark, I'm not sure that a company making cake mixes would also be a bakery. They would be more likely to make bread mixes, packaged flour, and/or cereal. I think that even large companies like General Foods that make both baked goods and various mixes use completely separate facilities for each product type.

On your Athearn tank cars what are they stenciled for? Typically tank cars will have a stencil on the tank showing what they are to be loaded with. If they haul petroleum products they will usually have a stencil showing the lading and "Flamable" placards, if they haul acid, they will be stenciled and have a placard that says "Corrosive." They might put different types of oil in a tank car, but they would never load oil for one trip and back haul acid for instance due to the possibility of contaminating a future load of motor oil. Tank cars hauling food products, would never haul petroleum or acid or other chemicals.

[Herc Driver]

Aarrrggghhhh! A brass GP30...ok...now you're killing me!

If I could find and afford the Nscale brass high hood that came out years ago...I'd snap it up...but they're rarer than the braces used to straighten hen's teeth nowadays. I'm still regretting not purchasing the HO high hood version when it came out, just to have one on display. Thankfully, we live close enough to the NC Transportation Museum to get pictures and a ride in the real thing every few years. That museum btw is a great place for finding current pictures of these engines. (And a great place to visit if you're making vacation plans.) There's plenty of great websites out there dedicated to the Southern Railway with many good shots and various perspectives to help correctly model an engine or car, so you should have no trouble finding a suitable prototype to help improve the look of that brass engine.

I keep hoping that one day Atlas will change their tooling just enough to produce a run of high hood GP30's. Granted, they'd have a limited amount of modelers that would buy either the N&W, Southern, or NS versions of the engine...but they've made other railroad names that are more particular and lesser-modeled, so maybe there's hope yet.

I was looking over your layout again and was thinking about the "what if's"...and thought...if I was my layout, what would I add? And it hit me...a transfer table servicing an engine or car maintenance building. A small operation with one or two tracks, limiting the overall footprint of the facility, but throwing open the possibility of adding "guest power" to the layout from the mainline tracks that could add switching problems where you need to get repaired engines out while maintaining your schedule around the industries. Not that you were asking for ideas...

[Southern Tuxedo]

Russ,

Thanks for the additional information on bakeries, this gives me even more to think about. I’m just finishing up lunch and reading the ingredients on a box of Nabisco Wheat Thins…wheat flour, soybean oil, sugar, cornstarch, salt, high fructose corn syrup, etc. This sounds near perfect to me. Would Nabisco be considered a bakery or something else? Would they ship by rail?

The Athearn GATX tank car isn’t stenciled for anything that I could see (it’s the exact one that I provided a link to, in two different road numbers) and it has blank placards, unlike other cars in the same line. That’s why I thought that it might be possible to ship vegetable oil in it.

Mark

[MountainMan]

If you pick a bakery product that is popular around the world, and many baked items are, you can ship a lot of stuff to various ports by rail, in large quantities. Modern factories turrn out as much as a million or more items a day in some cases, and the same ingredients can serve many different product lines within the same factory.

[Southern Tuxedo]

Mark,

I was looking over your layout again and was thinking about the "what if's"...and thought...if I was my layout, what would I add? And it hit me...a transfer table servicing an engine or car maintenance building. A small operation with one or two tracks, limiting the overall footprint of the facility, but throwing open the possibility of adding "guest power" to the layout from the mainline tracks that could add switching problems where you need to get repaired engines out while maintaining your schedule around the industries. Not that you were asking for ideas...

I just took a quick look at the layout and I think that you idea would clutter it too much as there really isn't that much room as it is now , but thank you for your suggestion .

[Brakie]

Mark,

I was looking over your layout again and was thinking about the "what if's"...and thought...if I was my layout, what would I add? And it hit me...a transfer table servicing an engine or car maintenance building. A small operation with one or two tracks, limiting the overall footprint of the facility, but throwing open the possibility of adding "guest power" to the layout from the mainline tracks that could add switching problems where you need to get repaired engines out while maintaining your schedule around the industries. Not that you were asking for ideas...

I just took a quick look at the layout and I think that you idea would clutter it too much as there really isn't that much room as it is now , but thank you for your suggestion .

I agree..Its time to whoa up instead of adding more clutter.

IMHO it would be best to highlite the layout with details like security fences,trailer drop lots,workers,vehicles etc.