Soft Drink Plant

[sailormatlac]

Hi,

I'm actually trying to figure out what my food processing industry on the layout will be. I remembered that Coca-Cola had a bottling plant in Limoilou which was rail served during the 50s, 60s and 70s.

I was curious what kind of traffic these plants had. I suspect they received the beverage syrup and prepared the mix on site.

Just curious about what was typical in these days.

Thank you.

Matt

[MountainMan]

Access to a huge water supply. Sugar, probably corn syrup or sweetener, boxcar loads of empty bottles and boxcars taking out full cases on pallets.

The plant might have looked like this:


Can't finds any photos of rail service at the plants but it would be similar to what happens at breweries.

[lajry]

Here's the address to Coca Cola in Downey CA; 8729 Cleta St CA 90241
Google that & it'll take you to an aerial of their plant. It has two spurs w/ 6 syrup tank cars on each one. Think it gets switched twice a week. There's alot of truck traffic in/out of there so no other RR service there.

[e-paw]

That building looks like an ocean liner.

[sailormatlac]

Thanks for the fast answer!

The plant in Quebec City was converted in a milk bottling plant, but remains almost inchanged except not rail-served anymore. I see a few similitude in layout to St. Clare exemple, thought about 1/10 the size. I suspect everything was trucked for shipping. No problem with me, trailers make nice backdrop items.

I guess I found myself a new tenant for my industrial spot!

Matt

[FCIN]

Matt;

Here's a Google aerial view of the "model railroad size" soft drink bottling plant, that I'm modeling on my switching layout: https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.051781,-8...8&t=k&z=19 and the same location on Bing maps: http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=qb7t577...orm=LMLTCC.

This is G&J Bottling in Lexington, KY (Pepsi rather than my favorite Coke). You'll note that only two corn syrup tanks can be unloaded at one time, although they can squeeze 4 of them into the short spur. R J Corman switches this plant at least every other day. What I like about it, beside its size, is that it can be used as a foreground industry since the spur sits away from the main structure. I'm modeling the unloading area and access platform and will just have a structure about 2 inches deep at the layout edge. Since you can have as many as 4 C/S tanks on the spur, that adds to the switching by having to place/pull/re-spot the tank cars.

You can find numerous examples around the country of Coke, Pepsi, Snapple and other soft drink bottling plants which come in all shapes and sizes. The only rail traffic they seem to get is the corn syrup in tank cars, with everything else (packaging, plastic bottles and aluminum cans, and the finished product) handled by truck.

[sailormatlac]

FCIN, interesting info there.

I understand nowadays only corn syrup is brought to these plants (and it's been probably like this for decades). We also know there was a shift from real sugar to other sweetener in soft drink industry since a few decades. I'm just trying to see if there was more commodities coming by rail in the 70s. Unfortunately, my prototype was modified. They installed a multiple-bay truck loading area where the rail were. Impossible to figure out if boxcar loading bays existed back then.

Thanks again.

Matt

[MountainMan]

That building looks like an ocean liner.

Art Deco - very popular back then. Remember that cans were not used until after the 60's, so you need a lot of bottles shipped in for filling.

[Brakie]

FCIN, interesting info there.

I understand nowadays only corn syrup is brought to these plants (and it's been probably like this for decades). We also know there was a shift from real sugar to other sweetener in soft drink industry since a few decades. I'm just trying to see if there was more commodities coming by rail in the 70s. Unfortunately, my prototype was modified. They installed a multiple-bay truck loading area where the rail were. Impossible to figure out if boxcar loading bays existed back then.

Thanks again.

Matt

Boxcars could bring in 100# bags of sugar,bottle caps and maybe new bottles but,new bottles would be a long shot due the transit time..

[sailormatlac]

Thanks Larry. I wa curious about the sugar. I wondered if it would have been brought with specialized car such as airslide hopper.

Matt

[Brakie]

Thanks Larry. I wa curious about the sugar. I wondered if it would have been brought with specialized car such as airslide hopper.

Matt

Absolutely..That would cut the labor cost of having to unload those bags of sugar by hand if the bags wasn't palletized and a lot of boxcar loads back in the 60/70s wasn't on pallets..

[sailormatlac]

Larry, you made my day! I've got two of these cars and never used them on the layout.

Matt