03-28-2011, 01:19 PM
I can think of a couple more industries to consider. How about a bakery? I'm not talking about the local mom & pop baker in a strip mall, but a major bread and pastry manufacturer like Nabisco, here in So Cal we have Wonder Bread, Orowheat. In addition all of the major Grocery Chains in the U.S. such as Safeway, Kroger, A&P Markets, etc have bakeries to make the store brands in every major market that they serve. The finished products are delivered by truck, but they all have sidings with grain elevators, where they store flower and sugar brought in by covered hopper, corn syrup storage tanks where they unload corn syrup tank cars. They may also receive loads of paper packaging material and bags of other materials like baking soda & baking powder from boxcars.
There is also a chemical company just West of Hobart Yard that makes catalyst. I don't know what it is used for, but I used to see Santa Fe spotting a dozen or more covered hoppers there on a weekly basis as I drove by. I suspect some of the covered hoppers contained raw materials used in the manufacturing process, and some were used to ship out the finished product. I went over to repair a refrigerated trailer that they borrowed from one of our customers to keep food products cold for the company cafeteria, and the place was covered with white powder which I presume was either raw material or spilled catalyst.
There is also a chemical company just West of Hobart Yard that makes catalyst. I don't know what it is used for, but I used to see Santa Fe spotting a dozen or more covered hoppers there on a weekly basis as I drove by. I suspect some of the covered hoppers contained raw materials used in the manufacturing process, and some were used to ship out the finished product. I went over to repair a refrigerated trailer that they borrowed from one of our customers to keep food products cold for the company cafeteria, and the place was covered with white powder which I presume was either raw material or spilled catalyst.