Commodity storage in covered hoppers

[Gary S]

Was wondering if anyone had thoughts on the following:

With Houston being the petroleum capitol of the nation, plastic pellets are a major commodity that is produced around here. I'm seeing that the manufacturers are producing product 24/7 and then loading the pellets in covered hoppers and sending them to storage yards. Then when a customer makes a request, the hoppers are taken from the storage yard and sent on their way. Instead of storing thousands of tons of pellets in silos, they are stored in the covered hoppers in a huge yard east of Houston.

I think this would be a great operation to model (of course at a drastically reduced scale)... and since I ended up with an extra yard from the old layout which was incorporated into the new layout, I think I found the perfect use for it. But instead of plastic pellets, I think I'll go with GERN granulated flux. So GERN produces the flux, loads it in empties, sends the empties to the storage yard, then the hoppers ship from there to fill customer needs.

Any thoughts on making this an operational success? Good points, bad points? Operating schemes?

Here is a GoogleEarth image of the huge yard I mentioned. Thousands of covered hoppers there!
   

[e-paw]

A similar system of storage was used for anthracite coal In north east PA. I don't know of any current locations where in is still in use, but up to the late 50's/early 60" it was common. Usually the storage yard had the mains running through the middle. The tracks on the Eastbound side held the loaded hoppers from the breakers and the west bound side held the empties returning from market. In the summer months when the demand for coal for lessened both sides could have loaded cars stacked up, ready for shipment. I just started to model this system on my layout for the same reason that you sited, it does add a interesting element of operation to the table..

[Gary S]

Glad to hear someone else has considered this and given it some thought. Considering the era when coal was still used for heating needs, it seems the perfect solution to meeting the winter demands. Instead of the mines trying to keep up with the need, they have plenty already loaded in hoppers.

Although it is a general rule of thumb that no industry on a layout should ship to another industry on the layout, I just see this as adding some nice variety.

Questions though... it is doubtful that GERN (or a coal producer) would be using some railroad's rollingstock for these purposes. I mean, they wouldn't want to be paying the per diem rates for those cars to be sitting in a storage yard for months. So, the cars would either be owned or leased by the company... sound right? So... looks like I will be needing a bunch of GERN LOs.... but absolutely nothing wrong with that!! Hey DocWayne, I hope you have lots of leftover road numbers.

I guess I would need storage tracks for the loaded covered hoppers, but also for the returning empties.

On that note, I was also thinking of using the yard as storage for empty home road boxcars too. I may have to add a few more tracks!

[Mr Fixit]

As I understand it, from my reading of Trains and Model Railroader and other sources, the reason behind these SIT yards [Storage In Transit] is to store plastic pellet production to cover orders of the different types of pellets between production runs.
The production plant obviously wants to make as long a production run as possible before having to stop production, clean through the plant and machinery and then set up, test and produce the next run of a different type of pellet.
Take for example food grade plastics, there are at least 6 or more types that can be recycled, and they are identified by the number within the recycle triangle. PETE bottles for soft drinks are numbered with a 1 and so on. Then there are food grade plastics which are un-numbered or numbered beyond the 6 recycling types.
Apart from food grade plastics, there are numerous other types and grades used by manufacturers of cars, furniture, office equipment, model trains, toys and just about anything else you care to mention.
I am unsure about just where various colours are added to the plastic, it maybe produced in base colours with various tints added later at the final production point or it maybe produced in the colours of the colour wheel with blending and tinting done at final production.
So at this point we know that there are a dozen or more types of plastic, you can begin to see how a logistics problem is developing here with the need to produce enough of one particular type of plastic to cope with orders until the production plant can get round to a re-run of that type of plastic. I think this may well cover the feeling.

Once empty and cleaned the covered hopper can be reused for any other type of plastic pellet as they track the type loaded by the car number.
The cars are privately owned or leased by the plastic plant.
Mark

[Puddlejumper]

That was a very good explanation. This was also done with coal, as there were multiple grades of coal that would be stored in a yard. The grade was tracked by the car number. Depending on what the customer ordered, cars of a specific grade, or combination of grades, would be pulled in order to satisfy the customer's demand.

I wonder, does GERN have different grades of granulated flux? Perhaps food-grade and industrial-grade?

[MasonJar]

I wonder, does GERN have different grades of granulated flux? Perhaps food-grade and industrial-grade?

Absolutely! There's even medicinal-grade from the GERN Health Care Division.

Andrew

[tomustang]

That's a lot of centerflows, and to think I probably unloaded a couple of them

[P5se Camelback]

... With Houston being the petroleum capitol of the nation, plastic pellets are a major commodity that is produced around here. I'm seeing that the manufacturers are producing product 24/7 and then loading the pellets in covered hoppers and sending them to storage yards. Then when a customer makes a request, the hoppers are taken from the storage yard and sent on their way. Instead of storing thousands of tons of pellets in silos, they are stored in the covered hoppers in a huge yard east of Houston. ...

O.K. ... I just had a big chuckle ...

At the risk of stirring up a big pot of Bunker Two ... and being on the receiving end of complaints .... again ...

Gary, you reminded me of something that I think of every time I hear/read some story on one of the dozen or so news outlets that I monitor each day about cancelling drilling permits, or putting areas of suspected oil deposits off limits for drilling. The cry goes out for alternatives to oil, coal or nuclear -- i.e., wind, solar and electric (currently generated by coal ... no pun intended) is promoted by the environmental alarmists.

But the thing I'm not so sure any of those same environmental alarmists are considering in their rush to ban the use of oil ...

... is their pending nudity, due to scarcity of used clothing, increased dental problems due to a lack of tooth brushes, or the fact that their new electric cars will only go 17.5 mph as they will weigh four tons, being made almost entirely of steel, imported from off shore, driving the price of the vehicle up to the point where only Bill Gates and Waren Buffet will be able to afford one ...

... and I have to chuckle ...

... because your big S.I.T. yard will have become a storage facility for empties ... or they could turn the hoppers into "mobile homes" for the unemployed homeless people who used to work in the plants that produced the plastics from foreign oil.