Grain Pier and Del Monte Canning

 Over the past week I was in Minnesota and Wisconsin at Pro Rail and some associated bonus sessions.

I came upon two industries that intrigued me. On Jeff Otto’s enormous DMIR layout was a grain pier, and on Ron Copher’s huge layout was Del Monte Canning.

I already plan to have a rail to barge coal loading facility on my layout, and I have mentioned my thoughts about a grain loading facility. Jeff Otto’s grain pier would have to be slightly reconfigured to be situated on a river. Jeff currently has his grain pier jutting out into the room, a short peninsula with elevators on each side. No ships or even water is modeled. Each elevator has three tracks adjacent, with a roughly 30 car total capacity. One track is for loading the other two are for storage. Entire cuts are spotted for loading, then pulled, after a time, and replaced by a cut from the storage tracks. Inbound cars go to the storage track. MTY cars are returned to their home road for reloading.

If I were to do this on AIR2 the elevator would be directly adjacent to the aisle and cars would be spotted on the “inboard” side of the elevator. I would not plan to model ships or water either. Cars would be billed to the elevator for unloading. I would naturally have to spice it up by having particular types of grain loaded , and require that the switch crew classify all cars by commodity. For example the switcher would arrive with a cut of cars loaded with various grains. Upon arrival at the elevator the switch job would be informed that they are loading corn today. The switcher crew would then have to cull out all the car loads of corn and spot them for loading. The switcher crew crew would also have to pull all the MTY’s and start them on their way home.

The Del Monte canning operation on Ron Copher’s layout has an associated yard, and this switch job does a great deal of classification that is not associated with the canning operation. Through trains pass through setting out and picking up blocks. Extra trains can be originated as well, but you only have power to run one or two extras, so this option is quickly eliminated. Cars for the cannery represent only about 20% of the cars handled.

There are four warehouse tracks at the cannery, with a ten car capacity each. There are three storage tracks adjacent to the warehouse, for MTY’s. At the start of the session cars are pulled from warehouse track one, these are classified, and sent on their way. Ten MTY’s are pulled from the storage yard and spotted on warehouse track one. This is repeated until all four warehouse tracks have been switched. At the same time through trains arrive and depart, picking up and setting out blocks. Cars for Del Monte are culled out of these blocks and spotted on the storage tracks. The rest of the cars get classified into blocks going east or west. 

Finally there are a handful of local industries that should be switched.

The job is not complicated, but the tempo of work is high. This is complicated by a physical plant that does not really fit the needs. Track space for classifying blocks is very limited.

If I were to build a canning industry on AIR2 I would not have any associated  car classification. None of the cars at Ron’s cannery are reefers. I would probably organize it a bit differently. I’d have car loads of produce arriving in reefers.

These would be spotted on unloading tracks.

These inbound reefers would then move to clean-out tracks.

I would have inbound car loads of cans and packaging materials; Ron does too. These would go to a “Receiving Dock”.

MTY Reefers from the clean-out tracks would move to loading tracks. Because we are talking canned products there is no need to ice the reefers. Once loaded these cars would be forwarded as per their waybills.

So raw produce, cans, and packaging materials IN.

Car loads of canned products OUT

Again fairly simple.