When Walking in Ogden. (Prototype notes)

[magickmaker]

Had to pick up my paycheck today from Ogden Utah, and ended up getting lost and wandering around. I did see something that intrigued me, which I'm going to note here.


In ogden, there's this HUGE Farmer's Co-op grain mill. Emphasis on huge. In any case the bus stop I needed was next to this place, so as I waited for my bus I noticed something curious. There were long lines of cylinderical hoppers. Curiously though, I noticed several of these hoppers, being loaded with grain, were labled "Plastic Granules Only."

That got me thinking, both in my budding model railroad and Trainz. If anything it gives me a good excuse to use my own plastics cars for grain transport. Though I do wonder if this is a common practice among railroads.

Also, yes, before you ask, I did wander around the museum I'd turn in my railfan card if I'd missed that.

 

[JCitron]

After reading this, I don't feel so bad when I put various hoppers on my routes.

Are you sure though that there isn't a plastics plant nearby? Where I worked once, we supported some plastic companies in that region. Perhaps the cars were just there on the siding.

John

 

[magickmaker]

Nope. Well, not in this case. I was watching them loading the cars for a while and they were putting corn in the cars. I talked with a friend of mine that works for UP, and he said that this actually isn't an uncommon practice by some companies. Apparently, according to him, some smaller co-ops can't afford new hoppers, so they'll buy used ones from other places. Since the plastic pellet cars are pretty much identical to the corn types, they'll often buy these up and use them.

 

[JCitron]

That makes sense prototypically and provides a nice backstory for us incase we have to explain things to other people.

John

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

I think this kind of item swapping between industries must go on a lot. I recently made a couple of industrial silos that were being used for granular ammonium nitrate, but one of them clearly had a "Wheatland" logo on the side. Basically anything that was built to handle free-flowing granular solids (polymer beads, wheat, corn etc) would have been suitable provided the loads don't get mixed up! Same with rail hoppers, I would imagine.