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Re: Car Types for a Brown & Haley Candy Factory

Tim O'Connor
 

Gary

Cocoa beans did not need refrigeration or insulation. Hershey had insulated
cars for its PRODUCTS, which did need insulation. Deliveries to the candy factory
should include packaging (specialty cardboard papers), inks (for decorating candy
boxes), sugars (cane sugar or syrup, or corn syrup), fats (butter, oils), possibly
milk (for milk chocolate) and the other ingredients (chocolate, flavorings). A large
candy producer certainly could generate carloads, but LCL sounds right for a small
factory.

Tim O'

The Milwaukee Road served the Brown & Haley candy factory in Tacoma, WA, a substantial building of maybe 5 stories and there is a partial picture of it on page 43 of A Northwest Rail Pictorial II using pictures from Warren W. Wing.

Boxcars would have delivered bagged sugar and most other ingredients, though maybe a refrigerator car for creams. The packaging materials would likely also be delivered by boxcars. Assuming that this or other similar candy factories shipped out to small stores on line crates of candies, they likely would have gone REA, unless a large a distributor needed LCL service. Flavorings could have moved via refrigerator cars returning for further loads. Would cocoa beans be delivered in refrigerator cars acting as insulated boxcars returning to their home road?

Would such factories have their own power plant or would they have used the local grid? It could be a function of the age of machinery in the plant: steam v. electric?

Gary Laakso thinking of candies while working on tax forms
South of Mike Brock
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