--- On Wed, 12/30/09, Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@...> wrote:


From: Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@...>
Subject: Re: [STMFC] NEWSPRINT
To: STMFC@...
Date: Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 3:04 PM


 




Thanks Andy, on further digging I found a newsprint mill in Jay, Maine,
that closed this year after 110 years in business. Newsprint consumption
is down 30% in 2009...

Tim O'Connor

At 12/30/2009 01:57 PM Wednesday, you wrote:

"Newsprint is delivered directly to printing plants. The rolls are
way too big and heavy for transloading at team tracks."

Not so fast, Tim. For many years the "Milwaukee Journal" received newsprint in boxcars at a concrete unloading dock at the south end of the Milwaukee Road's Beer Line. This was known as the "Journal Paper Dock." The big, heavy rolls of paper were unloaded there and reloaded into trucks for the trip to the printing plant in the basement of the Journal Building, which was only a few blocks away but not on any rail line. This transloading was still a regular operation when I first moved to Milwaukee in 1979.

Either when the Beer Line shut down or some time before, the Journal Co. began using the Hansen Storage warehouse on the west side of Milwaukee, along the Chicago & North Western's old freight line. Newsprint still came by rail to Hansen's warehouse, and was trucked downtown as needed. By the way, this is the same Hansen Storage warehouse Gordy Odegard modeled for our club layout in a March 1992 "Model Railroader" article.

It's been a while since I heard anything about how the Journal Co. gets its paper, but the newspaper business being as it is, I'm sure it doesn't buy nearly as much as it once did.

Andy Sperandeo
Executive Editor
Model Railroader magazine
asperandeo@mrmag. com
262-796-8776, ext. 461
FAX 262-796-1142

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