This is a link to a photo of Southern Pacific boxcar 2417 in its last days in MOW service. The photo was taken in Schellville, CA, October

Hi Al, Hmmmm--I can't give you specifics back to 1880, but by 1910 or so, the value of processing iron ore to improve the smelting quality was widely recognized. In the early days there was more of

Rick, At what time frame are we talking about?   What happened very ore sizes in the 1880-WW1? Al Kresse

Ron & Larry - I surely would like to see a photo of one of those NYC 1946 conversion (5-container) gondolas floors! The floors were steel instead of wood. Steel plate or steel mesh?? The only

Clark, send me your mailing address off list, and I'll send you a little package of ore. The ore is a medium brown color, not reddish at all. Black sand? That sounds more like blast furnace slag, or

Rick wrote: I have a pail of fine ore from the site of a very small washing plant a few miles east of Stewartville, near my brother's home. Can you take a picture of that stuff. We've been trying to

Clark, Iron ore is usually screened at the mine or beneficiation plant. Coarse and fine ore was shipped separately. Coarse ore could go straight into a blast furnace. Fine ore was usually sintered at

I remember thinking I was going to need to buy some of those neat Canadian flat sided hoppers, made by ECW at that time, to bring potash to my layout's feritlizer plant. I was talking about it to a

Rick, Iron ore wasn't necessarily used in all applications. The mix had a nasty habit of stripping the coating out of kilns. So cement with iron ore added was made just before the kilns were scheduled

Clark, I haven't found the reference yet, but I will post it here when I do. Some of my saved links on that topic are dead. There has been some discussion of the SE MN deposits on the Orerail group in

David, I supplied IM with a lot of the information on these cars, and as far as I can tell they followed the prototype photos quite closely. I don't have all the flat cars, but the ones I've seen

Just for clarification. They put the dry mix (batch) in the truck first, then add the water ! Clark Propst

That is usually called a concrete batch plant.  Where they mix the cement and fly ash with sand and gravel, sometimes other things and water to make concrete which is then sent to the construction

Jim Murrie1 wrote: This rule of thumb only works, of course, if there is a big difference in the two values. For cement, and for other building materials like brick and block, the difference

Jeff; Many moons ago when I was getting my MBA degree the rule of thumb was that you wanted to "long haul" the raw materials (low value goods) and "short haul" the finished product (i.e. high value

Rick asked. "Did you think I made that up?" No, but you had to have heard it somewhere. I model Mason City and know someone modeling the CGW in SE MN. If there's any documentation of loads into the

More like 2 or 3 months ago. And as I'm trying to buy stuff he is already very badly missed. He ran one of the best mail order businesses I've ever done business with. -- Jon Miller For me

Not in hand, but if I recall I read it in a CGW forum, posted by somebody with paper documentation. I can probably dig it up if you really need to see it. Did you think I made that up? Regarding my

I've been greatly enjoying this discussion on bulk materials and their shipment by rail in the purview of the STMFC list. Gravel, sand, and crushed rock was used in great quantitites in the Toronto,

Nate, "Cement Plants" make cement. "Readi-Mix" (however you choose to spell it) or so called "Batch plants" mix, sell concrete. One's a big place with big machinery and the other isn't : ) Around