Clark Propst wrote

... is there any special type of tank car [molasses] would
have been shipped in? Anyone have any examples of tank cars
hauling molasses?

Ordinary ICC 103 tank cars could be used for molasses. Usually
they would have heater pipes installed to warm the molasses to
unload it. The Southern Pacific had a number of tank cars in
this service, marked with a large "S" on the dome for "sugar".
The cars were originally built for fuel oil service and most
of them were used for fuel anyway regardless of the "S".

I think Intermountain and Proto 2000 both did corn syrup paint
schemes on their Type 21 & 27 (respectively) tank cars. Syrup
is about the same viscosity as molasses.

Molasses also could be produced from wood fibers. There was an
article some years ago about the Superwood plant in Superior WI
that produced it as a byproduct. (Not for human consumption.)
See RMJ Feb 1990.

Tim O'Connor

The SP tank cars with the "S" on the dome were often seen at the C&H can
sugar refinery in Crockett, California. They might have also been used
at Holly or Spreckles refineries, but of that I have information. I used
to work across the street from the Holly beet sugar refinery at Dyer
(actually Santa Ana, IIRC), and can't remember any tank cars. It is my
understanding that the cars carried sugar syrup to various fruit canneries.
Doesn't commercial molasses usually come from sorghum, not sugar can or
beets?
Kind regards,
Garth G. Groff

Thanks Garth & Tony, I didn't know that. I think molasses is the first step
in sugar processing, whether cane or sugar beets (or wood pulp). I think
when it is evaporated its becomes "brown sugar" (not the kind you buy in
the Safeway, which is refined white sugar with molasses added back) and
then it takes further refining to clarify it and crystalize it as white sugar.
I can see why the canneries would not want to use molasses in their
canned fruit, since the molasses has color and flavor that would not go
well with peaches or pears!

Tim O'Connor

Garth Groff wrote:

The cane or beets are crushed, then cooked to drive off a highly concentrated sweet liquid. This is then centrifuged, probably more than once, depending on desired product, to remove the water and impurities. The intermediate steps are (IIRC from my tour of C&H 30 years ago) raw or turbinado sugar, brown sugar, and finally table white sugar.

Maybe you can correct me, Garth, but my understanding is that C&H (in the time period of this list) received raw liquid concentrate from first processing of cane (from both Hawaii and elsewhere) and refined it into various sugar products. These included not only the dry or "table" sugar products listed above, but liquid sugar for other food processors. It was the case in the 1950s that most refined dry sugar was shipped in cartons (containing either supermarket box containers, or the little packets Garth mentioned), with some bulk shipment in bulk in converted box cars. Early in the 1960s, the advent of "Airslide" and related covered hopper technologies took over the bulk dry shipping, but that's off the end of this list.
Several kinds of liquid sugar, different syrup densities and possibly different degrees of refinement, were shipped in bulk in tank cars. There are photos from around 1960 of those SP tank cars in long strings at the C&H plant in Crockett, and if you pass there today on the "Capitol Corridor" train to and from Sacramento from the Bay Area (how I get to CSRM: required research content), you will still see tank cars and covered hoppers being loaded, along with box cars.

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Garth Groff wrote:

Tim,

At the risk of getting a Mike Brock no-no, I will say that your
description of the sugar refining process is essentially correct. The
cane or beets are crushed, then cooked to drive off a highly
concentrated sweet liquid. This is then centrifuged, probably more
than once, depending on desired product, to remove the water and
impurities. The intermediate steps are (IIRC from my tour of C&H 30 years ago)
raw or turbinado sugar, brown sugar, and finally table white sugar.

Garth, I thik a return trip might be called for! 8-)

Taking sugar beets as the example, the process is:

- wash the beets
- slice them
- hot water extraction of sugar
- filtration (different steps using coke (pure carbon), mother of lime, and
SO2
- creation of a supersaturated solution
- first crystal extraction -- white
- repeat crystalization -- the color turning browner with each repeat
extraction
- molassas extraction

The color in sugar is nothing more than impurities they couldn't filter out.
These impurities are various compounds from the sugar bearing plant itself,
cell walls for instance. When they're finally done extracting as much sugar
as they can the residue - molassas -- is still about 50% sugar.

Both the spent beet slices and molasses are used as cattle feed -- the
former often consumed at or near the refinery and the later mixed with
things like alfalfa to make feed pellets. Coke, limestone, and sulphur for
the filtration steps were usually rail delivered in the steam era. And
somewhere in the process you can create MSG but I don't recall how.

For those who enjoy a good how-to book I can recommend _The Manufacture of
Beet Sugar_ made available by the Great Western Sugar Company ca 1921. It
was handed to each new mgmt employee as their introduction to the business.

Dave Nelson