Carbon Black Covered Hoppers

[Omaha Road Man]

I'm going to be modeling a 1950 tire plant that recieved shipments of carbon black in covered hoppers. I've found a few pictures online and it seems these shipments came in black hoppers lettered for the manufacturer. My question is was carbon black ever shipped in regular (home road) covered hoppers? How many manufacturers of carbon black were there that had their own hoppers? Were they always black?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[tomustang]

Here is a list of some http://www.railgoat.railfan.net/other_cars/carbon_black.htm

As far as everyone using black colored hoppers I don't have a clue

 

[Yard_Duty]

The major carbon black producer / importer / shipper in the US right now is Cabot. It was founded in 1882. They have a very large fleet of railcars, but I'm not sure when they started using them, or what they were doing in 1950. There was also united carbon products but I'm not sure if they're still in business now. Athearn actually made a run of UCP cars a while back. At the `Bridgestone-Firestone plant near me, there is a steady flow of carbon black. And EVERY hopper in there is black and owned by the manufacturer.
Go to bing maps . com and search for 3001 firestone parkway, wilson, NC and mill around in birds eye view. Now, again, this is now, I don't know about in the 50s. I would bet though that the railcars have to be dedicated once theyve hauled that stuff, so the railroads probably avoid using their cars for it. Just my $.02

 

[UP2CSX]

Carbon black transport was considerably different in 1950 than what you see today. There were no pressurized hoppers back then and unloading carbon black from a standard covered hopper was very difficult, since it tended to cake up and men had to go into the hopper to break up the cakes so it would bottom discharge. It was hard, dirty work, and many men either died in the confined space environment or got a form of silicosis, a lung disease from inhaling carbon dust without a respirator. There was no OSHA back then so it was simply accepted as part of the business. The advantage of the covered hopper was that it could carry more carbon black then the most common method, which was containers in open gondolas. The containers would be lifted off the gondolas by crane, run through a vibratory unit, and then dumped from the bottom of the container. The old Athearn blue box line made a fairly accurate model of a gondola with four carbon black containers. They may still be available at some hobby shops and show up frequently on e-bay.

Railshop makes an accurate version of the first carbon black hoppers that were built in the 30's and then postwar. These had a dump door that ran almost the entire length of the bottom of the car, so the whole load could be dumped at once and not get hung up in individual hopper chutes. Large users, like Firestone and Goodyear, had many of these cars, since they went through huge volumes of carbon black.

Carbon black was also used for things like paint and newsprint. These smaller users almost always used the gondola and crane system, since the cost of buying dedicated covered hoppers and the associated unloading system was just too high for the volume of product used.

As far as color, I've never seen a carbon black hopper from that era that was anything but black. Carbon black is a dusty, sticky product, and loading and unloading would have had them covered in black anyway. Carbon black hoppers in use today are painted colors other than black because the loading and unloading is now completely dustless and relatively clean.

A few railroads owned carbon black hoppers in the late 40's, mostly as demonstrators, to show carbon black users the advantages of the new hopper design compared to the crane and container system. I know the Nickle Plate owned at least 10 and set up a captive leasing company to build more for businesses that wanted the covered hoppers. The vast majority were owned by equipment trusts, though, and had private freight car markings.

If I was doing a layout set in 1950, I'd have about 75% gondolas and 25% covered hoppers. It wasn't until the mid-60's that covered hoppers started to overtake the container and crane system.

 

[Omaha Road Man]

Thanks for the info guys.

Here is a picture of what the carbon black unloading facilities at the plant I'm going to model looked like as of the early 90's (when the plant closed). The tracks are still there with metal cover plates between them covering up the unloading mechanism.

I have no idea when this unloading facility was built though According to the Sanborn maps and other research I've done a lot of plant expansion took place in the mid 40's though; the current unloading area doesn't really look big enough for the crane/gondola method.

 

[UP2CSX]

Where exactly is this plant and who owned it? It's hard to tell details from the picture, since the unloading area is kind of dark, but this was definitely built for pressurized unloading. The silos on the right would be where the carbon black was stored after being pumped by compressed air from the unloading pits. I would guess that it was built sometime in the early 60's, although improvements in carbon black handling continued through the 80's, so I'm sure there were modifications made during the life of the plant. This type of facility would not have existed in 1950, although the similar silos would be there if the plant used the earlier all door covered hoppers. The carbon black was transported to the silos by either a conveyor belt or a screw type conveyor.

 

[Omaha Road Man]

The plant is in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It was originally built in 1917 or 1919, can't remember.

Sorry for the low quality photos, I'm hoping to get a new camera for christmas, but for now my cell phone will have to do.

Here's a good view of the plant from the west side:

And a view of the plant powerhouse, built just after WWII:

 

[cripete]

Carbon Black Transportation

The HUBER Company and SID RICHARDSON compete with CABOT ,
among others, and they operate private covered hoppers in the
service that indicate same. OIl companies also sell the material
obtained from large refineries having black processing unit(s).
Since some of these have direct relation-
ships to subsidiary divisions (e.g Humble and Atlas Tires) I am
not sure if all of these operations are selling to others. Logic
would suggest that they sell to all comers, but Quien Sabe?
Additionally, expanding petroleum coke making by refiners, has
eliminated (or sometimes idled ?) carbon black operations.

Carbon Black,has played a role all out of proportion to its
dollar value in impacting political and sociioeconomic conditions
in the world's industrial societies.
Aneurin Bevan, who rose to lead the British Labo(u)r Party to
prominence in the era surrounding WW 2, came to prominence
by leading London longshoremen in demands for "A TANNER
A DAY", in wages.
Carbon Black that was then shipped interbnationally
in multi walled cloth sacks, were the cause of the initial
strike which wound up involving free dockworkers in most of
the civilized world in demands for better working conditions and
reasonable wages.
The pernicious nature of carbon black, that camed through
the interstices of the weave in the cloth sacks notwithstanding
efforts to contain it, made men filthy with very difficult to
remove material. It also caused massive respiratory problems
in the process, Carbon black, which was hated wherever it
had to be handled, triggered the massive workers' revolts
which changed the wage structure and working conditions
on the world's docks, In the east coast of the UNited States
we had a gangsterized ILA, which made for other problems,
but it woke up interest in fixing that problem here as well.

Regardless, there have been carbon black model hopper
car kits. Even after RED BALL's car went out of production,
because the then owner of the marque was afraid of
OSHA going after him for making white metal kit components,
they continued to sell heavy stamped laminated
paper sides and ends printed for several different car
company operators. Peerless, Carbone, Cabot (and maybe
others that were Rubber companys) exist. The MODEL
RAILROAD WAREHOUSE, in Roanoke Indiana (and online
as well) was connected with this, so you can check them
for availability. The GREAT DECALS website had several
makers of decals fior covered hoppers,

Before the coming of modern containment methods the
makers owned box cars for shipping bagged carbon
black, and I believe oil companies shipped it as a liquid
suspension in tank cars. The private owner cars
came about because of the difficulty in cleaning cars
which had carried it. Carbon black was a
persistent greasy material that was, as has already been
noted in prior posts, difficult to deal with.
Cabot, by the way is the same Cabot of the stain and
paint company sold in the Northeast today, and also in some
other parts of the country.

The Cabot's in question are athe same
ones that gave us Henry Cabot Lodge,his brother the actor
John Lodge, and most notably their father - the Harvard
histotry professor and US Senate Majority Leader who despised
Woodrow Wilson because of the latter's racism and bigotry
against "non Anglo-Saxon" people. While grounded in
decency , this animosity to WW also had side effects on
the country, that weren't.
Good-Luck, PJB

 

[Omaha Road Man]

Here is a picture of the plant as it appeared in 1944. It is hard to tell but it appears there are no silos in 1944 where they are today (this would be just below the bottum line of text, "the CNW to switch the factory".

As I said though the plant went through a lot of changes between the end of WWII and 1950; you can see the new powerplant under construction on the left of the plant.

I'm also not stuck on 1950 exactly; I'm looking at anywhere from 1950 to 1954. If I really want to be a stickler about it I guess I'll have to find some pictures from the early 50's (not sure how easy that will be) or talk to someone who knows about the plant history. I'd really like to use the specialized covered hoppers to deliver carbon black to the plant, add a bit of variety in car types, but if its not prototypical its not prototypical.

 

[UP2CSX]

I would guess that the plant was still using the crane and container system in 1944. They were probably using boxcars with bagged carbon black as well. Too bad the picture doesn't show any railcars at the plant to give us a clue. During the war, it was virtually impossible to get materials to make the major changes need to service covered hoppers. Since the first carbon black covered hopper didn't appear until 1934, very few plants started adopting them before the war. After the war, both the railroads and private car makers made a big push for carbon black users to switch to the covered hopper system, since both bagged carbon black and containerized carbon black was expensive and dirty to handle. I would imagine a large company like US Rubber would have made the switch as soon as materials were available after the war, since there was a huge pent-up demand for new tires. The carbon black hoppers could deliver the larger amounts of carbon black needed to rapidly increase tire production.

 

[bobismoi]

Carbon Black transport info

I'm going to be modeling a 1950 tire plant that recieved shipments of carbon black in covered hoppers. I've found a few pictures online and it seems these shipments came in black hoppers lettered for the manufacturer. My question is was carbon black ever shipped in regular (home road) covered hoppers? How many manufacturers of carbon black were there that had their own hoppers? Were they always black?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Please write to me at indebag@mindspring.com and I'll send you all you need for the transport of carbon Black. That was my career. No kidding!
Bob Drasner
Carbon Black Transport Guru