Lonestar

Working the Southern Pacific engineer's extraboard out of San Antonio, I had the opportunity to catch switch engine assignments that worked both the Pearl Brewery interchange and Lonestar.  Pearl had their own electrified railroad and we would deliver / pick up boxcars and covered hoppers.  Lonestar only received covered hopper cars that we would spot on a track next to their grain silos.  SW1500 switch engines were typical power for East Yard and Yoakum Bend assignments.  Bright Yellow CNW ACF built covered hopper cars seemed to be the standard fare for Lonestar.  The lead into Lonestar came off the Rockport Sub near Tower 112, that track crossed a street and passed through the fence gate.  Once on the Lonestar grounds, only the top of the rails could be seen in most places as the neatly manicured lawn grass had grown over the track.  Pulling past the switch for the silo track, the stub ended lead ended with only enough room for a switch engine and a few cars. Hopper cars were shoved to a spot.  The Old Heads spoke of getting a "refreshment" or two after working Lonestar, but by the timeframe I worked the place from the mid-1990's onward, the only thing we did was look at the pool full of large catfish.  Lonestar was a bit of a gaudy tourist mecca with the Buckhorn Saloon as the main attraction.  Although closed, the Lonestar Brewery is still pretty much intact, maybe Google Earth could help you with your ideas.       

Pictures of Lone Star Brewery

Lone Star Brewery

The three pictures of the Lone Star brewery shown in the post above were taken in San Antonio last December, while I was there for a mini vacation. There was no room for comments on that post, so writing them here. The brewery is abandoned, and being redeveloped into retail shops, it's such a large set of buildings that it was hard to get far enough away to take the pictures. Hopefully these will be helpful for the background structure you want to build, if you want the images in the original size which will fill up a wide screen computer, feel free to email me through my profile link, and I can email these three images in their full size for printing. Jim

Brewery operations

Some brewery ops stuff for you, based on my time at Coors:

The Golden brewery actually had plenty to choose from. Yes, the basics were covered hoppers and boxcars. Raw barley hoppers got spotted at the silos for the malt house and rice hoppers were delivered to the storage silos a couple miles down the road, as well as used for intraplant delivery of rice to the brewery. Boxcars delivered shipments of hops to their refrigerated storage facility, and packaged beer was shipped out in insulated boxcars. The Coors rail shipping area is somewhat famous for rail fans and modelers, as it is mostly in a covered area and uses several 2-track transfer tables that allow for retrieval of loaded cars without disturbing other cars being actively loaded. See http://www.carendt.com/micro-layout-design-gallery/straight-lines/ (about halfway down) for an example track plan of that operation.

Here's where it gets interesting. The plant also receives open hoppers of coal that get dumped inside a single car-sized shed (not rotary dumped, bottom discharge only) that feeds an augur tube which runs into the powerhouse. There is also a fleet of glass lined tank cars which are maintained on the premises. These tankers are loaded with high gravity (low water content) beer, which gets shipped to the finishing and packaging plants east of the Mississippi. There is also a ceramics production facility onsite, which loads (loaded? Not sure if still in operation) ceramic/porcelain dust waste into covered hoppers; I assume pressureaide, rather than grain-style bottom dumpers, although I never saw cars spotted there, just small piles of ceramic dust on and around the tracks at the loading area.

One more interesting brewery operation that I learned when touring the Budweiser brewery up the road in Ft. Collins: every so often, they receive a tank car of yeast from the "mothership" in St. Louis. This yeast is considered enough of a trade secret that the shipment is guarded for the duration of the journey, although the tour guide failed to say HOW it was guarded.

Hope you find some of this useful. Good luck and happy modeling!

Mike in CO

I too am planning a Brewery Layout...

...mine is set in 1967 on the PRR. In researching breweries I have found some loads delivered/received form breweries. Mine will be 2' x 8'.

IN Grain in Covered Hoppers - Bottles, Cans, Cardboard Boxes/Wooden Crates or raw wood to make crates in Boxcars - Coal/Oil for power house, Hoppers or Tankcars - Liquid Carbon Dioxide in Tankcars.

OUT Beer (naturally!) Bottled, Canned or Kegged in Boxcars and also as already mentioned in Tankcars - Used Grain in Covered Hoppers for animal feed.

Obviously some of this is era dependent but it gives some ideas.

Double post DELETED  

Double post DELETED

For your baseboard, Foamcore

For your baseboard, Foamcore would be ideal - see http://mmrrc.blogspot.co.uk/2014_04_01_archive.html - FWIW I drew the original artwork for Model Trains International magazine, (used for Prof Klyzlrs clinic) so if you want further info on how to make a clipboard layout contact me - I have also used the same system to make a "clipboard" from homasote and from MDF, and it works very well. Good luck and enjoy your tour

PS I think Kingsmill "Radical Flats" are now discontinued

Info on the real life Lone Star Brewery

If you can find a copy of the Pentrex DVD "Juice" it has a segment about the traction railroad.

More info at LDSIG and MRHA

The Layout Design SIG quarterly did an article on the Budweiser plant in SoCal a number of years ago - go to their website at http://www.ldsig.org for more details on ordering back-issues of the Journal. I believe issues LDJ-54 and LDN-20 are recent publications; there was one even earlier in the '90s or late '80s on this plant.

Also, the Milwaukee Road Historical Association has a wonderful book on the famous Beer Line (aka Chestnut St. branch) within the Milwaukee Terminal division. http://www.mrha.com will get you there - look for the Company Store.