An excuse for coil cars

[sirenwerks]

I am looking for a medium to small size industry in the Pacific NW that would accept coil cars in the early 70s.  I was thinking about something like a small boat manufacturer (like Lund or Angler) or an industrial cabinet maker (like relay equipment cabinets).  Any prototype ideas out there (not necessarily in the PNW, but transferable)?  Extra points if the industry accepts or delivers with other forms of freight cars. Like coatings inbound in tank car, or formed boat hulls outbound in box cars...

[eja]

Oh ...  a  most intersting question.   I look forward to seeing the responses.

[Missaberoad]

Perhaps a small pipe plant producing drill casing for the oil patch?
Inbound steel coils. Outbound pipe and scrap...

Here's one that we service...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tB1SKiX2kY556Ade8

[James Costello]

A cannery?

Steel and produce / foodstuffs in - reefers or RBLs out with tinned fruits / sardines / pet food / etc etc out.

[Philip H]

Take Google images and walk around in Ballard, Seattle.  Still somewhat rail served and lots of industries that might have taken coil steel . . .

[nickelplate759]

What about trucks (e.g. Kenworth) or railcars (Gunderson)?

[DeltaBravo]

How about a "can" manufacturing business? Was recently in one here on the east coast and they bought their steel in coils. They have a job shop score and sheet it for them. But you could expect that a large manufacturer of steel cans would have rail service.

alendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/r?tab=rc

https://silgancontainers.com/products/cans/

[Curtis Kyger]

How about a metal siding manufacturer.  They would run the coils through sets of rollers to make either corrugated steel siding or the board and batten design. Then they would either galvanize or epoxy coat the siding in various colors; cut to length and stack and band. Unfortunately most outbound would probably be by trucks.

[djconway]

Thinking of any stamped metal manufacturer.  Master locks, circular saw blades, hand tools ... ?

[Curtis Kyger]

Make a fairly generic company called American Cabinet. They could have produced home and industrial epoxy painted cabinets.

[Missaberoad]

An electrical transformer manufacturer.
Inbound steel and electrical components, outbound transformers on depressed center flats.

I remember one in Winnipeg growing up, they even got the odd inbound transformer to refurbish...


https://maps.app.goo.gl/441QdhXfNuWQ3xQN9

[Rivet Miscounter]

I would say just a standard steel distributor.    They take loads of coils and roll them out into plate steel or other various products.  Then sent out via trucks to customers or retail steel yards.   Probably a few would send out flats of plate steel to local/regional industries.  (I expect this would be rare as time wore on, but it could happen)

I am probably misremembering but my dad used to own a steel yard and we would occasionally travel to Dallas to pick up steel from a distributor and I seem to remember they always had a few coil cars spotted in the same (very) large metal building that we would pull through for loading.  I think there was a large collection of machines at one end where the coils were processed. (EDIT: There would often be a gondola for scrap, too)

Something like this is similar to what I recall.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/steel/@32.6914907,-97.361601,526m/data=!3m1!1e3

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Something like this is similar to what I recall.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/steel/@32.6914907,-97.361601,526m/data=!3m1!1e3

I am so triggered right now.

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[sirenwerks]

What about trucks (e.g. Kenworth) or railcars (Gunderson)?

I was thinking about an equipment manufacturer like Skagit or Madill.  They manufactured logging equipment such as yarders.  Those may be larger facilities than I was hoping for though, because those ops were open floor shops.  I was hoping for something that would fit more in a two-story-ish warehouse.


The can manufacturer may work, I'll have to look for modern versions.  The American Can Cos I am familiar from Baltimore and the East Coast were large brick/concrete factories and, like I said above, I am hoping for something less invasive, something that would have been built in the 50s, 60s or even closer to my 1974-76 era.  A two story B&M structure with prefab metal add-on might work, if something that scaled down is realistic.

[sirenwerks]

Perhaps a small pipe plant producing drill casing for the oil patch?
Inbound steel coils. Outbound pipe and scrap...

Here's one that we service...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tB1SKiX2kY556Ade8

Great idea, but I am trying to keep away from the sprawling open dirt storage yard sort of industry, I am not going to have that sort of acreage to do it justice.  I am aiming for something that would be contained within a structure(s) and have tall weeds growing around it, and could even be repped as 3D flats of varying depth against the backdrop.  There were industries like Oregon Steel in the Willamette Valley, which was an electric furnace, but I am not looking to be THAT grand.  And by the 70s, aluminum production was on its way out of the NW.