An excuse for coil cars

[DeltaBravo]

Can plant allows for steel coils in and boxcars and trucks out.

[wazzou]

...And by the 70s, aluminum production was on its way out of the NW.

Not really.  Alcoa (Intalco) and Reynolds Aluminum were still going strong into the early 2000's.
One of the Reynolds plants was just East of Portland and closed in 2000, I believe.
In fact, Alcoa announced that it would be shuttering one if it's two Pacific NW smelters just last year.
They still have another operable plant in East Wenatchee, WA.

[Missaberoad]

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

Another example of a small steel distributor is Russell metals in Winnipeg.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/a7rSZYNqs1YBEKJ67

Single spur into a warehouse, they get coils and flats loaded with steel. There's usually some cars stored on a nearby storage track waiting to be spotted.

[sirenwerks]

Not really.  Alcoa (Intalco) and Reynolds Aluminum were still going strong into the early 2000's.
One of the Reynolds plants was just East of Portland and closed in 2000, I believe.
In fact, Alcoa announced that it would be shuttering one if it's two Pacific NW smelters just last year.
They still have another operable plant in East Wenatchee, WA.

But nothing in the Willamette Valley. I think Troutdale was the closest at that point.  The alumina plant in Salem was gone in the mid 60s and it wasn't a smelter, it was a clay refiner and looked like a coal mine.

[cfritschle]

Bryan,

Farwest Steel in Boise receives steel on coil cars as well as bulkhead flatcars. https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5623693,-116.198694,3a,59.7y,276.1h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s2JDx9AnFzLXnc8VJNkM10w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D2JDx9AnFzLXnc8VJNkM10w%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D294.5598%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192  It has a rather small footprint, but of course is too modern for what you are looking for.

However, Farwest Steel replaced (more or less) the old Gate City Steel plant that was east of Boise on the Barber Branch.  The Gate City Steel plant was the old "finishing shed" for the sandstone from Table Rock Quarry.  While the plant was constructed mostly from sandstone instead of brick, I remember a lot of rail traffic in and out of that plant during the 1960s and early 1970s.  The Barber Local served the plant, and my third grade class room had a good view of the branch.  My teacher never could figure out why I paid more attention to the local when it went by then I did to what ever it was she was trying to teach.   

Edit:  Here is a view of Farwest Steel with a bulkhead flatcar.  https://www.google.com/maps/@43.562354,-116.1986736,3a,43y,269.42h,89.47t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scLKfPz7J9xN0lN2zsz2sTQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[milw156]

Here is a guy who built essentially a steel transloading building that might work for you

This is a multi part video but this one shows the proto inspiration for what he is doing. will take flat cars, coil cars as well as box cars and semi trucks with the added benefit of only having to suggest what is going on inside rather than "prove it"

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Signal and street light maker: stamped parts from coils, metal poles on flats or center-beams.

Roadway sign and guardrail maker: sheets and stamps from coils, boxcars for paint and Scotchlite sheets.

[learmoia]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/43%C2%B018'51.8%22N+93%C2%B012'27.5%22W/@43.3143884,-93.2076498,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d43.3143884!4d-93.2076498

The facility is (now) basically a Transloading and Pre-fab for a larger Mfg (Sukup) 45 miles south of there.  They get 2-3 Coil cars/week on average.

If your modeling Modern, a Transload Facility is the easiest solution.

Simple pre-fab building, with an overhead crane, and they can take basically anything a truck would take (Boxcars, Lumber, Coil Steel, in some cases covered hoppers, anything in a tank)..
They are great for smaller mfgs that take enough product where they can take a railcar at a time, but are either don't have access to rail, or not enough rail to be worth building a spur.

~Ian

 

[transitionalman]

Before they were bought out by Whirlpool and moved away from Newton, IA Maytag received coil steel and shipped out finished appliances and parts in boxcars and double stacked containers

[ncbqguy]

Kenwal Steel in Lebanon, TN is a rolled steel fabricator and is a huge customer of the Nashvillle and Eastern line.  Many coil steel cars handled by RJ Corman.  Google, Maps and Satellite views for ideas!
Charlie Vlk

[u18b]

How about Containers-R-Us


Coil comes in.  Containers are built and trucked out.
Stacks of containers ready to go.

[packers#1]

There’s a metal distributor and fabricator on the Norfolk Southern industrial line here in the Gvegas area. Checked their website and their first location opened in 1975, so you could probably have something like them that just takes in cool cars.

Kloeckner Metals
https://goo.gl/maps/dujQBaSJfd6wFCoe7

[Angus Shops]

I agree that some sort of trans load facility might be best. Even a single coil car holds a LOT of steel; there probably aren’t a lot of “small to medium sized” industries that would the capacity to process multiple coil car loads. American Can had a plant on the Vancouver waterfront, but it was a big old brick building. I imagine it had coiled steel going in and scrap going out, but I think most of the product was trucked out (or barged out to the canneries up and down the coast). There’s a steel trans load facility in south Burnaby that consists of a track under a steel shed; it seems to deal mostly with plate steel, pipe, and structural steel on flats and gons,  but coiled steel could be added. It looks like it might have capacity for 5 or 6 cars.
Steel (or aluminum) roofing and siding also seems like a possibility, or a corrugated steel product manufacturer such as a farm bin maker… But any of these get beyond “small to medium” pretty quick.

[learmoia]

Has anyone ever looked into the logistics of rounding up stray covers?

Or 'correcting' mis-matched covers.. I.E. a Conrail Flat with a Chessie and DTI Cover... how do you fix that?... Fresh coat of paint?... Did it matter?

~Ian

[samusi01]

Where any shipyards still operating in Portland during your era? I have no idea how steel was shipped in to them, haven’t looked closely at the era aerials of the two major Seattle shipyards. My era is earlier than yours so traditional gons or flats work… through traffic only, the only on-layout steel recipient is the Columbia Basin Project. A Seattle-specific, probably freelance recipient would be any steel shipments up to Alaska via barge. Doubt the Willamette Valley would see much if any steel traffic into the Puget Sound area; I’d imagine most was either BN or UP.