Modeling a Paper MIll - Part 3 Rail Services

The Spruce Creek facility receives most of its bulk raw materials via rail.  I have purposely chosen not to include truck operations in my modeling, as I lacked the space to include a large enough loading area for trucks and opted to set my warehouse building at the end of the module, so that I might have more storage track space. 

Rail traffic for the four mills consists primarily of boxcars, chemical slurry tank cars, and chemical tank cars.  When I began to design my mill, one of the first items I noted that the prototype had was a number of storage tracks that were present, either within or outside the mill itself.  The second item was that, with the exception of the Temiscaming mill, each mill had its own or several switcher engines.

Switching Power

One the most interesting aspects of the mill I find is the power used to move the various boxcars and tankcars and the number of movements needed to keep the operations running smoothly.  I chose to replicate my mills power based on the various types of equipment that have been used at my four prototype mills.  The following is a rough list of engines that have been known to operate at the different mills in the area and is simply used to illustrate the variety of power over the years.  

The next decision was how the mill would be switched. Paper mills receive a large number of cars on a daily basis when in operation, which can tie up the local switching crew for the better part of a day or more.   For a start-up operation, this would have strained the resources of the crew, so the decision was reached early on that KLR crews would go to the mill, drop any empties and pick-up the cars ready for transport from the yard, while a two-person yard crew would work at least one shift to move cars within the mill.

I decided to go with similar engines and power requirements as were typically seen at my four example mills.

	Engine #	Type	Notes
Iroquois Falls	1203	S4	Ret. from ONR 1973; sold to Abitibi Pulp & Paper
	1310	RS3	Sold from ONR in 1985 to Abitibi Pulp & Paper
Smooth Rock Falls	104	S4	Mattagami Rail; formerly Quebec Iron & Titanium
Kapuskasing	108	RS23
	109	RS23	Former Devco #201
	168	GP7	Mattagami Rail, ex ACR 168
Temiscaming			No known dedicated engines; services provided by CP and RaiLink via the branch line (Temiscaming Sub.) from Mattawa to Temiscaming, Quebec (approximately 41 miles).

Currently, the Spruce Creek mill is serviced by an S4 (former Boston & Maine ) and a Mattagami GP7 unit.  With the introduction of the SW1200RS by Rapido in 2017, a unit in CN's black and orange paint scheme may become the newest switcher.  Ideally, when funds allow and a model is available, power will be replaced by an Alco RS23.

Inside the Mill

Let me first start off by saying that I firm believer that modeling an industry should be realistic to the prototype but also fun to operate.  After all, who wants to operate on a layout or switch an industry if they’re not having fun.  So I subscribe to the thought following what the prototype has done is the simplest and most realistic way of achieving your goal. This may include modeling only some of the basic buildings one might find in a paper mill, as well as following the general track arrangements, or modeling each and every building if it is needed to support a variety of rolling stock which is received. 

The idea of keeping the track plan simple and close to the prototype became very apparent during a review of my first mill track plan.  My first design was based where I had cited various buildings and where they fit best, rather than based on any logical flow from a manufacturing standpoint.  That was a mistake, as the initial design created the situation where I would need to build a crossing within the facility just so that I could access both my chemical delivery track, as well as the warehouse tracks using different movements.  So it was back to the drawing board and a little more review of the aerial photos I had from several of the northern Ontario mills before planning the track work.    What really jumped out at me was that each of the mills had sufficient yards within or immediately outside of the mill, such that empties and filled cars were shuttled to and from the yard from the active loading or unloading areas.  When switching was completed, the plant switcher was generally returned to its engine house or bay.

Location	# Yard Tracks	Notes
Iroquois Falls	6+	Exterior to Plant; between Cambridge Ave and Ambridge Drive; use of a Wye
Smooth Rock Falls		Unknown within mill; Access via rail along 4th Street
Kapuskasing	5+	Yard tracks adjacent to ONR main; parallel to ONT-11
Temiscaming	6	Yard tracks well south of the mill; Small wye towards south end and near river

Car Loads

Let’s take a look at what the Spruce Creek plant produces, what the various raw materials that are needed, and how often rail cars enter the plant.  Similar to the Temiscaming mill, I modeled operations to include three main mills that manufacture different forest products, including specialty cellulose, high-yield-pulp and coated bleached board (containerboard) as well as a chemical products facility.   The chemical products division produces a variety of products made from spent sulphite liquor (primarily alcohol, resin or lignin based).  

It goes without saying that modeling four operating plants takes up a large amount of space, which typically is not available with a model railroad regardless of which scale you're modeling.  However, I have used photos from the Kapuskasing and Temiscaming mills as backdrop, which is how I incorporate each of the mills.    

The Spruce Creek Pulp and Paper Mill is located on two 2’ by 6’ modules in the center of the room.  Starting from the left side, my buildings include a power plant, the pulp mill, alcohol plant, acid building, kaolin building, specialty cellulose mill, board mill and the warehouse.

High Yield Pulp - the pulp mill is a manufacturing facility that converts wood chips or other plant fibre source into a thick fibre board which can be shipped to a paper mill for further processing. Pulp can be manufactured using mechanical, semi-chemical or fully chemical methods (kraft and sulfite processes). The finished product may be either bleached or non-bleached, depending on the customer requirements.  In our mill, kraft pulp is produced using softwood pulp, while the "B" mill can produce either softwood or hardwood pulp.  Similar to the Boardmill, final products are shipped via both rail and truck.  The Kraft mill also produces large amounts of lignin liquor, a byproduct of the digestion process. This material can be shipped out in tankers, dried, or fed to other bacterias to make yeast.  The Kraft mill also uses other chemicals such as sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) and sulfuric acid. Kaolin (slurry form) is brought in to make glossy paper. Kaolin is often supplemented by calcium carbonate (lime) slurry and titanium dioxide.

The Chemical plant consists of products which are made from the spent sulphite liquor generated within the facility.  The plant can be divided into an alcohol division, resin division and lignin division.  Most of this operation takes place within numerous tanks situated within three central buildings.  Due to their relative size, I chose to model only the fronts of the buildings and blended the building into the photo backdrop.

Refined from wood pulp, specialty cellulose is used in a range of applications across many industries – cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, personal care, food, coatings, electronics and energy.  Specialty cellulose is manufactured in both rolls and bales.  Similar to the chemical plant, this area was modeled using only the front of the building set against the photo backdrop.

The Boardmill Division produces high quality paper and manufactures newsprint for publishers of daily newspapers and commercial printers, as well as controlled bulk paper for mass-market paperback book publishers and commercial printers.  Coated bleach board is a product used for a broad range of commercial printing, publishing and packaging applications.  Newsprint production uses wood fibre obtained from four separate sources, including thermomechanical pulp (TMP), recycled pulp, groundwood pulp and kraft pulp. Kaolin is used to make glossy paper. While chlorine was used to bleach the paper, in recent years it has been replaced by sodium chlorate.

Rail Traffic

One of the other key aspects I looked at when designing my mill was how much traffic did a typical northern Ontario paper receive and could I support anything close to that. For example, both the Kapuskasing and Temiscaming mills generally receive rail traffic at least 5 days per week.  Aerial photographs are readily available for the Kapuskasing mill, and show that it has at least 5 storage tracks which appear to be able to easily hold forty (40) fifty-foot boxcars easily.  There are several additional tracks within the property which can also accommodate 15-20 cars easily per track.  If a typical train load is 20-30 tank cars and boxcars, I knew that there was no way to accommodate that much storage for my modelling. 

Another aspect that goes hand in hand with this was how much yard trackage would I be able to accommodate within two modules, given that this would become the easiest way to move traffic around with the yard switcher.  With the exception of the Temiscaming mill, each of the other mills discussed previously have been supported by a fairly large amount of trackage either on or just off the mill property.  It was very common to see numerous strings of boxcars just waiting to be pushed into the warehouse tracks, however, stored just along the property boundary.  Warehouse tracks were typically designed to support multiple boxcars, with the area under roof supporting at least 3 tracks and it was quite common to see 4-5 boxcars on each track.

The next step was to determine which types of rolling stock would be needed at the mill.  Paper mills take in and also ship out of lot of things, which may typically include: 

Rail Car	Inbound	Outbound
Boxcars	Scrap paper	Paper Rolls, Kraft or bleached paper	Various sized boxcars paper rolls and bundles bleached kraft bundles, scrap paper
Gondolas/Hi-cube Hoppers	Wood Chips
Bulk Head/Pulp Wood Flats	Pulp Wood Logs (cut to lengths of 4 to 6 feet long)
Tank Cars	Kaolin Chlorine  Limestone Slurry Caustic Soda Sodium Hydroxide Sodium Hydrosulfide Sulfuric Acid Lignin liquor	Tall Oil by-product Lignin Liquor Turpentine by -product	Chlorine (pulp bleaching); Clay slurries (note: Kaolin would be used for glossy papers)
Gondola		Scrap Iron
Bulkhead flat cars	10-foot pulpwood		Single-stacked cross-ways
Hopper	Coal, although most facilities burn some sort of wood waste
Covered Hoppers	Salt Cake, Calcium Carbonate, Lime, Sodium Chlorate, Corn Starch		Calcium carbonate – off loaded near the fourdrinier building for coatings; replaces kaolins

 Rail Spurs

 For my operations, I opted to go with the following arrangement:

• Warehouse (1 interior track within the Building; 2 interior tracks in adjacent Bldg.); each track to hold 2-3 boxcars
• Rotary chip dumper (1 track); able to store one hopper
• Chemical Plant (1 track – min. 5 loading/unloading spots)
• Engine House – (single track off of the outbound storage track)
• Yard Tracks (2 tracks, one for outbound cars and one for inbound; able to store 8 cars min.)

Engine house - Iroquois Falls, ONT

Modeling a Paper Mill - Part 2 Operations

This is the 2nd part of my paper mill discussion, and I have tried to explain the thoughts that went into designing the mill and more importantly the amount of traffic it could generate and handle.  You may not realize it, but a paper mill makes a great central industry on a layout. The mill gets inbound shipments of chips from lumber mills, chemicals from everywhere, and ships out boxcars of paper (and trailers for the intermodal trains) to all kinds of satellite industries such as paper converters (cut rolls of paper into various size sheets for copiers, notebooks, ect.), corrugated box plants, newspapers, and printers.  Therefore, rail transportation includes:

• Raw logs to a mill from a log reload offline
• Chips from the lumber mill to the paper mill
• Various types of chemicals from multi-sources that are used in the paper manufacturing process
• Paper from the papermill to a paper converter
• Various chemical by-products which are shipped to numerous types of industries for their own use
• Paper sheets from the converter to a printer
• Coal and other products brought in for power generation

Let me first say that I firmly subscribe to the thought that building a layout by following what the prototype has done is the simplest and most realistic way of achieving your goal. My first mill track plan had some crossover and other trackage that just didn't seem realistic, mostly because it wasn't following what the prototype did.  So it was back to the drawing board.

During the summer of 2001, I had the opportunity to take the family for a trip on the short-lived Timber Train excursion.  Started by the Mattawa Temiscaming Excursion Co., the train was intended to shuttle tourists between Mattawa and Temiscaming, Que. for the day.  The Timber Train used the existing Ottawa Valley RaiLink line, and RaiLink provided the power.  During the stop in Temiscaming, you had the opportunity to walk and shop around the town, or go on a informative tour of the paper mill. Unfortunately, the 7.5 hour journey through the scenery of Ontario and Quebec ultimately did not survive.  When the Timber Train went belly-up, the Adirondack Scenic RR picked up all or most of their cars at bargain-basement prices.  Engines went back into RaiLink service.  But for me, the tour of the paper mill was very much worth the entire trip. Informative from both how paper and pulp is made, but also informative from a railroad operations standpoint.  No wonder the train staff was looking at me kinda funny as the train was entering the mill.  I was the only one at the window trying to photograph every building and track in front of me.  Ultimately armed with knowledge gained from trip as well as observing the other mills I discussed in Part 1, I would pattern the Spruce Creek Pulp & Paper mill after these operations as much as I could.

So let's start with a discussion with what the Spruce Creek plant produces and how it actually is made from the various raw materials which are needed. Similar to the Temiscaming mill, I modeled operations to include three main mills that manufacture different forest products, including specialty cellulose, high-yield-pulp and coated bleached board (containerboard) as well as a chemical products facility.   The chemical products division produces a variety of products made from spent sulphite liquor (primarily alcohol, resin or lignin based).  

Tembec's Temiscaming, PQ operation

Temiscaming - Chemical Division in background; bark & chip storage buildings in foreground

Temiscaming Specialty Cellulose Mill

It goes without saying that modeling four operating plants takes up a large amount of space, which typically is not available with a model railroad regardless of which scale you're modeling.  However, I have used photos from the Kapuskasing and Temiscaming mills as backdrop, which is how I incorporate each of the mills.    

As I mentioned in Part 1, my Spruce Creek Pulp and Paper Mill is located on two 2’ by 6’ modules in the center of the room.  Starting from the left side, my buildings include a power plant, the pulp mill, alcohol plant, acid building, kaolin building, specialty cellulose mill, board mill and the warehouse.

High Yield Pulp - the pulp mill is a manufacturing facility that converts wood chips or other plant fibre source into a thick fibre board which can be shipped to a paper mill for further processing. Pulp can be manufactured using mechanical, semi-chemical or fully chemical methods (kraft and sulfite processes). The finished product may be either bleached or non-bleached, depending on the customer requirements.  In our mill, kraft pulp is produced using softwood pulp, while the "B" mill can produce either softwood or hardwood pulp.  Similar to the Boardmill, final products are shipped via both rail and truck.  The Kraft mill also produces large amounts of lignin liquor, a byproduct of the digestion process. This material can be shipped out in tankers, dried, or fed to other bacterias to make yeast.  The Kraft mill also uses other chemicals such as sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) and sulfuric acid. Kaolin (slurry form) is brought in to make glossy paper. Kaolin is often supplemented by calcium carbonate (lime) slurry and titanium dioxide.

The Chemical plant consists of products which are made from the spent sulphite liquor generated within the facility.  The plant can be divided into an alcohol division, resin division and lignin division.  Most of this operation takes place within numerous tanks situated within three central buildings.  Due to their relative size, I chose to model only the fronts of the buildings and blended the building into the photo backdrop.

Refined from wood pulp, specialty cellulose is used in a range of applications across many industries – cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, personal care, food, coatings, electronics and energy.  Specialty cellulose is manufactured in both rolls and bales.  Similar to the chemical plant, this area was modeled using only the front of the building set against the photo backdrop.

The Boardmill Division produces high quality paper and manufactures newsprint for publishers of daily newspapers and commercial printers, as well as controlled bulk paper for mass-market paperback book publishers and commercial printers.  Coated bleach board is a product used for a broad range of commercial printing, publishing and packaging applications.  Newsprint production uses wood fibre obtained from four separate sources, including thermomechanical pulp (TMP), recycled pulp, groundwood pulp and kraft pulp. 

Part 3 will look at the rail operations inside the mill.

Modelling a Paper Mill – Part 1 Origin of the Spruce Creek Pulp & Paper Mill

One of the key features on the layout is the Spruce Creek Pulp and Paper Mill, located on two 2’ by 6’ modules in the center of the room.  The mill was modeled after several mills located in northern Ontario, including the mills at Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Iroquois Falls and the Tembec mill at Temiscaming, Quebec.  While each of these mills offers unique aspects to model, they also have several common themes, including rail access, locations along a major water source, multiple ages of buildings and general building architecture.  Several of them have operated with their own switcher engine, which shuttled empty and full loads between the mill and nearby storage tracks.  It was this particular aspect that was of primary importance and I wanted to include in my paper mill complex.  Therefore, observers will quickly find that switching power for the Spruce Creek plant consists of both an Alco S13, patterned after the Spruce Falls 108 and the newer GMD GP7 Mattagami 168 (ex ACR 168).  Both units may still be found in Kapuskasing, although as of 2017, neither unit is active and sits on the mill property in pieces or in the weeds.

What’s in a Name 

One of the first and toughest decisions was what to name the paper mill, since it would be a major feature of the railway.  I had no intent of modelling a town to go along with it, but I wanted to recognize local features of the area, yet at the same time create a fictional area that was in keeping with other local town names.  I ultimately chose Spruce Creek Pulp & Paper as my fictional paper mill and town.  Spruce was chosen based on the varieties of spruce found as predominant trees in northern Ontario.  While I wanted to add a waterway feature to the name, "Falls" was already done and it basically came down to whether the second part of the name would be river or creek. For no real reason, creek won.

Like many layouts and modelers, I borrowed certain aspects of each of the mills to form my own.  I wanted a fairly heavy and diverse amount of traffic, so the choice to model both a paper and pulp mill became obvious.  I was also lucky enough to have toured several of the mills, so I was able to incorporate some of the aspects I had seen on these tours into my layout.  And lastly, I had to compress as much of the mills that I had seen into a small, finite space on the layout. I knew that certain buildings would have to be scratch built, while others could come from kitbashing or using straight builds from existing kit structures.  I also wanted to use photo backdrops of the mills into my scenery.  Certain large areas such as chip unloading would not be possible, due to size restrictions, while at the same time maximizing the amount of trackage was key.

So let's take a quick look at some history for the area.

 

History of Local Mills

Kapuskasing (Spruce Falls Company) - the timber limits around Kapuskasing were sold to Kimberly-Clark in 1920. The new Spruce Falls Company Ltd. began the development of the first pulp mill in Kapuskasing under the direction of F.J. Sensenbrenner, a Vice President of Kimberly Clark Corporation for the next 20 years. The small sulphite mill started up in late 1922 with four 12-ton digesters and a daily output of 75 tons of pulp. Spent liquor was discharged untreated into the Kapuskasing River.  In 1923, a water storage and hydro electric dam was built by Morrow and Beatty Ltd. of Peterborough at Spruce Falls. In 1925, the Spruce Falls Company Limited was awarded additional timber limits to the north and south, bringing their total limits up to 11,830 square kilometers (4,570 sq mi).  In 1926, the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company was incorporated under joint ownership of Kimberly-Clark and The New York Times. The new company negotiated two additional hydro power leases to the north on the Mattagami River at Smoky Falls and Devils Rapids. Work to build a 550 ton/day paper mill at Kapuskasing, a 75,000 HP hydro generating station at Smoky Falls and a 80 kilometers (50 mi) railway and power line connecting the two got underway in the spring of 1926. The contractor for the entire project was Morrow and Beatty Ltd. of Peterborough.  Since July 13, 1928, The New York Times has been printed entirely on Spruce Falls paper. The mill has run continuously ever since.

Tembec's mill at Kapuskasing (2017)

Smooth Rock Falls (Tembec) - the town of Smooth Rock Falls lies on the Mattagami River and on Highway 11, between Cochrane and Kapuskasing.  The Smooth Rock Falls economy was dominated by the Tembec Malette pulp mill, which unfortunately was closed on December 5, 2006.  The pulp mill was subsequently dismantled and demolished, leaving nothing but an empty field and some vague hopes for redevelopment.   

Smooth Rock Falls - photo courtesy Mike Robin and onrgallery.com

Iroquois Falls (Abitibi) – Iroquois Falls lies on the banks of the Abitibi River, west of Lake Abitibi and approximately 40 miles northeast of Timmins.  Iroquois Falls' primary industry was a large mill producing newsprint and commercial printing papers.  The paper mill, then called Abitibi-Price, merged with Stone-Consolidated, and then with Donohue Forest Products, and finally with Bowater to create Abitbi-Bowater. On 17 April 2009, Abitibi-Bowater sought bankruptcy protection, emerging from it as Resolute Forest Products. Five years later, Resolute announced its permanent closure.  As of 2017, the buildings housing the paper machine and other structures are in the stages of demolition, although the engine house still stands.

Iroquois Falls - photo courtesy Mike Robin and onrgallery.com

Temiscaming (Tembec) – the southernmost of the mills actually resides in Quebec, located at the south end of Lac Témiscamingue on the upper Ottawa River.  The area experienced major growth when the Riordon Pulp and Paper Company built the Kipawa Mills pulp and paper mill there in 1918.  The Canadian International Paper Company, bought out the Riordon Company in 1925.  In 1972, when the company decided to close the mill, the employees formed Tembec to take over the operation of the mill. The mill produces chemical products, specialty cellulose, boardmill and high yield pulp. Unfortunately, the Temiscaming mill is located across the river and rail operations are difficult to photograph with all of the trees along the rivers edge.

Temiscaming mill