plastics hauled in the covered hoppers

[railbuilderdave]

I wanted to know what plastics hauled in the covered hoppers is like.  Do the plastics get shipped as little pellets or round little bullets of some sort.  What size would these pellets be and what would the pellet colors  be? Would you find these spilled on the tracks near loading or unloading points?  Also has anyone found anything good to model these loads?  I'm just asking cause I may have found something that may work for such a load and I wanted to know if this may work.  If so I'll spend the time needed to clean it from the mess it was found in.
Dave

[GonzoCRFan]

I wanted to know what plastics hauled in the covered hoppers is like.  Do the plastics get shipped as little pellets or round little bullets of some sort.  What size would these pellets be and what would the pellet colors  be? Would you find these spilled on the tracks near loading or unloading points?  Also has anyone found anything good to model these loads?  I'm just asking cause I may have found something that may work for such a load and I wanted to know if this may work.  If so I'll spend the time needed to clean it from the mess it was found in.
Dave

Plastic granules are usually rather small pellets or bits, a few millimeters in diameter. I've seen them in green and white, but I'm sure they could be nearly any color, depending what pigment is mixed in where they are manufactured.

[3rdrail]

Sean (GonzoCRfan) has got it right. But, the pellets are incredibly easily contaminated. A teaspoon of ash will contaminate a carload of pellets and cause it to be off-color. As a result, they are loaded and unloaded in very much closed systems, so you would never see any on the ground, unless there was a bad accident at the unloading site.

[GonzoCRFan]

Sean (GonzoCRfan) has got it right. But, the pellets are incredibly easily contaminated. A teaspoon of ash will contaminate a carload of pellets and cause it to be off-color. As a result, they are loaded and unloaded in very much closed systems, so you would never see any on the ground, unless there was a bad accident at the unloading site.

Indeed. I recall talking to a truck driver for a company that manufactures plastic pill bottles, they get hi-cube pellet cars delivered to a team track for transloading to bulk trucks for delivery to their plant. He was talking about how careful they have to be with the transloading process, if their QC guys find a single off-color pellet or other sort of contamination, the whole carload would be destroyed.

[rswinnerton]

Where I grew up there was a plant that made nothing but easter grass. They got plastic pellets in covered hoppers. They used dried compressed air to shift the pellets down a pipe into bins where they waited to be melted down.  Kinda a neat operation, but never saw any pellets on the ground.
Russ