Roanoke Virginia Trip

I took a trip to Roanoke Virginia last week for industry tours with the Railroad Industry Modeling SIG (formerly the Railroad Industry SIG I started 21 years ago and have now retired from it's leadership and turned that over to others).  There were a lot of nice tours and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Our first tour was the Yokohama tire plant where they explained the way tires are constructed - very complex with many layers of rubber (mostly synthetic), steel, and other elements.  After the detailed briefing we toured the plant and saw the tire manufacture process from start to finish.  Our first stop was the rail siding where they received hoppers of carbon black.  We continued through each phase ending with the final vulcanization of the completed tire.  A very informative and interesting tour.  No photos were permitted on that tour.

Our next tour was at Old Virginia Brick where they use old style wood molds to shape the bricks as specified by the customer.  The clay bricks are fired in modern kilns.  By producing brick this way they create bricks that look hundreds of years old for a unique look, and for repair of very old historic structures.    Old Virginia Brick allowed photos so below are a few that I took.

Above is an example of one of the wood brick molds.

This photo shows stacks of bricks on pallets outside the warehouse.

Stacks of brick inside the kiln.

This warehouse inside view shows some of the cart tracks embedded in the concrete floor.  There were actually several gauges of cart tracks which was interesting. 

Those of you who have followed or viewed this blog may recall that early on I showed the construction of my brick works.  While my model was highly condensed due to lack of space, there were some similarities, including that Old Virginia Brick's clay pit is up on a hill a short distance from the plant.  They use trucks to bring in the clay.  

There were many other industries we visited and I will probably present more information on these tours at a later date.  Meanwhile I am back at work on the next and last dyeworks structure which is moving slowly since I am putting interior details inside - I hope these are some what visible when the structure is complete, but they are fun to do.