Red Caboose: "coil car"

It depends.

As an empty, it would go to a steel mill for loading with coils of steel, hence the name.

As a load, it would go to any number of industries, any of which would use such material. Some that come to mind are:

An auto body plant (for stamping the body panels)

Appliance manufacturer

Furniture maker

Casket maker

Suppliers of decorative sheetmetal, like you may find at Home Depot or Lowes

Fabricators of various industrial structures, e.g., guardhouses, etc.

Dieter Zakas

=>A quick question ... what type of industry would a "coil car" be =>delivered to? =>

Any fabricator that uses sheet steel. BTW, a fullscale model of such a plant would be bigger than most model railroads. With an in-plant railroad, it would make a layout in itself.

Actually, here in Canada, many (most?) are delivered to a central unloading/storage point near Hamilton ON IIRC, from where the coils are shipped to end users. I saw a brief story about it in the local paper (Sault Star -- Sault Ste Marie ON is location of Algoma Steel, which ship a lot of coil.) Some of that sheet steel is pretty heavy stuff, too - used pretty well as is to make pressure vessels etc. The stuff that's used in cars etc is IIRC processed further before it goes into the presses that form the sheet into fenders, roofs, hoods, and so on.

HTH

Wolf Kirchmeir ................................. If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on this train? (Garrison Keillor)

Excellent. Thank You Dieter!

The auto plant delivery will work nicely in my planning. I am hoping to create a large industrial, on-line, switching area dedicated to the automobile business, and then support this on-line area with many of its associated, smaller, retail outlets in a supporting, roadside [town] scenario.

One other:

Watching American Chopper as they did a theme bike for Snap-On tools. Snap-On's raw material is (iirc) 3/4" round steel that comes coiled.

They had a great shot of their progressive die cold drop forge in operation.

And the bike wasn't bad either.

You could also have these deliver to suppliers to your auto assembly plant. Anyone who does stamping work needs coils.

To take this one step further upstream, add a "metal service center" that takes in coils and slits or cuts them into narrower coils or stacked blanks for shipment via truck or rail to other manufacturing sites such as appliance, electrical, HVAC, and automotive Tier 1 and 2 suppliers.

The possibilities are pretty broad.

Allen Ca>

" To take this one step further upstream, add a "metal service center" ...The possibilities are pretty broad ..."

Indeed! Thanks, everyone, for all of these ideas. They're great!

Steel fabricators.

Rolls of steel are delivered and then they cut the steel into many different shapes and designs.