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Early this year, I was driving through Ludington down the Pere Marquette Highway and noted a new siding beside a new building on the south side of where the spur into Occidental Corp crosses the highway. Google and Bing aerial images haven't been updated yet, but the GIS I use at work has new aerial imagery. The new spur branches off of one of the spurs into Cal-Chlor, in the lower right of the image below. The new, big building appears to sit on top of one of their staging parking lots. In addition to the photo below, you can also see the new siding under construction on Google Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/bgoqB9qCUwLtTbFGA

Is this an actual expansion of Cal-Chlor? Are they moving a new product, or just more of it? Has this resulted in any new carloads for the MQT?

Is Cal Chlor the business that used to receive lime or was that the Dow plant?

AARR wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:12 am

Is Cal Chlor the business that used to receive lime or was that the Dow plant?

That was the Dow, now Oxy plant along the lake.

To answer the original question though it is an expansion of Cal Chlor of Ludington, it has up their capacity from an 8 car full spot to 15, but that being said it has actually slowed production down. The new plant was supposed to be almost entirely automated and be able to handle as many cars as the two other buildings combined over there but max capacity for the new spur is 3.5-4 cars a day when it was supposed to be 8. The new plant has been nothing but an electrical nightmare for them and they really haven’t gained much sadly. It’s a real pain to switch though as they request by car number and in specific order.

The photo that shows US Trackworks building the track looks like it has an unloading pit. I don't see how they can load on that track.

Everything they do is unloading except they do load boxcars but main business is unloading hoppers from Oxy.

So Cal-Chor is the bagging company / facility for Oxy? I never knew that. Hoppers loaded at Oxy, unloaded at Cal-Chlor, bagged and shipped out by truck and boxcar.
I learned something new:)

Me too

Raildudes dad wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:51 am

So Cal-Chor is the bagging company / facility for Oxy? I never knew that. Hoppers loaded at Oxy, unloaded at Cal-Chlor, bagged and shipped out by truck and boxcar.
I learned something new:)

Calchlor was a customer of mine for 25 until I retired earlier this year. They shipped domestic loads of calcium chloride with me in 40' containers to California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Texas, and Florida. They ship all over the world. The new building is suppose to be a fully automated processing line for calcium chloride to be used for human consumption. Just a forklift driver to carry away the full pallets.

I learned a couple new things, one being DLM is retired