Blue Circle Cement Plants - Model Railroader Magazine

Lafarge owns quite a few aggragate industries east of Atlanta, GA, in the granite swath making up Stone Mountain, Panola Mtn, Arabian Mtn, Pine Mtn in Lithonia (about four active granite/gravel quarries and at least that many cement plants), and the Oxford, GA granite quarry. To my knowledge, only two of the quarries see any rail traffic (most gravel and granite ships out by truck), but I believe at least 4 cement plants between Covington and Atlanta see at least 5 or 10 rail cars each of aggregate and processed cement per week. Alot of the cement cars are still labelled Blue Circle though, so it wouldn't be out of place to use them in a Lafarge owned cement plant.

My understanding is that powdered cement is actually a combination of raw materials including crushed limestone, granite and sand, mixed and thoroughly dried to a powder, where it's then loaded into covered hoppers, and shipped to the distributor. To model a complete aggragate industry, a quarry (for the limestone and gravel), a cement processing plant (like Valley Cement by Walthers), and a cement distribution plant (like Medusa Cement or Blue Circle Cement by Walthers) would all be appropriate structures. The raw materials would come in by open top hopper from the quarry to the processing plant, then powdered cement would be shipped out in covered cement hoppers to the distribution facility where it would be either offloaded into cement mixer trucks for delivery to customers, or to a bagging plant where it would be bagged and shipped by truck for sale at retail stores and home improvement suppliers.