Vermiculite at one plant, perlite at the other, a mile apart
Two mineral plants sit about a mile apart on the Beaver River here, one working vermiculite and the other perlite. It is the same pairing recorded at Orwell in Ohio, and both are lightweight expanded minerals rather than crushed stone.
The nearer of the two, the JP Austin Associates plant, lies about 1.6 miles north-east. Neither is a heavy aggregate operation, so the freight around them is bagged and palletised as much as it is bulk.
Rail yards inside nine miles, mostly downriver
Those runs have somewhere to go, and they mostly go the same way. The Poor Farm yard on the North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics lies about 6.0 miles south, and then a cluster downriver: Conway about 7.3 miles south-east, Blacks Run about 7.7, the Conway yard about 7.8, Aliquippa about 8.2 and the Conway river terminal about 8.7 miles south-east at Baden.
Georgetown Sand & Gravel about 11.2 miles south-west closes the ring. A truck based here has a choice of loading points inside a ten-mile circle, which is unusual and shows up as high hours against modest mileage.
A bagged-mineral load out of the Austin Associates plant is lighter than stone and handled more, so the deck and the tie-down points wear ahead of the springs, which is the opposite of a quarry truck from the same county. Both are ordinary here.
- The deck is chewed up from forklifts.Expected on a bagged-mineral run around the JP Austin Associates plant.
- Around the Conway yards about 7.8 miles south-east we see contractor disposals regularly, one truck or several.
Between the Poor Farm yard about 6.0 miles south and Georgetown Sand & Gravel they turn up steadily.