Industrial railway

Overview

Industrial railways were once very common, but with the rise of road transport, their numbers have greatly diminished.

An example of an industrial railway would transport bulk goods, for example clay from a quarry or coal from a mine, to an interchange point, called an exchange siding, with a main line railway, onwards from where it would be transported to its final destination.

The main reasons for industrial railways are normally for one of two reasons:

• Onsite shunting and consolidation: part-finished products or goods require movement between different parts of the process site to enable them to be manufactured, or made-ready for shipment. Moving relatively small amounts of goods over short distances is expensive if undertaken by mainline railway operators, who make money by charging for the shipment of goods over long distances in bulk
• Control of manufacture: Many industrial lines only operate for short periods of time, requiring the shipment of time-sensitive goods to the factory or processing point, over relatively short distances. These are mainly food products, often operating on narrow-gauge lines to enable closer access to the originating point

As a result, most industrial railways are short, usually only a few miles/kilometers long. While these types of lines most often at some point connect via exchange sidings or transfer sidings to bulk mainline shipping railways, there are notable exceptions that are hundreds of miles long, which include the iron ore-carrying railways in Western Australia, or in China to transport coal. At the same time, in Canada there are the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway and the Cartier Railway. These lines can be thought of as dedicated shipment routes, where only products from that industry require shipment between those two points; hence, a dedicated line makes more economic sense, with only a limited possibility of consolidating shipments with other industries. See Compagnie de gestion de Matane

Industrial railways serve many different industries. In both Australia and Cuba, a large number of industrial railways serve the sugarcane industry. In Colorado, the Coors Brewing Company uses its own industrial railway at the brewery both for the delivery of raw materials and for shipping the finished product.