Expansion is on tap at the Railway City Brewing Co. in St. Thomas.

Calling itself the only micro-brewery located in the five-county Sand Plains Community Development Fund area, Railway City rolled out plans for the future Tuesday at a funding announcement hosted by Joe Preston, Conservative MP for Elgin-Middlesex-London.

Railway City Brewing is receiving up to $250,000 in a loan from the Sand Plains fund.

Al Goulding, one of the founding partners of the brewery, said it will use the money to expand marketing to get its brands better known locally and to boost production.

"Railway City Brewing will be supporting other local suppliers," Preston said in making the announcement.
"We're starting to see Railway City products in more and more places," Preston also said.
"This type of project is what I envisioned when we launched the Sand Plains Community Development Fund," Preston said. "Projects like this help us to move forward."

Preston said he was impressed with the quality of Railway City products.

"The quality is impeccable," he said. "Now we just need to get more people to try it."
"It's good to hear our product is being found in Southwestern Ontario," said Paul Corriveau, director of sales and marketing for Railway City Brewing.
Corriveau said last week was the first time a bus tour stopped at the plant on Curtis Street.

The company just finalized plans for an Orchard Harvest line of two new beers in the spring that will feature apples from Rokeby Orchards and honey from Clovermead Bees and Honey, both Malahide businesses.

"This money is going to allow us to make our brands well known," Corriveau said.
Goulding said Railway City Brewery took time to grow.

"It wasn't an immediate success," he said. "Now we seem to have worked out those bugs."
Malahide Mayor John Wilson, who sits on the Sands Plains steering committee, said the fact Railway City Brewery was planning on using honey from Clovermead and apples from Rokeby was a perfect example of expansion for the local economy.

The Sand Plains program is structured so that payments made by borrowers go back into a separate funding pool to be redistributed to new clients.
Goulding said the loan means the business can add staff.

It currently has five full timers and five part timers. Plans are to hire two more part-time and two full-time employees.
Corriveau said the brewery currently produces four brands