I bought one of these very cheaply at a swapmeet in south east England last week.
I’ve trawled the intenet and have failed to find any pictueres of a prototype for it. Was it just a one-off experiment,and if not would someone tell me where and when they operated please.
Thank you,
Terry Bray,London,England.
There were “humane” stock cars which included seperate areas sometimes, water and feed capabilities. I don’t know about this particular model. At one time livestock were transported in boxcars without good ventilation.
Richard
Terry,
I found a photograph of the prototype for this car in “Train She Cyclopedia No. 3” . The book is based on the 1931 “Car Builders’ Cyclopedia”. The caption reads:
“Triple-Deck Stock Car for Sheep, Lambs and Small Live Stock. Provision for Feeding and Watering; Caretaker’s Room at End. North American Car Corporation. Builder, Standard Steel Car Corporation.”
The reporting mark is H.L.S.X. 1. I believe it was a prototype. It certainly wasn’t a big seller, as I don’t ever recall seeing anything like it before.
But it did exist. And it’s an interesting model.
I believe that by the time this car was built, United States law required stops for watering livestock. Perhaps a benefit of this car would be the ability to skip these required stops.
Ed
The Humane Livestock Car was developed by the Mather Livestock Car Company.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry about Mr. Mather and his Humane Livestock Car –
Sigh…
OK Terry, here’s what you’ve ACTUALLY got. The Bachmann model is a BAD representation of a 1920s-built poultry car, with a bad paint job. If anyone cares, the model looks like this:
http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/products.php?act=viewProd&productId=604
And here’s what these cars are supposed to look like:
http://www.hoosiervalley.org/photos/historic-railroad-photos/live-poultry-cars/
The Bachmann model itself is pure fantasy: poultry cars were built before deep refrigeration, so were never more than 39 feet long at the strikers. Their heyday was in the 1930s, and all were off American rails by the early 1950s. Mostly, they were a Midwestern and central Southern “thing”, which is where most poultry is grown today (by 1940 most live poultry was shipped by TRUCK, as was most livestock in general). The enclosed section on the end is for a ride along caretaker, who fed & watered the birds (which were regulated differently from hooved animals: birds didn’t need watering and rest stops).
The “decks” are really just shelves to place standardized wire coops onto. These cars ran in pairs or more on circuits every few weeks. LPTX only had a fleet of 200-400 cars which serviced most of the country.
Hope this helps!
“The unholy alliance between Big OIL and Big CHICKEN”
- “The Chicken of Tomorrow” , MST3K Ep 702 “The Brute Man”
Fraid not.
I’m looking at a prototype photo and it looks like the Bachmann car. Please read what I wrote earlier. And note that the subject car was NOT referred to as a poultry car. The Bachmann car is DEFINITELY a model of the car I am looking at. Whether it is a GOOD model, I can’t say until I can examine the model first hand.
I recommend you obtain one of the books I mentioned and examine the photograph. It is on the bottom of page 151.
Ed