I model in the mid 1950s and have an industry that will receive grain. I’ve read that this was around the time grain began being shipped by covered hoppers rather than box cars. Nothing I have read so far gives a specific year for when the hoppers started taking over the grain shipping. My railroad is freelanced and I am not took specific about an exact year but I don’t want to stretch things too much. Were covered hoppers the rule or the exception by the year 1955? Also, if hoppers were the prefered method of shipping, what size would they have more likely been. Most of what I see available today are 3 bay hoppers but they seem more suited for modern railroading to me. I have a 2 bay hopper that I acquired many years ago before I began my current railroad. Would this be more appropriate?
Hi Jeff,
If your baseline date is 1955, you’ll only see boxcars being used for hauling grain. Covered hoppers had been around since the 1920s, but only for mineral ladings (sand, concrete, carbon black, etc). There were a few around in the mid-1950s that were designed to haul FLOUR, but those were in captive service between MAJOR shippers, and wouldn’t be seen at typical elevators.
The first covered hoppers designed specifically for bulk grain loading didn’t show up until 1958, when both ACF and the NYC built experimental Airflow hopper designs, and Pullman-Standard came out with the PS-3 covered hoppers. It took almost a decade before both the railroads and the elevators/mills finally accepted them. So basically the only time you’d see a mix of covered hoppers and boxcars would be the 1960-1980 period, with a 50/50 mix right around 1970.
Airslide covered hoppers were used in grain service quite often. They first appeared in 1954.
I wonder about this. The Airslide device (fabric-covered low-angle trough through which air was introduced) was/is designed to handle bulk fine-grained and powdered materials like corn starch, sugar, and flour, all of which have a high angle of repose when dry and tend to compact and clump during shipment (finer materials like cement and clay do too, but would tend to clog the fabric). Introducing air at low pressure fluidizes the material, breaks up the clumps, and overcomes the resistance to flow. Coarse granular materials like corn, wheat, and rice have a lower angle of repose, don’t clump, and don’t need the air flow to induce gravity flow.
A major grain hauler, the GN purchased 25 Airslides from GATC in 1954-1955, 25 in 1958, and 20 in 1960, a total of only 70 cars. By contrast, they built or purchased 1264 combination plug/sliding door 40-ft boxcars for grain and wood products service between 1956 and 1960.
Not saying some roads didn’t haul grain in Airslides on occasion, just that it wouldn’t be necessary if boxcars (or perhaps covered hoppers) were available.
Just to be pedantic (or to correct a typo for the record), the Pullman designations were assigned to general car types rather than generations of a particular type:
PS-1: Boxcar (XM)
PS-2: Covered Hopper (LO)
PS-3: Hopper (HM)
PS-4: Flat Car (FM)
PS-5: Gondola (GB)
KL (not an AAR car type. . .)
wjstix wrote: <“Airslide covered hoppers were used in grain service quite often. They first appeared in 1954.”> I very much doubt that Airslides were used in grain service in 1955, which is the year jecorbett is interested in. As Shilshole notes, the Airslide design was intended for ladings that have entirley different characteristics to grain. All of the Airslides I have data for, from their introduction up until 1958, were in assigned service for specific shippers handling products such as flour, sugar and carbon black. I can find no reference to them being used for grain at that time. Cheers, Mark.
orsonroy is correct. General American introduced their Dry-Flo cars in 1958 and they were considered the first such cars specifically designed for grain hauling. They futher refined the cars around 1964 with trough loading hatches and this feature really allowed for the rapid expansion of covered hoppers in grain service.
Rick
Based strictly on my memory I can say that plenty of grain was still being shipped by 40’ boxcar even into the 1970s, when covered hoppers were becoming quite common for grain service. The reason is that much grain originated at fairly small grain elevators in small towns and the track was often light rail on poor ties with no ballast. The traffic was too seasonal to warrant better track and the trend in the industry was already towards consolidation of facilities to these huge grain storage bins.
At the destination silos here in Milwaukee in the 1970s the ground was littered with the busted remnants of Signode grain doors – heavy paper reinforced with metal strips. Some elevators still used wood because busted wood was also all over. They also used reusable heavy wood planks that would be nailed in place. At an old abandoned grain elevator in Illinois on what had been a Milwaukee Road branch line I found, in the weeds, part of an old heavy wood slat that had the Milwaukee Road logo painted on it.
If we seek to model the ordinary then the ordinary way to move grain in the 1950s was by boxcar-- especially for the kind and size of facilities we are most likely to have on a layout.
Dave Nelson
I’m modeling the Seaboard in north Florida in the early 50s. I know that a major source of traffic for the Seaboard was the potash mines in central Florida. Can anyone tell me if covered hoppers would have been used to haul potash at that time, or would they be using boxcars?
Perhaps you mean phosphate instead of potash? Lots of phosphate hauled out of FL, can’t think of any potash mines in the area (but I may be way wrong).
SAL and ACL both used covered hoppers for phosphate service through the 50s. Some of ACL’s were a rather unique design: http://www.westerfield.biz/cg800001.htm used from the 20s through the 50s. ACL & SAL also used covered hoppers closer to standard in appearance, with 4 discharge bays; here’s the SAL version: http://www.fandckits.com/Images/6862Large.html with a NEW date of 1950.
If by chance you did mean potash – yes, hauled in covered hoppers.
I probably was thinking of the ‘other end’ of the process, flour rather than grain. In either case, it’s certainly true that grain was primarily hauled by boxcar until maybe c.1970, and even after the larger covered hoppers became the preferred method, boxcars were still used (especially on branchlines) well into the 70’s, maybe even into the 80’s…so boxcars would be the method to use for the 1950’s.
Further to Shilshole’s comments about phosphate cars, my 1922 Car Builders Cyclopedia features another quite unusual ACL covered hopper, built by Standard Steel. The bottom half looks like an ordinary 40-foot steel hopper, but the top half looks like a double-sheathed wooden boxcar. Sliding hatches on the sides of the top half were provided for loading. There were 100 cars in this series, numbered 8075 to 8174, and all were still in service in 1949. I’m not sure of the manufacturer - maybe Ambroid? - but a model of this car was on the market many years ago. If you were looking for something out of the ordinary for your phosphate traffic, this car would be it. All the best, Mark.
Phosphates come out of the ground (guano deposits) IIRC… where does Potash come from please.
Phosphates are used for fertiliser…Potash?
I know that CN and maybe CP run trains of one of them (brain’s gone , can’t recall which)… who else would shift them and from where to where please?
I believe that the CN trains have hatch loading instead of trough loading… would this apply elsewhere?
TIA
(apologies for slightly hijacking the thread).
Out of the ground, yes, but not guano (although surface guano was “harvested” for limited commercial use). It occurs in marine sedimentary rocks (shales and some limestones), naturally concentrated by organisms extracting it from seawater to build body parts or by direct precipitation under very restricted conditions. It forms thin layers in sedimentary rocks but is also found as nodules and fossils, such as shark’s teeth.
Also from sedimentary rock, this time a salt, either sylvite (potassium chloride, or KCl) or sylvanite (mixture of KCl and regular table salt – halite, or NaCl). KCl is more soluble than NaCl, so it’s one of the last salts to precipitate from an evaporating body of sea water. It’s also manufactured from brines in evaporite ponds near, for example, Salt Lake City. A minor amount occurs as potassium carbonate.
Primarily fertilizer, some for ceramics. It’s the ‘K’ (potassium) part of the ‘N-P-K’ label on fertilizer, indicating the concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
From 1km-deep sylvanite mines in Saskatchewan, which has between 1/4 and 1/3 of the world’s reserves of potash. To fertilizer blending plants in North America and ports for overseas shipment.
Dunno. I thought they used trough loading to handle the volume, but perhaps I’m mistaken.
Thanks to all who have provided information regarding question about the covered hoppers. I now have a follow up question. As I understand it, grain hauling boxcars were equipped with disposable grain doors. After the grain was loaded and shipped were the regular doors closed over the temporary grain doors or would they have been left open. The grain elevator I am using has a covered loading dock so if the boxcar doors would be closed during shipping, I have no need to install these grain doors on my boxcars. If the grain doors were exposed during shipping, I need to install them. Would these be installed on both side of the boxcar?
Yes, the cars’ doors were closed during shipment.
They were installed on both sides, to seal the load behind sliding doors and for flexibility in accomodating the arrangement of recipients’ unloading facilities.
As I understand it grain doors were installed across the ordinary single door to sufficient height to hold the grain load as it partially filled the car by volume. The top of the door space provided access to get the loading spout into the car. Closing the car’s normal door kept rain, dirt and vermin out. It also prevented pilfering.
There have been several long threads recently about or related to the whole subject.
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/945200/ShowPost.aspx
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/870199/ShowPost.aspx
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/930207/ShowPost.aspx
A good number of the CN cylindrical covered hoppers were equipped with hatches for potash loading. Four small hatches are easier to seal than a large trough hatch. Many trough hatch cars are used, though. CSX uses regular trough hatch cars for phosphate loading in Florida.
Athearn made, and perhaps still makes, a grain boxcar that I think has plug doors but also a small upper door at the top of the regular door (whether this is on both sides of the car I do not recall) that enabled the contents to be tested before unloading. A grain facility would be reluctant to potentially contaminate existing stocks of grain by just unloading any boxcar that said it contained grain, so the load would be tested, whether or not the car had that special small door.
My recollection is that a flexible tube would load the grain in an opening left in the temporary grain door, then once the car was full that opening would also be sealed and the doors closed. Assuming the load was accepted my recollection is that they would smash out the temporary door and the grain would just pour out (the car would be standing over an open pit, at the bottom of which was presumably some sort of conveyor system or screw). Then crews with brooms would enter to finish up the job. So at an unloading facility you would have boxcars, remnants of grain doors, some spilled grain, and guys with brooms at the ready.
Jaeger makes Signode grain doors in HO by the way.
Great memory! I have one sitting in my unassembled stack, a Christmas gift from a relative about 25 years ago: Athearn kit no. 2092, lettered for GN in Big Sky Blue, car no. 6739, stenciled as BLT 7-68, with 5/5 Dreadnaught ends. It’s unassembled because GN never had a double-plug-door 40ft car, and the car no. is for a 10ft single-plug-door 40ft car with R/3/4 ends.
I did manage to find a pic of a UP version which shows two small doors in the upper third of the main 8ft plug door. The model has two plug doors on each side. The left small upper door on the model is stenciled “GRAIN DOOR”, and the right one is stenciled “INSPECTION DOOR”.