I’m modeling the early 1930’s and I know, at least I think I know, that grain was shipped in box cars. My question is this, what was the earliest that covered hoppers where manufactured for this use??? Thanks to all that reply.
The “HARVEN”
If I remember correctly, the short 2 bay covered hoppers were introduced in the 1930s, but they were for sand and cement.
I don’t think grain hoppers were in common usage before the late 1960s.
Nick
Well the “Airslide” covered hopper was introduced in 1954 I believe, and that was used in grain service. It had a special lining inside it for clean lading, and also had some way that air could be used to help grain or flour slide out the chutes better (hence “air slide”). I’d have to dig out my 1942 Walthers decal catalogue, but I think it had some decal sets for covered hoppers in food service like sugar companies, not sure about grain though.
In the period you’re modelling, grain was shipped in boxcars. The very small number of covered hoppers in service in the 1930s were used for ladings such as bulk lime, cement, carbon black, glass sand and phospate. But they were not at all common. The use of covered hoppers to ship grain did not become commonplace until at least the late 1950s. The June 1952 Railway Age is devoted to a detailed article on how grain was moved, and makes NO mention whatsoever of covered hoppers being used. Cheers, Mark.
Airslides entered service in 1953, wearing GATX reporting marks. General American’s publicity material stated they were intended for flour, semolina, cane and beet sugar, starch, plastic moulding powder, dehydrated alfalfa meal, feed, carbon black, and chemical powders. So far as I’m aware they weren’t used for grain service, as grain, unlike the commodities mentioned, didn’t clump. Thus it did not require pressurised unloading. Cheers, Mark.
Isn’t semolina grain (wheat)??
That’s what it said on the pasta box!!![:D]
“The Harven”
But it’s not “granular” once it has been processed… then it is a powder… so it’s handling will be different. [8D]
Don’t forget that grain is a seasonal as well as a high density traffic (High density in 2 senses:- 1 the load is heavy by volume. 2. everybody wants it shifted at the same time).
Not all grain traffic is interchange traffic (i.e. it can stay on its home RR and not interchange to any other RR). This means that RR can use their old cars that no longer conform to interchange requirements. These cars would be kept for the peak grain season wherever the RR had spare track that cost little. Ahead of the season they would be worked into position ready for the rush. On line cars and interchange would probably be kept seperate to avoid problems with a car going the wrong way and having to be switched out.
I’ve recently done a post on this seadsonal type of traffic. Try the system for old posts (it drives me nuts even more now than before [V]).
Short version is that you can run cars from the early 1900s (if not 1890s) on peak grain trains… 30’ cars and starnge underframes included. This could look really good. Paint jobs would be faded rather than weathered with dirt/goo because the cars would tend to be out in the country rather than in dirty city environments. repairs (new planks in the side) could be very fresh and possibly unpainted. Running gear would be functional but less than pristine.
Hope this helps
[:P]
Thanks for all the info guys, I need all the help I can get and when it’s free that’s better yet.
“The Harven”
Canadian Pacific built two experimental 36’ Fowler Patent boxcars with drop doors in 1911, then followed up with an order for 200 of them in 1912. They were intended for grain service. In the '20s, they ordered another 3500 similar cars, but built as 40-footers. All of these cars appear to have had drop doors in the floors, but no actual “hoppers”. CP’s first true covered hopper was built in 1919: they called it a “Battleship Grain Car”, and it was rostered with their boxcars.
Wayne
I should have remembered the Fowler cars! [banghead].
Various makers and roads designed box cars with drop floors (like drop bottom Gons) and “convertible” boxcars from at least the 1890s (probably the 1880s). Some of these had a flat floor over hoppered bottom… the flat floor could be lifted up to form sloped sides inside the boxcar.
I think that the big problem was always with security and water getting in the roof hatches… which were like the icing hatches on reefers (where water didn’t matter and the ice chamber was seperate from the load… so pilfering couldn’t happen that way).
Convertible cars came as box/covered hopper/stock or any two of these. Some of the box/cattle just had two doors for one doorway each side… a boarded door and a bar door. They also tended to have small end doors for airflow and putting in feed (that’s what the notes on the drawings say… copies are somewhere in my pile of stuff…
I’ve always wondered whether the drop floor cars used the dropped floor to clean out the cars after cattle had used them.
Most of the designs didn’t last that long as far as I’m aware because they were complicated for parts and operation but, worst of all, they had a high tare weight (unloaded weight). Empty car mileage was the thing they were designed to reduce… they could run box one way and cattle the other… but all the parts had to be there (and fit/work) they reduced load space and made load for the loco to shift. I think that they were really killed off by the development of interchange rules which stopped empty car movement provided that there was a load within a short time and the car wasn’t labeled in restricted service.
Something else that wouldn’t have helped the occasional hopper floored car… most places were set up to deal with box cars with grain doors… so they wouldn’t want the hopper anyway.
Hope this helps [:P]
wjstix wrote: " Isn’t semolina grain (wheat)??" Yes, but it is processed into a powder. It clumps, and won’t slide down the slope sheets of a normal hopper car by gravity alone. Hence the reason it is shipped in PD cars such as Airlsides. Mark.
doctorwayne wrote: “Here’s a picture of a couple of scratchbuilt 36’ Fowler Patent cars that I built for my own railroad.” Very nice models, Wayne! (I considered mentioning the various hopper-bottom house cars and the like in my reply, but I decided against confusing the issue.) All the best, Mark.
Thanks, Mark. The reason that I mentioned the CPR cars was because I remembered them being mentioned in an article in Mainline Modeler concerning the Fowler boxcars. I was looking for info to build a few Fowler boxcars, as the generally excellent Proto2000 model of them had just been released. The $39.00 price tag, however, helped to rekindle my scratchbuilding interests.[;)] The mention in the article of the drop-door cars inspired the models. Shortly after I finished them, the LHS offered a number of Proto2000 bodies for these cars: they had been incorrectly lettered, and the manufacturer was offering free replacement bodies for anyone returning the incorrect ones. The LHS was selling the old bodies for $2.00 each, and I snapped up the six that were available. One of the reasons that I balked at paying the original $39.00 price, besides the fact that I’m a cheapskate, was the plastic grabirons, which I felt to be oversize, so I replaced all of them with wire ones (had to bend most of them myself, due to the odd size). I also replaced the stirrup steps and roofwalk corner grabs with metal parts, and built new roofwalks from strip styrene, as the old ones were about a foot too short. A simple floor, made from .060" styrene sheet, some “K” brake gear from the scrap box, and new Simplex trucks completed the rebuilds. I repainted and relettered the cars, using dry transfers from C-D-S.
Despite CPR’s early interest in covered hoppers, they continued to use boxcars, including 36’ Fowler Patent cars, to ship grain, right up into the 1960s. This was in part due to the lightly built branch lines in Western Canada that would not support 100 ton covered hoppers.
Wayne
They probably coopered a bunch of boxcars and shipped grain for a long time.
The PS-2 2893’s came into play in the 50’s I am currently building several Athearn RTR… ahem. KITS! undecs for my home road.
Some of my boxcars feature wood in the doors so that if they are loaded with grain, the door is simply opened to show the wood sides.
I can’t get your picture to show up, Safety Valve. The boxcar is from Tichy: the strip styrene “grain doors” are in the form of a built-up box, and can be easily removed.
Wayne
There is no picture in my post.
The link you see at the bottom is to copy and paste into your browser bar for a larger version of my Falls Valley Image
But your post shows precisely what I meant, thank you! Those look really good!
For a time I did have loads inside but found them too heavy and unstable.
So (pardon if this is a stupid question), then if X business was not able to use the drop bottoms, they would have it shipped in boxcars in bags or pallets of bags? Just wondering… I am modelling a late 1940-early 50’s brewery and I am interested how the malt (and hops) would get there in this time. Sounds like in bags unless it was a HUGE, new operation, able to use floor drops. Thanks for all the great info, guys.
Brian
I would agree that it might have been in bags. However I think boxcars loaded with grains or hops might have been spotted over a chute, doors punched out, material flowed by gravity down to a converyor system and a work group went in with shovels to get at the corners.
The bags probably weighed as much as a man can lift. The ones Ive seen in my life on the horse farm with feed were about 125 pounds and nearly as tall as a man. Lifting that weight 4 feet to load a truck from a silo (Pipe was too low for truck to back under doh!) was some work.