Need some help here. My MRR club is running grain, and 2 of the three Mills are side-loading. Whoops, that mewans we need Boxcars.
And ways to mark Boxcars as Grain Only. (Since we’re limited on types of Boxcars we had run off for us by Accurail, we aren’t gonna mess with types, juat era-accurate) Originally, the instigators and I were gonna do a wedge logo, with Naptiwn written across the top and a picture of a piece of grain. Then at the last minute, the Pres says “Wait, I thought we were going to do that with the Trim film”
I don’;t know nothing about Trim film, but he was thinking yelow boxes like patches. (I knew nothing about this until last night, I was going to print the decals today…)
I’m not bad-ordering a car like that. But a yellow box with “grain Loading Only” might be a better school of thought. So I come to you guys. How does a mid-1950s Indiana railroad mark it’s Grain Boxcars?
Normally, a box car ‘suitable for grain loading’ needs the following:
Good clean interior(Class 1 box car)
Tight sealing doors
Grain Doors inserts added before loading
Special combination exterior grain doors like the Athearn model were something late in the box car era(at least for grain loading). Usually a good 40’ box car will fill the bill(just the right cubic capacity for about 40+ tons of grain). I have seen some cars stenciled with ‘grain loading’ on the door. I sort of doubt that they were restricted to grain loading, but were marked as suitable for grain loading. Just about any 40’ box car that was ‘suitable’ was confiscated in late summer for the ‘grain rush’.
With your special run ‘club cars’ - maybe a ‘Grain Loader’ script in a color patch would be sort of neat. I doubt there would be any ‘assigned’ service back then for grain. Sometimes 50’ box cars were used, but they would fill out capacity wise before ‘cubing out’. Many times special doors/load securing features would restrict them to other services.
It doesn’t. Any clean class A boxcar is a grain boxcar. Very few if any boxcars were “grain only” in the 1950’s. Why buy a boxcar for a commodity that is only shipped 3 or 4 months a year in any major quanitity?
Just confirming Jim’s comments, it is just a standard 40’ boxcar. Very much preferred were the cars with narrow doors, 6’ or less, since it was easier to cooper the interior grain doors. Some roads would have a stencil “Clean Lading Only”. Although this was for general service, certainly boxcars for grain loading would be selected from that type. Elevators would (and still do) reject cars with dirty interiors.
In Canada there were boxcars stenciled with a wheat sheaf for grain loading, but they were ones upgraded with government money as a result of the infamous Crows Nest Agreement. Subsequent legislation expanding the scope forced the railways to carry grain at 1898 rates, which after 80 years of inflation was a major financial burden. The rate is now finally history, but during its last few years the government realized it had to fund upgrades to branch lines and equipment to keep the grain handling network functional. The Crowsnest Rate was a sacred cow for the prairie farmers, and eliminating it was a major political challenge, to say the least.
Wonderful info guys. The club still wants to mark cars specific to grain ops, (even if it don’t make sense, I do what the Pres wants…) but we’ll drop the "only"s for sure. Lts us show “clean” cars vs everything else, and does stick a monkeywrench in operations. I’ll naba pic when the cars ae done, And pass along the rest of the info too.
Funny you mentioned the grain logos from Canada, I believe those were the kindling to this whole idea. The original was that we had three cars with the wooden slats in them, those three were just not enough to handle grain service, and then someone found the ppictures of the Canada cars without explanations on them.
Those wooden grain doors should not be visible in service though; you’d only see them while a boxcar is being loading, not while it’s moving. The doors would be coopered, the box filled, and then the car door should be closed. And to empty the car the grain doors are removed so the grain can be shoveled out.
Some other cars had a block of text there indication “FOR NEWSPRINT, GRAIN, FLOUR, SUGAR OR OTHER HIGH CLASS MERCHANDISE ONLY”
CN for a while used a tag system, with a yellow circle and a letter inside it. Unfortunately I don’t have my reference with me indicating what each letter stood for, but “A” was high class clean loading, and “X” was rough, dirty freight only.
You can see a couple examples of this classification tag here, the yellow circle left of the door:
even though clean cars in good condition were preferred for grain loading, sometimes in desperation a less than perfect box car would be used. an old trick was to stuff pieces of burlap bag into cracks and holes in the floor and liner so grain would not leak out.
we used to divert (hijack) suitable empty box cars to the “Q” during the grain rush because they paid a five dollar cash bounty for good clean mty 40 footers. they didn’t care who it belonged to. it was a no-no but they would’ve had to fire most of the Big Four employees in E St Louis to break it up. not to mention those on several other connecting roads.
Cars were inspected after every load and OKed for grain. If more cars were needed the cars that were not OKed for grain were sent to the RIP track. The GN would reline walls with plywood and do just about anything required to get cars up to grain standards. Cars could be marked with chalk or tagged on the tag boards. Primarily the inspector’s reports determined what cars went for grain.
Dear Flashwave: A few years ago I painted, lettered and modified about 60 ,40 foot boxcars for grain loading on the Great Lakes Northern RR , one model railroad of a round robin group . The operation is empties in, loads out. I did this by gluing the doors open, with grain doors for the empties (30 cars) and gluing the doors shut for the loaded cars (30) cars. The empties came into the huge elevator complex as a transfer run from a large yard and the fulls went back to the yard for inclusion in an outbound road freight. This freight then proceeded to the other end of the layout. Between sessions the layout owner re staged these and other freight trains.
Tag boards is a new one to me. And because we don’t have the paper system that the real RRs do, we’re marking cars insstead.
Most of the club cars I’m marking don’t have doors that can be opened, or opened easily. The MILW box’s doors I finally pried closed last night, so it’s grain basin is now shut up. Our Ops is a rather simple one, and we don’t have full grain complexes, most of them are just local farmers Co-ops. Otherwise the empties/loads would work. But we just hum a few bars and pretend.
Man I wish I’d gotten here sooner (knew about it) and given him this info but oh well. I like the C logo on the CN, but I think I’m going to hybrid the “clean lading” onto a yellow box (since I cannot print white lettering) instead, so people know what it means. Also, boxes are easier to cut out (and print) than are circles.
Some old-time modellers like John Allen used to use a physical “tab” system to route cars, either a thumbtack that fit into a hole on the roof or an H shaped piece of plastic. The colors on the tab would tell you something like where the car was going or whether it was empty or full. You could do something like that, put some type of tab on top of boxcars intended only for grain service. If you use the H shaped plastic, you can turn it over so say one side is green indicated a loaded car and orange on the other side indicating it’s empty. That way you don’t have to permanently ruin a car by adding unrealistic markings on it.
Bleck, no thank you. I’m having enough trouble getting tacks out of the clb’s layout as it is. I’d rather promote a sign created from a base fact than a giant’s tack.
Well I never used the tabs (the H shaped ones don’t leave a hole and don’t stick you if you pick them up wrong) it was just an alternative to lettering a car incorrectly. Keep in mind the prototype “clean lading only” lettering is very small and would be almost unreadable in HO scale. The things mentioned liked certain colors and graphics for cars designed to haul wheat or grain didn’t real exist until maybe the late sixties or seventies so wouldn’t be right for the 1950’s or earlier.
Depending on who you ask, NWR is either running 1953, 54, or 59. The decal for Clean Lading ends up being about 1/8 of an inch, in size 5 font. Yes, most illegible. Especially when the Pres hands you a sheet of paper to do it on that SUCKS as printing paper, and washes the ink off when I try to sealcoat the sheet… Oh well, tis always something. Pics tonight, or my name isn’t Fred.
Of course, just because the president thinks doing something is a good idea, doesn’t mean it is one - especially when it creates unnecessary work and ends up being prototypically questionable anyway. Generally, model railroad clubs are supposed to be democracies, where everyone has a say. If the president is wrong (as he is here) perhaps it should be brought up for discussion and a vote by everyone??
I think that you’re missing an opportunity to use non-home road cars for grain loading. If your railroad was desperate for grain empties, suitable cars from any railroad, provided they were headed in the direction of “home”, would be pressed into service.
However, if you’ve got a bunch of custom painted home road cars and don’t want to go to a lot of trouble or expense to designate them as “suitable for grain loading”, add an “A” in a coloured circle, as shown below:
Mine were done with a spray can of yellow automobile paint, using a plastic template of various-size circles and shapes from a kid’s geometry set. I simply chose an appropriately-sized circle, then masked over all of the others. You could just as easily cut a circle opening into a sheet of paper or cardstock, or drill a piece of sheet styrene with the proper bit. Hold the stencil close to, but not touching, the car’s side and spray. The “A” is from a dry transfer alphabet set - the small size of the lettering means that there are a substantial number of "A"s on each sheet, cutting the expense. A little light (or heavier) weathering will hide the slightly indistinct edges of the sprayed circle.
If we had had more time, it would have.m bt when this came up, were were 1.5 weeks away from hosting CIRROPS/OPSIG at the club for their Midwest show, No time and the regular meeting wasn’t until next weekend. Or rather, it was brought up way earlier but nothing ever came of it until then. Partly my fault, I’ll admit, but not all.
zThing is, from President’s theory is not wrong. He wanted cars specifically marked fro grain, which should read marked for clean commodity, and since we aren’t doing car-cards and such, the only other coption was a decal on the carside. As far as I’m concerned For the NWR, it’s justified on the following:
At least one railraod, the CN, used a yellow marking
Several railroads, including again the CN, had a “clean lading only” stencil on the car to the right of the door. Others were similarly marked for clean commodities in some way or another
NWR needed a way to identify cars specifically in clean load service for its operators.
I’m willing to defend his theory. Now, as for execution, that’s the debate I’m seeing here. It should be Clean Lading, not Grain which is what the second set (see bleow) reads. Sortof. Did when it left the printer…
[quote user=“doctorwayne”]
I think that you’re missing an opportunity to use non-home road cars for grain loading.&
