Just a quick random question. When railroads shipped cattle, did they just mix the stock cars in with any old freight train headed in that direction, or did they have whole trains entirely dedicated to the movement of live beef?
Cattle were generally hauled with the regularly scheduled freight train headed in that direction. I imagine there were special “cattle trains” as well, but aside from maybe coal, the advent of “unit trains” (trains consisting of nothing but one type of cargo) is comparatively recent.
It has been decades since I saw a stock car in a train – I am thinking maybe mid 1960s – and that was one isolated car in a mixed freight train. I can’t remember if it was loaded or empty. By the 1960s movement of livestock by rail was getting pretty rare, very rare by the 1970s. I seem to recall reading that as the era came to end, if there was going to be livestock shipped by rail it tended to be a large shipment all at once, so perhaps it was something of a livestock “unit train.” The NP had some large modern stock cars, I think the UP did too.
I suspect the railroads tended to bunch stock cars together in a train because of the rules requiring that at certain intervals the animals be allowed out and watered and fed. Sometimes these intervals were between yards. It would be more efficient if all such cars were together even if that meant reblocking the train elsewhere.
By the way, as livestock moves became rare some railroads used their stock cars for other purposes. The Rock Island among others lined the inside of the car with plywood and used it, if memory serves, to haul grain during the fall grain rush in the Plains! Presumably the car was thoroughly cleaned first but nonetheless the wood on that car would have been thoroughly soaked and permeated with … well, with byproducts.
Care for another piece of toast by the way?
Dave Nelson
Most of the railroads ran their mainline loaded stock cars as scheduled movements akin to a unit train. This allowed them to meet the Federal rules for watering and resting the stock enroute in trackside pens without delaying other freight. Many of these moves were scheduled one direction only; the cars made their way back home either as a section of another train or intermeshed with miscellaneous cars in a general freight move. A good example of this kind of operation was the MKT’s Katy Packer.[dinner][C=:-)]
One common feature of trains hauling cattle is a “drover’s caboose”: a few cowboys would tag along in the caboose with the crew, to help take care of the cattle on the trip. Sometimes a larger sort of caboose, with added passenger areas, was used for this purpose, although regular cabeese were also used for this.
Livestock, I’d imagine, is a seasonal business–until 1966 when the rail line was cut off, some railroads in California ran “State Fair Specials”, offering 4-H clubs free livestock shipping to the California State Fair in Sacramento. This would mean a bunch of extra livestock trains coming into Sacramento in August. I don’t know if other agricultural states had similar sorts of institutions, but it seems likely.
In the early '70s Penn Central would haul the cattle cars (70 and 89 footers at the time) in the Truc Trains. That way they could get them from Chicago to Philly or New York without having to stop for water/feed/exercise. By that time the cattle cars were not common, but they came through often enough that you could count on seeing at least one a day.
I worked for PennCentral in Chicago in the mid '70s. By that time we were only shipping a few cattle cars per week east. It was almost always two of the 89 foot cars at a time and they always went on the head end of a Truc Train right behind the power.
[#welcome] and thanks for the interesting info. Any idea where they came from and where they were going??
I live in the middle of cattle country, Nebraska, and farmed for years. (owned my own cattle, too.) Union Pacific regularly shipped hogs to California packers as recently as the mid 90’s. Once I sold hogs to that packing company and they were picked up and loaded on a train in eastern Nebraska. Those hog trains were about the fastest of any train between Omaha and Los Angeles.
I believe, as a general rule, livestock cars were usually on the front end of a train if it wasn’t a total stock train. They could be switched in and out better.
Seasons, two in cow-calf country. April to June to haul cow and calf pairs to summer pastures. This was often done in the mountains. (DRGW) September and October were the other season, to bring them down from summer pasture for weaning.
Steers for fattening were often hauled to summer pastures before the advent of large feedlots. I’d say,prior to the 60’s.
One other point. While researching CBQ routes through Nebraska, I found a 1926 survey map showing a half dozen “ranch” spurs in the panhandle and sandhills. Larger ranches had their own personal “loading pens”.
My experience is, when cattle were ready to ship, they were loaded onto cattle cars and then if any other cars were likely candidates for that consist , they were added.
Miked
exSPcowboy
At the height of the business of hauling cattle the Rock Island had both cattle trains and stock cars run on regular freights. [:D] The cattle trains were usually headed for the stock yards of the major cities - Chicago, Omaha, etc.
Charles
I know that there were federal regulations governing the transportation of cattle though don’t know specifically what they are/were or when came about. What I do recall about it trying to think back more than a half century when I lived with my granddaddy who was a general stores foreman at a major SP yard (Tucson) was that most cattle trains coming through were ‘unit trains’. On the ‘shortline’ spurs, say from Benson to Patagonia in southeastern Arizona, they would send up the mixed daily and whenever there were cattle to load out empties in it and so cut the cattle cars into a boxcar or two and maybe a coach ‘way back when’. However, upon arrival in Benson at the mainline juntion the cattle would be held off-car in a trackside corral until shortly before a cattle train would be coming through. At that point then be reloaded and cut into that for their continuing journey… presumabley to the packing houses in the Vernon packing house district of Los Angeles, CA.
The purpose of off-loading the cattle on the order of every 8 hours of rolling was more than to just feed and water them but to also REST them. The cattlemen (in a generic sense including all involved in the industry) had found that if they didn’t do that, then the constant jostling of the cattle over time would exhaust them and cause them to lose weight excessively. So if they were going to proceed to any destination at a great distance (say the 500 miles from Tucson to L.A., or more, for example), they could be counted on to be off-loaded at least twice, possibly more times, during that journey.
As a model railroader building my first ‘big’ HO almost double-garage-sized layout–all steam era that I grew up with, one of the things I intend to have on it is some of the cattle ranching/processing industry. So, as the ‘ranches’ will be out in the ‘countryside’, that is how I intend to treat with them–like as if picking up from Patagonia on the shortline (although Patagonia per se isn’t on this pike–but the same principa
BTW, the advent of “unit trains” is not a relatively recent phenomena. A P.F.E. (Pacific Fruit Express) ‘reefer block’ was a unit train, often consisting of a hundred cars or more… all decked out in PFE SP/UP (jointly owned) reefer orange… and reefer blocks were run from late in the 19th century. The SP also ran their one-time famous “Overnight” express trains on the coastline back in the 1930s between L…A… and S.F., all painted black or silver cars heralded as such in the consist but consisting of drygoods transport rather than perishables. Both of these were types of unit trains, though the vernacular of the times didn’t know of the ‘word’ as we use it today.
There were, of course, other examples, too, from other roads. 
A lot of cars of the same type running on the same train in the same general direction isn’t a unit train, it’s a block of cars. Unit train denotes a single commodity in a specific train to a single customer, hauled at a reduced rate. Before 1960 or so, unit trains were illegal by Federal law, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for railroads to blow money by preblocking a lot.
A steam-era train full of reefers is nothing more than a coincidence, or maybe scheduled planning. In the good old days, many freight trains were scheduled by timetable as second or third class trains, and had specific scheduled times to (try to) meet. A railroad that dealt with a “hot” commodity on a regular basis would schedule a specific train to carry that commodity as a matter of good customer relations, and as a way to keep that business. My road of interest, the NKP, regularly ran reefer blocks (meat, produce and booze) from Chicago to Buffalo (and NY City, via the Erie or DL&W). Those trains were made up of blocks of cars, and usually looked sort of like unit trains, but they weren’t. Once the train got to Buffalo, the cars went in all directions, from Washington DC
OK, you make a fair semantic argument… and I did call them reefer blocks.
But I’d beg to differ with you that the SP’s reefer blocks (or UP’s) didn’t all go to a specific and single destination (or the Overnights for that matter–though I have no idea what commodity they carried between the two metros), and in that context then they were certainly kin to ‘unit trains’. BTW, a cantaloupe block out of southern Arizona headed for either Los Angeles of Chicago had priority over everything except perhaps the Golden State (CRI&P/SP) or the Sunset Limited (SP), even the 2nd class passenger trains such as the Argonauht and the Imperial, and I can guarantee you that they didn’t just peel off cars before getting to a destination. Furthermore, the vast majority of them WERE single-commodity trains made up at the vast production fields of the southwest and pacific. The same applied to a tomato block coming out of the San Joaquin Valley headed for New Jersey… it didn’t break-down until it arrived there (one of the strange things about the 1930s and 40s was that tomatoes were sometimes being shipped en bloc from California to New Jersey while at the same time being shipped en bloc from New Jersey to California… ah, I guess you’d have had to have lived back then… and there) ;). These trains were in no way considered as being ‘3rd class extras’ and were definitely pre-planned for and had the right-of-way over virtually everything else.
Whoops, sorry… I seem to have led this thread OT.
Have in hand a supplement to the Rockdale Reporter, Rockdale, Texas published in 2004 – it’s a historical look-back.
On pg 16 it is stated that in the early days of the 1900’s “about 10 cars of cattle were shipped daily from here to the stockyards in St. Louis.” Living in the area today, it’s hard to believe there was that much bull to ship[:D]
At any rate it was shipped on the IGN RY (International Great Northern later known as the Missouri Pacific)
Somewhere I read that there were 40-50 head to the car – abt 500 head a day?
Back in the 50’s and 60’s on the Santa Fe southern Division here in Texas livestock was a very big biz.Every evening TSF ( regular frt.West from Temple.)usually stopped at Lampasas and would pick up one to five cars of Cattle. Most days already loaded from trucks backing up to the cars on the stock track. Further West at Lometa cattle would be loaded and cars spotted to the chute by TSF. Usually 3 to 5 cars.Then TSF pulled down to the West End of the small yard at Lometa and on Tue.Thur.and sat. would pick up the connection from 53-54 the San Saba District local.This would include 20 to 40 cars of livestock.(cattle and Sheep both.)Livestock was always carried on the head end to prevent injury from slack action.However I remember lots of trips on TSF with a 5 unit 100 class(FT) units and 140 to 150 cars out of Lometa to Brownwood.The slack action on the hogbacks there with that many cars and that old power had to injure lots of cattle.
The San Saba District local was another story . It was mostly livestock. On the return trip from Eden with a side trip tp Menard was big time cattle and sheep country. There was a man contracted to load stock. He had a 1947 Plumouth Coupe. He had a Judas Goat that sat in the front seat with him and chewed tobacco. This guy drove ahead of the train and was ready to load when the train arrived at a station. The Judas goat would run up the chute into the cars and the Sheep would follow . When they were loaded the guy whistled and the goat ran out over the backs of the sheep.This train usually brought about 40 loads of stock into Lometa.
Every spring the Owens Brothers Ranch in San Saba would load several trains of yearlings to Colorado to summer pastures. This was fun. Caboose hop out of Temple at 0400. Pick up 75 empty stock cars at Lometa. Go out on the branch and load cattle and eat BBQ all day. Return to Lometa and run to Brownwood in 16 hours. They can not get over the road today like we did.
UP had a regular “livestock Dispatch” train that ran into LA.
When there were just a few loaded stock cars they would be cut in on the head end, not only to facilitate switching for rest and watering stops but to minimize injury due to slack action.
To ilustrate how time sensitive cattle shipments were: one night when I was working third trick opr at Oxnard I had a message to notify a ranch in Santa Susana (now Simi Valley)when the GGM (a Coast Line eastbound manifest train) was approaching so that they could load their cattle into semi trailers and meet the train at a grade crossing and load the cattle directly onto the train as it waited on the main line.
I remember cattle movements when I was a kid–SP didn’t have a lot of them, but occasionally they would run stock from the Valley to the mountains during the summer, when the Valley dried up, but the mountain pasture was still good. The cattle cars were at the head of the train and cut out at the various high-country locations where the ranchers had summer grazing. As to the reefer movements mentioned in a couple of posts, out here in the west, the trains were run east as solid fruit extras. Then they were broken up in Omaha or Kansas City (or wherever) and sent in regular expedited freight trains to the East coast. That’s why you very seldom saw a solid fruit train east of the Mississippi. SP/UP, WP and Santa Fe were famous for their solid fruit blocks heading east. Same thing happened with GN and NP and MILW in the Northwest.
Tom