Back in the bad old days (before grain moved in covered hoppers), unloading a box car of unbagged grain involved:
My question is, “How long did this normally take assuming a typical 40’ boxcar and the optimum number of laborers?”.
From this thread of a few years back"A good crew could do a boxcar in about a 1/2 hr. depending how hot it was and the type of grain, but at the end they still had to finish with a good old broom and shovel."
Some of the larger, busier grain elevators had a contraption that tipped a grain boxcar sideways and then raised one end and then the other, to empty the grain.
This probably required less than 5 minutes to empty a car.
Thanks for the link. I must not hold my mouth right or something but I’ve never been able to get the search function to work very well. Maybe I ought to try again.
Some good info at that link. The idea of one rail being higher than the other had not occurred to me. That would sure make an interesting detail. I’m guessing that a two-track unloading bay like I’m planning for a free lanced export elevator would be set up to unload to the outside — not between the two tracks — so the rails nearest each other would be elevated. It will be an eye-catcher when the cars on the two tracks are leaning away from each other.
There were mentions of things like that in the link chutton01 provided. Any idea when those would have been used? I’m stuck in 1943. Would shakers have been used then? I’m pretty sure rotating the whole box car would not have been used that early but I suppose it’s possible.
Unloading Box Car 1924.
http://imagescn.technomuses.ca/structures/index_view.cfm?photoid=-117070786&id=39
Thank You.
No, thank YOU.
I would never have guessed this would have been used as early as 1924. That picture kind of says I was completely wrong on that score.
I don’t think I’ll try to model that … at least not an operating model. Maybe a longer-longer-than-really-necessary unloading shed alongside the elevator.
Off Topic?
Coal and Briquettes were loaded at some tipples as shown here.
http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca/cura/spalding/industry/017.html
http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca/spalding/images/industry/0023.jpg
Some old box cars had small sliding doors in the car ends into which curved chutes could be inserted for loading coal to keep weight over trucks.
Thank You.
Western Grain Journal, April 21, 1921
OTTUMWA BOX CAR UNLOADER
Device Reduces Labor and Saves Time - Loads As Well As Unloads
Present-day methods requires the installation of labor saving machinery, and success will be met by those only who are prepared to eliminate unnecessary cost, and to increase production and be able to operate their plants under the most favorable circumstances.
Usually nine men are required to unload box cars at large elevators, terminals and transfer plants. In order to unload many cars per hour or day, it is necessary to have a number of unloading pits, also a great amount of tools and equipment. This requires an extensive track arrangement, considerable yard room for such tracks and extensive buildings to cover these unloading pits. At every large unloading plant delays have many times been occasioned by failure to secure enough labor to unload cars within the allotted “free time.” This results in serious handicap to railroad management, to the public who needs the cars, and is a direct financial loss through the payment of demurrage to the owners of the plant. With a multiplicity of unloading pits, a complicated conveyor system is necessitated. Such system is extremely expensive and costs money to maintain and operate. At docks, terminals, storage yards and other points, it is often desirable to load box cars as well as unload. The Ottumwa Unloader which is manufactured by the Ottumwa Box Car Loader Co. at Ottumwa, Iowa, solves these problems satisfactorily and is also a loader, and will load cars even more rapidly than it will unload, without any change to machine. In lo
The box car unloader shown above looks similar to what I saw (from a poor angle outside the fence) at a grain elevator in Thunder Bay ON in 1976. If my memory serves me right, it took about 5-10 minutes to empty the car.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_handling_in_canada
About 19 minutes in it shows a box car being unloaded at a terminal elevator. States it takes about 7 minutes to unload.
Jeff
I wonder what effect such shaking and rotation such grain unloaders would have on truss-rod wood-underframe boxcars, which weren’t excluded fron interchange service till the 1930s. Where such cars excluded from use in these unloaders (sort of the 1920s equivalent of “Do Not Hump”…although there were hump yards in the 1920s as well), or did they just have to tighten everything up after the car was unloaded?
Haven’t had time to read your entire post, wanswheel, but two things have already surprised me. 1) This contraption was intended to be used both for unloading and loading and, 2) It was advertised as handling any kind of “loose bulk material”. Were “crushed rock, ores, coal, sand and gravel” ever normally shipped in box cars?
That is a fascinating video, Jeff; thanks. Couldn’t help noticing all the people involved. Canada’s (and probably the USA’s) law concerning grain shipments appear to be a Full Employment Act.
Interesting! I must say the Canadian Film Board put together some high quality ‘slice of life’ films detailing Canada and it’s rail based operations of the 40’s.
With all the sampleing and grading that takes place, according to the film, the must have been a number of Bernine Madoff types in the Canadian grain ‘pipeline’.
Not usually. Bulk material typically went in hoppers if it could get wet, and boxcars if it couldn’t. Some sand may have been shipped by boxcar to avoid it getting damp, but it was likely bagged. Of course precious metal ore mostly traveled by boxcar.
Took me about five seconds once…
Of course, the car wasn’t supposed to be grabbed in the retarder and hit by the load behind it, but I buried the switch just outside the retarder.
Wasn’t a clean job of unloading, but those 40-footers held a whole heap of corn!
Born and raised in the Rust Belt, I hear “ores” and subconciously prefix it with “iron”. I know precious metal ores moved in box cars in the late 19th Century; it just isn’t part of my experience.
Did precious metal ores ever move very far? I’ve always understood the mills and smelters to be pretty close to the mines.
All of the coal that went past us in Irricana, AB from the Atlas Coal Mine at East Coulee was shipped in boxcars. There were interior “coal doors” made of lumber as opposed to the “grain doors” made of double layered corrugated cardboard.
And yes, shaker machines were used for unloading at some locations, although I did read on a Canadian RR forum once about an individual who had a summer job in the sixties working on a crew who hand bombed coal out of cars.
Bruce
I can tell you about one situation that believe me, very few people knew about at the time.
The Cominco lead/zinc mine in Trail, BC also produced a laundry list of other minerals in trace amounts, one of which was gold. And if you keep producing trace amounts, eventually you get a pile, and eventually that pile grows into a boxcar load. And before Canada went off of the “gold standard” mines could only sell their production to the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa, ON.
So, when the time came, a call was placed to the Yardmaster in Penticton, BC for a empty express fruit refer without ice to be sent to Trail. This car was loaded with the gold and placed in with the other head end traffic on the EB passenger train. Once that train was east of Trail all anybody would ever think was there goes another carload of delicious BC fruit. This car was switched into the EB Montreal section of “The Dominion” at Medicine Hat, AB and taken to Ottawa. A total trip of several thousand miles. And no load was ever robbed.
Bruce