When classifying cars in a yard, did railroads send stock cars loaded with pigs, sheep, cattle over a hump? Or were these handled separately with DO NOT HUMP signs? What about empty stock cars returning to point of origin for reloading?
Or did stock car loadings and operations not overlap in time with hump yards?
Thanks
I don’t know the official answer to your question, but I suspect that cars with live animals would never be humped.
I think stock cars were probably similar to the first unit trains, moving from a loading facility to an unloading facility, all in one block of cars.
Also stock had to be rested every 24 hours, so they were kept moving.
And if I remember correctly, at some point that was reduced to 16 or 18 hours. Railroads would want to get the livestock where they were going as quickly as possible - removing the livestock from the cars for rest / food / water and then reloading them took time and effort. Doing it as few times as possible would be the goal.
Hump yards actually predate dedicated stock cars too, which sounds a bit odd, but here we are. Cows or whatever were crammed into regular boxcars or open cars until the 1860s. The first hump yards date to the 1850s.
Given their unique servicing requirements, those cars would have been pulled before the train got to the hump. You’d see the same thing with any car that required special servicing. You’ve got to pull those cars full of cows to feed and water, so why send them into the bowl and have to fish them out?
I think it was 28 hours, which coud be extended to 36 hours for some types of livestock if the shipper signed the waiver for the extension. One railroader’s remenices was that the shippers that he delt with rarely signed for an extension. They figured they would get faster service without the extension.
Jeff