and he wonders -
Pickle Cars - Heinz and Claussen, (plus a few other pickle packers), owned a number of cars for transporting cucumbers in brine from the farm areas to their canning plants. Some had four wooden tanks on a flat car with a roof with hatches for loading.
I know that it was back-breaking work to load the cars with wheelbarrows, but the question is - how were the cars unloaded when the got to the pickle works. Anybody know how it was done?..
might want to email heinz?
stay safe
Joe
and he notes -
Thanks, but I’ve already checked. No one at Heinz has a clue. I’ve checked with Claussen and they haven’t used rails for shipments in decades and nobody is old enough to remember.
Wire baskets on long handles.
Dave H.
carpy,
Interesting Q. Try posting on the Classic Trains forum and if you get an answer bring it back here. If that doesn’t work try an e-mail to the editorial staff at CT. Id bet they could find the answer.
Jay
and he notes -
Whaddya know - someone at Heinz searched their archives and found out how they did it and emailed me:
The car was spotted on an elevated grade track next to the canning factory and the cucumbers along with the brine were siphoned out with a hose. The last few cukes were dipped out with buckets by a crew that entered the car. When empty and cleaned out, the car returned to the brine plant for a refill.
They said that the ‘pickles’ weren’t pickles until they were processed, as cucumbers were used in other products. The cars were called “Pickle Cars” because of the Heinz Pickle advertisement on the sides, but they were really used to haul cucumbers in brine.
They also noted that some cars had wooden sides like refrigerator cars for cold climate shipments, (in answer to my question about freezing in the winter).
So that’s how it was done and though it seems ridikiless, the ‘pickle cars’ were really ‘pickleless’ - hauling cukes was was the reason they were built…
Makes sense. There were a couple of plants in the western Michigan area where I grew up at which I remember seeing pickle cars, in the late 1950s or possibly the early '60s. They didn’t have elevated tracks, so, armed with the information in the foregoing, must have been locations were pickl…cucumbers! were put into the brine.
Places like those would have had to be supported by cucumber farms fairly close to the loading point, but nowadays those seem to be gone, too. There is still, I believe, a Heinz pickle plant in Holland. If the Heinz facility I remember delivered pickl…cucumbers! for this plant, it was a real short haul…certainly less than ten miles.
The other facility was owned by Glaser, Crandall and Co. I don’t know where their processing plants were, but certainly nowhere near the loading point I remember, which was in the middle of a small village (the cukes had to have been trucked in). Hmmm…I have the Crandall name in my ancestry on my paternal grandmother’s side…maybe I’ll try that resource!
Thanks for the story. Lionel has always made some strange model trains, but most of the time there is a prototype behind their design. Actually, at one time I think Athearn made a model of these "vat"cars, too. Did your source say how many cars were made, or if any are still in existance, never mind use. Fun railroad trivia.[swg]
Correct…I used to have an Athearn pickle car…I think they made it in both open and closed versions–Heinz, of course!
It’s nice that someone at Heinz went out of their way to look that info up for ya. Maybe you emailed your question to a railfan?! [8D] Or maybe they just don’t have anything better to do! Either way, it was nice of them!
I have a lionel pickel car, also have a radioactive toxic waste car that glows green!
Adrianspeeder
If you tickle my pickle, I’ll ravish your relish!!!
It’s just a coincidence, but I just made that up earlier today because my wife had pickles and relish on her hot dog!!
Wow, now I know all about something that I never even knew existed…
There’s always something going on around here.