Does any livestill move by railroad, and if so how much and in what type of cars?
Paul
Do Pig (piggyback) trains count? But seriously, by the early 80’s most RR’s ran their last trains (maybe even a little sooner.) Big ship / receiving locations (KC, Ft Worth, Chicago) no longer have the facilities nor do the RR’s have the facilities to rest and water the animals en route. More meat production (slaughter houses) have been moved closer to where the animals are grown and so only the refrigerated finished product is shipped, but much of that by refrigerated truck.
It looks like our Australian bretheren still move cattle by rail. Given the vastness of Australia and the remoteness of many of the sheep / cattle stations (ranches), it probably makes more sense in their situation.
Go to Railpictures.net and search on livestock or cattle for australian photos.
none since the early to mid 1970’s. (except for the circus train). It is cheaper to move meat than livestock so the packing plants moved into the livestock raising areas and trucks took over.
dd
I remember reading an article in Trains magazine on the D&RGW fall livestock trains which ran into the mid or late 1980’s.Union Pacific ran sheep or hog cars into the 1980’s.I’m sure there were others as well.Burlington Northern stopped offering livestock service in the early or mid 1970’s.Can anyone comment on Santa Fe?
Have a good one.
Bill B
The last livestock I can personally recall moving were shipments of hogs to the SK Meat packing plant in East Baltimore. The plant would receive 1 to 2 cars per week that would arrive the B&O’s Bay View yard on the train Baltimorian. One really could tell when there was livestock in the train as it passed.
I was “mentored” at the ICG by a man named Al Watkins. (He started out by estimating it would be about two weeks before he killed me.) Anyway Al knew his stuff. Which was intermodal.
He told me the two most difficult things in the world to transport are:
-
Ice Cream
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Livestock
If you have a problem with either one of 'em and you’ll loose the load (and buy it). There is little room for recovery. You can loose a reefer unit on a load of lettuce, fix it in a reasonable time frame, and deliver the lettuce in good shape.
If Ice Cream or hogs get too hot - they’re gone.
People are packed in like cattle on the subway and amtrak. Does that count
I recall something about the UP running a train of hogs out to Los Angeles around 1994?? This was a very occasional move to the Farmer John packing plant in the LA area, and is the last I recall any livestock move by rail in the US…The majority of livestock moves ended by the early 1970’s…Hope someone else knows more on this…
In the late 70’s/very early 80’s the Conrail ran a livestock car at the head end of an eastbound train on the old Pennsy thru northwest Indiana.
Not sure if I ever snapped a shot of one.
ed
The Farmer John “specials” haven’t been run for about fifteen years or so now. They really weren’t specials because it was a pretty regular occurance. At the end of the era the HOGX cars were usually the first block on an intermodal train. As one who raised hogs for years and years it made me sick to see one of those loads bad ordered on a siding in the middle of the summer because I knew most of those animals were going to die of heat stress in that car.
Do you know what the reliability of carbon dioxide cooled reefers versus mechanical reefers is?
Carbon Dioxide is very cold in the dry ice form.
CO2 should keep a load cool even if the fans are not blowing.
Yes, Here in Queensland (Australia) We still move Cattle by rail, although it is starting to dwindle, Queensland Rail still run double-headed 40 car trains throughout the state to the various abbotoirs in the state.
Eric, I suspect that carbon dioxide-cooled reefers in their current incarnation are pretty effective, but that the latest generation of mechanically-cooled reefers has probably become just as effective and more efficient. I know that the Cryo-Trans CO2 cars could get the job done, and they entered the business with a lot of those cars. But they’re all gone now, replaced by a fleet of mechanical reefers. I haven’t seen the Simplot RCs around either lately.
As James said in the post above, QRNational in Queensland, Australia still moves plenty of cattle. Most of the cattle move in the cooler and drier months of the year, between May and November, although there are movements outside these months.
At the high point of the cattle traffic season there are about 21 trains each week from loading points in Queensland’s north-west, central-west and south-west to coastal meatworks, from Mirri (2), Cloncurry (3), Julia Creek (4), Charters Towers (1), Winton (3), Longreach (2), Clermont (3), Quilpie (2) and Dalby (1).
The longest trains, running from Mirri, Cloncurry and Julia Creek to Townsville have as many as 54 livestock cars, each carrying around 24 head, so that’s around 1300 cattle on the train. Most of the livestock cars in the fleet were converted from redundant box cars, with the body removed and replaced by a container-type crate.
Rail and road transport of livestock (QRNational used to haul sheep as well, and smaller numbers of horses, camels and goats) is subsidised by the state government, and road users (hauling as many as three trailers) are allowed to exceed the weight limits that are applied to other heavy vehicle operators on the highway network.
QRNational’s focus in the last few years has shifted towards export coal and interstate freight, and traditional tasks such as grain haulage, rural freight and livestock have seen rates rise and services decline, but it’s still possible to see cattle trains on the western trunk routes from Mt.Isa, Winton and Quilpie, and on the North Coast line between Townsville and Brisbane.
Scott
Jim Boyd’s 2001 book, THE AMERICAN FREIGHT TRAIN, says that Conrail ran two cars of steers from Chicago to Newark in bi-level, 91-ft. cars until 1989 and the Union Pacific hog move to Los Angeles “continues.” There is a shot on wikipedia showing stock cars at a watering stop in Nevada in July 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HOGX_July_1994.jpg
Perhaps the text was written by Boyd in 1999-2000 and the livestock move ended shortly thereafter?
The Rio Grande’s livestock specials last operated in 1980 (signed into law that year, the Staggers Rail Act probably allowed railroads to eliminate all remaining unprofitable livestock traffic).
I live in Peoria, Illinois, which at one time had the seventh-largest stock yard in the nation, and regular livestock shipments were probably gone by the time the Armour & Co. slaughterhouse closed in March 1967. There was some discussion about resuming the use of rail for eastbound shipments because of expansion to accommodate cattle after the Chicago stock yards closed in 1971. Occasional livestock moves into Peoria occurred until about 1979 or 1980.