Way back when (1970’s) I used to hostle for AtSF at the Hobart yard in LA. UP has yards in the vicinity and I think Farmer John had a rendering plant/ meat processing plant in the same vicinity. Between the Bandini fertlizer plant next to Hobart and the farmer John plant life could be pretty smelly. Anyhow, someone told me that UP brought the hogs for farmer John in from their line from Nevada and the pig trains had to stop out in the desert to water the hogs every so often. Does anybody ship animals/livestock today by rail? If not why not?
Federal law required that livestock be unloaded, fed, and watered every 28 hours if cattle were involved. I don’t recall if the same rule applied to hogs. It seems that hogs could be fed and watered in the cars if the animals had room to lie down while in the stock car. Because of this requirement, railroads really did not like to be in the livestock shipping business. As a result, they dropped that business in the 1960’s or very early 1970’s, at the latest. Today, livestock is shipped by truck.
The UP was still hauling hogs in the HOGX cars through Cajon when I started hanging out there in 91’. They quit shortly thereafter.
I’ve a photo of UP stock cars running in a doublestack train entering North Platte in May of 1988, a startling sight!
I remember back in the late 70’s and early 80’s Conrail would run a livestock car on an eastbound train thru Valparaiso on the ex PRR.
I dont think I ever took a photo as I was locomotivecentric at the time.
I think I recall something about Kosher requirements regarding the killing of the livestock…although I could be wrong.
With that in mind…I just sold some “KOSHER” decals to a tank car company for new cars. That was cool.
ed
You could see a livestock loading facility from the MIdway “L” line (Chicago) in the 1990’s. I remember seeing an actual stock car parked there from the “L”. Woulda’, Coulda’, Shouda’ taken a picture of the moo cows being loaded. It is my understanding that the cattle took their final ride on the head end of hot intermodals to Kosher slaughter in the New York City area.
Somebody finaly wised up and put a Kosher slaughter facility in Iowa, and that ended that. There’s a good, somewhat controversial, book about that facility in Iowa titled “Postville”. The book does include a train wreck episode. (no animals were injured in the train wreck)
Federal law required livestock transported by rail or water to be let out every 24 hours for feed and water. (You could keep 'em in the stock car if they were going to reach “Final” destination within 36 hours; and in this case “Final” generally had a whole different meaning.)
This law was never extended to trucks. So livestock can be kept in a semi for days on end with no food or water (and they are). Also, the truck rates were never regulated, and they could fluctuate with market demand. Rail rates were regulated and fixed.
After trucking became practical, the railroads never had a chance to hang on to this freight. Regulation made it impossible for the railroads to respond to the market changes and they had to be much more “humane” in their
In my early teens in the 1950’s I had the job of bedding livestock cars with hay prior to them being loaded at the local cattle stockyard. I took 3 bales from a box car and busted the bales and spread it on the wood floor. I was paid 35 cts per bale or $1.05 per car. The cars were basically wood with wood slat sides and 45 degree outside iron bracing. About 45 ft in length as I recall. My family worked for the Katy in Oklahoma and thats how I got the job. The hay was baled from “grass” on the RR right of way, had every kind of briar and stickers you can imagine. There were usually about 10 cars, 2 or 3 times a week and were mostly shipped North from the McAlester, OK yard.
wboatner
Alabama