How would these be arranged, typically? I have a couple of 2-deck stock cars, meant for smaller animals like hogs, I suppose. Would the loading ramps come in from both ends, one high, one low, or would they use a single ramp with some sort of “drawbridge” arrangement to select the upper or lower “berths” for the little piggies?
I am by no means an expert but as I recall the upper and lower doors are side by side not exactly above each other or at least can be opnened in this manner. the discharge chute then had a ramp down from the upper one alongside a level or sloping upward ramp from the bottom one to get them in and out. PIcture a split level house stairway and you will have the general idea.
Sometimes they’re above and below each other. The stock pens near Powder River, WY (now razed) were that way.
I’ve got these Walthers/Proto cars:
So, the doors are directly above each other. (I love these kits, by the way. Easy to assemble and very well detailed.) I hadn’t thought about the side-by-side half-width ramps, but I think that’s a good option. I have a rather small, odd-shaped space for a livestock pen, so I’ll probably be scratching this one out of balsa.
Now, on to the inside of the cars - There was a thread a while back where a very nice model stock car (full-height, not double-decker) was shown with straw inside the car. A comment was made that straw was not appropriate in most cases, for reasons that real cow people understand, but I don’t recall what it was. I’m willing to forego straw in my stock cars for cattle, but how about these cars that would transport hogs? Would they have had straw inside the cars?
Hey, I just noticed this: Gotham Stock Express. Got Ham?
Yes. the double deckers were used for hogs or sheep.
‘How to Build Realistic Layouts - Industries you can Model’ has an article ‘Rolling Livestock’ (page 48) that talks about shipping livestock. Page 51 has a photo of loading sheep into a UP double deck stock car. The article notes that hogs need wet bedding to keep them cool, and there is a photo of a stock car train passing by some water spray nozzles to wet them down. This is a good in-depth article on the subject.
Go to Wikipedia .com and look up “stock car (rail)”, One of the photos shows sheep being unloaded from the upper deck of a double deck stock car. You can see part of the ramp.
This response is not going to be a lot of help to you because what I saw was only a smattering of a stockyard operation; I was atop a cow trailer and I looked out across the stock pens towards the loading tracks and could see a long line - only the tops mind you - of stock cars drawn up for loading. There was an elevated platform blocking my view of the lower part of the cars sitting there. I have always been of the impression that that elevated platform was there to facilitate the loading of the upper deck on double-deck cars.
I had the pleasure of living not far from a large hog farm while growing up. The NKP had a spur that picked up the porkers and took them to Chicago for their final moments. That Mather stock car was commonly used for pigs and this hog farm had pens with a fixed lower ramp and a temporary upper ramp that could be used with two deck cars. They didn’t always get double deckers, sometimes it was a normal single deck car. I assume it had something to do with car availabilty. The hogs always had a layer of straw and it was always watered down in the summer. Apparently pigs overheat easily and you have to keep them cooled down for them not be dead by the time they get to their destination. I think it was AAR or the Humane Society which finally set up rules about having spray stations so many miles apart - 200 sticks in my mind. The whole train had be slowly pulled through the spray station while each car (and load of pigs) got soaked down. I think this was the begining of the end for stock cars since trucks could transport hogs from Cleveland to Chicago in one day compared to 2 to 3 days by rail. The added expense of spray stations just put another nail in the coffin of the stock transport business. I saw all this when I was a kid of about 10 years old so that would have been 1956. By the time I was a freshman in high school (1960), the NKP pulled up the spur and all the pigs were moved by trucks. I don’t think I saw another stock car again until I moved to LA in 1966 and saw the Farmer John specials.
I’ve seen photos of positionable ramps, but none showed the mechanism clearly enough to build a model. I built the version below, with fixed ramps, from several photos of different ramps, so it may not be strictly prototypical. The design is logical, though, and it looks good enough for my purposes.
I added the roof specifically for hogs, although the pens will hold any type of livestock. I seem to recall reading that some stockcars carrying hogs used wet sand instead of straw, in conjunction with the watering stations. Must’ve been a lot heavier work to clean them out.[swg]
Wayne
Hogs and sheep could be transported in the double decked cars.
I built this stock yard behind my farmer’s co op in N scale. Note the siamesed ramps for loading one level, then move the car a few feet to load the other level.
If there’s a stockyard close to you, it’ll have chutes to load double deck pig trucks. The chutes for them are bout the same as for loading rail cars. Most all had upper and lower chutes; some had a single entrance with a swing gate for loading whichever ramp. Some larger yards had 2 entrances for load upper and lower decks at the same time. On either way, they were built one over the other, so cars didn’t have to be moved.
Yards that handled both hogs and cattle would have single chute for loading cattle.
One yard I remember had a single chute, which was raised or lowered by cables.
Local buying yards receiving stock would have one single 1 ton +, one for pickups, and another for stock trailer for unloading.
Hogs are hosed down in hot weather to cool’em. They can die from being to hot just like people, so most loading is done late night or early morning.
Straw was put down in the cars coming in before loading stock. Paris was also an auction barn and received feeder calves, pigs, and lambs sold for finishing. Those cars had to be cleaned out and washed down, before shipping out, empty or loaded.
Hope this helps with some questions, best I can remember from selling stock in either in Paris, or Marshall IL as a kid, the Pennsy had track that ran through there. They were taken out during CR years. The yard in Marshall is long gone, but Paris is operating, but I don’t know if the rail chutes are still there or not. I’ll be going through there tomorrow on my way to Danville, I’ll try for some photos maybe.
If memory serves, Mike from St. Louis has modeled the chutes pretty close to as I remember them at “Hormel” in Austin MN. But I’m thinking that they were more (even if not completely)atop each other. Grandpa Elmer worked there all of his life and as a kid (late 50’s & early 60’s) I got many a tour.
I would also seek away whenever I could, hike the two blocks to the gates to do railfaning as there was a lot of switching going on. Loved the sound of the old Alcos. You could sure tell the differance between them and the EMDs.
When I was a bit older I hiked a bit farther to a foot bridge that crossed multiple tracks, standing for hours watching the goings on. It is from here that the yards and chutes were able to be seen, but still at some distance.
I can’t say that the chutes were adjustable…or not, but two were configured for the two levels.