Regarding Stock Train operations, you might want to do some research on that, I’m sure you’ll find the answers.
Even a contemporary railroad allows for the occasional exception. What road is your stock train? From where is it traveling to?
Well technically the current answer is they don’t get stock cars any day.
Since you aren’t modeling anything real, then the answer to your question is moot. You can have stock cars spotted every 4 hours if you want.
You have said you are modeling a very large packing plant. Very large plants need a lot of cattle. Small plants need a small amount of cattle. How many cards do you want to spot?
I model the BNSF from Richmond, California up to Klamath Falls, Oregon. The stock train would run from Klamath Falls down to my hump yard (major yard) at Sacramento, where the stock cars would be cut off the Z train and put on a local and run directly up to the Bieber yard which is adjacent to the packing plant. The stock cars would be immediatly taken to the packing plant and the other cars would be left in the yard for the Beiber local to deliver later that day. Outbound cars would be returned to the hump yard for sorting and put on the appropriate outbound trains. The Z train would proceed to the intemodal yard as soon as the stock cars are cut out and power is put back on the train.
HOGX car 1990’s
Model of car built by Ortner 1966
Chickens has to eat and the chicken food around here comes by unit train.
But that’s not even close to what he’s modeling.
The largest poultry farms get unit trains, several in Arkansas and N Texas got them.
If you are getting several cars at a time, the livestock would likely first get unloaded into outdoor holding pens rather than going directly into a slaughter house. The several hundred animals will need to be inspected after the trip for health before entering the food chain. I also suspect there are valid health reasons for keeping separate holding pen areas for each type of livestock, with very thorough cleaning required if the use changes.
Stock cars would get unloaded as soon as possible on arrival at destination. That is why they would often be handled on the head end of a train; the yard engine would be standing by, ready to spot them for unloading as soon as the road power cut off. Stock traffic required precision scheduled railroading, something the railroads used to do quite well. Now it is an empty buzzword.
John
John
Your suggestion about the se[erate pens for the different types of animals is a good one. As I said in a previous post the yard engine will move the stock cars immediat;y to the packing plant upon arrival (See my prior post, about 3 posts back from this one).
There is an interesting discussion on TrainOrders a few years ago which stated when the real railroads ran stock trains. D&RGW, my RR ran them into the late 1970’s or early 1980’s - can’t remember exactly when the last train was. So my time frame being around there I could protypically run a stock train but the hard part would be finding stock cars that work for that time period.
I have been trying to get the address of the Perdue chicken plant in Salisbury MD with no luck I want to Google Earth it to see if it is rail served.
If the packing plant is close to the yard and if it isn’t and the urban local is gone then what?
Railroads got out of that business for a reason.
Truckers don’t want it but,they’re stuck with that business.
There’s Government regulations that’s needs to be followed and of course there’s PETA.
I guess that if the local is out somewhere , the yard engine would have to move the stock cars to the packing plant. You DO NOT want to have to pay for dead animals. You DO want to get the m to the packing plant s soon as possible.
Nope it doesn’t work like that…There are company and union job classifications and work agreements that must be followed by both parties.
It doesn’t look like it is, Joe.
31149 Old Ocean City Rd., Salisbury.
Scroll just a little North, and see the huge Perdue Agribusiness, which is rail served, but deals in grain. It’s all the same company.
Mike.
Americold Logistics in Fremont, NE is a rail served chicken processing plant that ships frozen chickens outbound.
They also have a facility in Russelville, AR for frozen chicken (Tyson foods plant to the east).
Could the answers to some of your questions be found in Kalmbach’s book that covers the livestock and meat packing industry?
Good possible resource. Unforunatly no one made a poultry car in N scale. I do not know of one in HO either.
Westerfield models makes some double deck cars, dont know what service.
NVM, you said you were in N scale…
Very often the packing plant and the terminating yard were close, since both were in the industrial part of a city. If they were separated, the through train might set the cars off directly to the slaughter house, or at a satellite yard that had a yard engine that would do the necessary final spot. Most major cities had multiple local yards at strategic locations, complete with yardmasters and local based industrial assignments. Mostly gone now, just as the livestock business has vanished.
If the work rules and job classification allowed a yard crew to do another man’s job which they would not. A yard man’s job was not to deliver cars but,to make up trains…Even a major terminal would have a five or four man crew (depending on era) that added and removed cabooses from trains plus switch the caboose service track.
However,some roads used a traveling switch engine to cover a ice house track and a slaughterhouse stock pens and switch out reefers. This is all that crew did. A five man crew made one trip a day to do around 4-5 hours of work.