I have just completed a covered sand storage bin for my 1940’s era small steam loco facility. It has two covered roof hatches for filling the bin with sand for drying. My question is how was the sand transported to the siding and how was it transfered from the boxcar/gon/covered hopper(?) into the bin? Was it shipped in bags and hand dumped into the bins or was it shipped in bulk and shoveled/wheeled/conveyed directly into the bin? I want to detail the scene correctly but need to know how the transfer was routinely handled. Thanks for your help.
The storage bins didn’t necessarily have to be covered because they held “green” or undried sand, but some storage bins were roofed or enclosed. The drying took place in a special hopper built above a stove in the sandhouse. (Which is why the sandhouse was a proverbially popular place to gossip and swap stories – it was always warm.)
In the steam era sand was rarely carried in covered hoppers – there weren’t that many of those, yet – but more typically in gondolas. It could be shoveled into a covered bin, but at larger sandhouses it was often dumped from a gon with bottom doors on an elevated trestle running into or over the bin.
In New Orleans the Illinois Central used a clamshell locomotive crane to unload sand from gons and transfer it to an open bin next to the sandhouse. That steam-era arrangement lasted into diesel days, so I got to see it at work, and got a look at the drying hopper in the sandhouse too.
So long,
Andy
Box cars were also used to carry bulk items such as grain, sugar, cement, sand, and coal. Railroads even converted some box cars (mostly in the 1940s and 1950s?) to covered hopper cars to better handle fine granular material such as cement, sand, and sugar. The modifications included roof-top hatches, interior slope sheets, and underfloor outlets. An older SP example is single-sheated box car no. 111903, class B-50-15 which was so converted in 1941 for cement service and later used in locomotive sand service.
If the sand was manhandled (without machinery), I would presume loading/unloading a box car would be easier than a gondola because it wouldn’t entail lifting the shovel above the car side.
Mark