Are covered hoppers correct for shipping unrfined sugar beets in northern Colorado? My era is circa 1950. Thanks.
Don’t know about Colorado but here in California the Sugar Beets were transported in Open Gondolas with raised sides and open hoppers. Don’t know why they would need to be in covered hoppers as they are generally stored outside until processed into refined sugar.
Sugar beet cars always look pretty beat (no pun intended) up in photos probably because they sat unused for most of the year. The wooden extensions often look like drift wood. http://espee.railfan.net/freight_sugar-beet-gons.html
One thing that makes sugar beet loads interesting is that some railroads such as the CB&Q would bring steam out of dead lines into the very late 1950s just to handle the extra trains caused by sugar beet season. And the Great Western stayed in steam for a long time. http://www.boulderrail.org/history/gwr/gwr.html
Dave Nelson
Sugar beets are almost always loaded in open top cars, either specific beet cars or open top hoppers. I have never seen covered hoppers used.
Dave H.
Don’t know about the beets, but onions were transported by the Santa Fe through Colorado and elsewhere in reefers with the roof hatches opened when it was above freezing. Sorry to be off topic.
Not really off topic at all. Onions were presumably for consumer consumption and had to be kept both fresh and visually appealing. Sugar beets were headed for industrial processing and the consumer would never see them, so open top and exposed to the elements was fine. If regular beets were shipped by rail they were likely shipped in the same manner as onions.
Say, all this talk of food is … have a great Thanksgiving everyone!
Dave Nelson
SP used old wood side gondolas with either plywood or wood slat extentions. I remember 100-150 car trains of sugar beets going to the Spreckles plant at Spreckles Jct near Manteca. When they cooked the beets it really smelled, very musch like a paper mill.
In Michigan, sugar beets were hauled in open hoppers.
rclarkdc,
There’s a nice article in the Fall 2003 Classic Trians magazine (pgs. 33-37) on transporting beets entitled, “Bringing in the beets” by J. David Inglesin, that might have what you are looking for. The article is on the Great Northern in the late 50’s (circa '58-'59). In the article they should high-sided and open gondolas full of beets.
rclarkdc, if you can’t find a back issue of it, I’ll be glad to mail you a copy of the article. If you have a good library, they may even have a back issue of it somewhere. Let me know. I’ll be glad to send you a copy.
Tom
Thanks Tom! That’s very kind.
I may have access to a copy here. I’ll be able to check next week after the holiday is over. If I can’t find the back issue, I’ll follow up with you .
Bob
Glad to do it, Bob. Just let me know…
Tom
I would expect a sugar processing plant to be getting sugar beets in open gondola cars (or maybe hoppers) and shipping out sugar in sacks in boxcars, I suppose if shipped in bulk something like Airslide covered hoppers could be used to - I think I’ve seen lettering sets in decal catalogues for sugar co. covered hoppers.
The SP beet gons were originally standard drop bottom composite gons. Around 1950 (maybe an SP fan can be more precise) the wooden extensions were added. Originally planks and then plywood. When working on the Milw we would see strings of 40’ steel hoppers (mainly CB&Q) at Warden on the BN during the beet season.
Rclarkdc,
I think you might want to access a copy at a library, or buy a copy via a Google search of:
“Where Steam Still Serves”
The Picture story of The Great Western Railway, Serving the Sugar Centers of Northern Colorado
James Lyon, Author, illustrator
1961
Published by Great Western Sugar Company, distributed by the Colorado Steamfan Service
It is a soft cover 48 page photo essay on the GWR. It has photos of sugar beets being hauled in both hopper and gondola cars, both with and without wooden board extension racks on pages 7, 21, 22, 24-25, 33 and 47. It also includes track layouts at Loveland and Longmont, spec pages for the steam locos, a combine and a McKeen motor car, and numerous photos of the steam locos at work. I either bought my copy by mail or at the Colorado Railroad Museum on one of several trips I made while stationed at Ellsworth AFB in the early 1960s.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
My grandpa loaded sugar beets into open hoppers in Montana for 30 winters (farmed in the summer) lots of old B&W pics of him loading them from the side with a HUGE front end loader. Being a beet farmer most of my life…I have been around this stuff ALOT.
The beets are loaded into trucks in the field, hauled to the piling ground or factory piling ground. The wait in line to go over the “piler” which then conveys the beets into huge piles out in the middle of the yard, usually parallel to one another, larger factories actually have a cover shed that the trucks drive into where the piler is stored, thus keeping the beets out of the elements. if stacked outside the beets are piled on to halved culverts which allow for ventilation. A blower is placed on the end to circulate air. Hay is then blown on top of the piles and sides of the piles as a insulator. Bulldozers are driven up the sides of the piles and ride on the tops to level them. This is when the huge front end loaders come and scoop up the beets, and deposit them into the intake hoppers on the side of the factory or into the high side rail hoppers.
Sidenote…if it interests you…the beets are not alsways transfered by rail, in Montana and Red River Valley of North Dakota, a company called Trans-systems (greatfalls, MT) is contracted to haul the beets via hoppered semi-trucks with a pup from remote pile grounds to the main factory for processing.
I have some old pictures digitzed of the loading process if anyone would like them e-mailed I would be glad to.
sjstrasheim@yahoo.com
In the Sidney MT area I hauled beets to the Holly Sugar plant for about 15 years every fall. By the time that I started (1986) Trans-systems was hauling the beets from the outlying piling grounds to the central processing plant. But up until the middle 70’s ( I think) the beets were carried in open hoppers from the piling grounds to the central plant. Even 10 to 15 years later hopper cars could be seen sitting on the sidings rusting away. Others have talked about the piling and loading process, so I will not be redundant here. One interesting note though, on the northern plains at least the reason for the fans and the straw was maybe not what one would think. The fans were to cool the beets, actually to at or near freezing. If the outside temp was too warm the fans would be turned off. And the straw similarly was to keep the beets cool. I remember one out of the ordinary warm winter where the company had tons and tons of rotten beets because they could not get them cool. Pig farmers were in heaven.
Anyway I am told that the frozen beets process the best, and so the time frame is limited as well with the plant not gearing up until there are enough beets piled to keep the plant running((mid Sept), and with the goal of being finshed with the slicing process by the end of Feb or early March.
Hope all of this is useful
Randy Johnson (formerly of Dagmar MT)
now Dallas Center IA
You are correct Randy…I should have clarified the “freezing” aspect of the blowers and straw. The freezing of the beets is to improve sugar content. Most of the concentration of the “good” stuff is towards the top of the beet, as soon as the beet is defoliated (leaves removed) the clock is ticking on how much sugar content you will get when processed. The freezing weather helps slow this.
I have just started a new group on Yahoo dealing with sugar beets. Pleaw join the group and lets talk about sugar beets and the sugar beet industry.
Thank You
Ira
If I remember right the WB Video “Last Steamers of the Colorado and Southern” shows a Great Western 2-8-0 hauling and switching a string of open hoppers filled with sugar beets in Colorado c. 1959.
I believe GN generally used open hoppers.
I grew up in SE Idaho with alot of sugar beet operations. Loading in our area was done with an automatic piler that took beets from where the trucks dumped them directly to 70t hoppers. It was loud and a dangerous operation with alot of open belts, wheels, cables and falling beets. As kids we loved it. I’m still looking for an old photo of the equipment in order to model the scene. UP hauled the loads to several processing plants in the Utah-Idaho Sugar company system on the Yellowstone branch. There are still some beets grown in the area, but not nearly what it once was.