Hi there
Can anyone shed some light on how timber was transported from the mill to the lumber yard during the time frame mentioned ?
Was it via flat car of box car ?
If flat car, was the finished product shipped via wrapped bundles such as that offered by Jaeger HO Products
Appreciate all replies
Happy New Year to all !!!
cheers
In the late fifties and early sixties lumber was delivered in a box car where I grew up. It was unloaded by hand. I can only guess it was loaded the same way.
I spent the first 21 years of my life 1944-1966 living about 100 feet from a lumber yard with a large outdoor storage area in between the legs of a junction interchange wye.
I don’t believe I saw WRAPPED bundles of lumber until after 1960. I saw lots of wrapped bundled of gypsumboard transported on bulkhead flatcars. I also saw dimensional lumber (2x4s, etc) bundled and banded but NOT wrapped, transported on bulkhead flatcars, and on general service flatcars (AAR Mechanical Designation FM), and I believe in boxcars. Mostly unloaded with forklift.
I have not generally heard the term “timber” used to described finished dimensional lumber.
(Bagman might be from the other side of the pond, where lumber is indeed referred to as timber.)
The typical practice in the U.S. in this time period was to ship as follows:
About 3 million carloads of lumber originated each year during this period. Hardwoods were usually shipped in the rough, about 8,000-16,000 b.f. per carload depending upon how green it was and what specie it was. Rough southern pine and Douglas fir averaged 18,000-22,000 b.f. per carload. Dressed boards, flooring, ceiling, finish, shingle, and similar averaged 22,000-36,000 b.f per carload.
Because of the cost of freight transportation West Coast lumber was almost always shipped dressed; even timbers (6 x 6 and greater) were dressed. Southern pine and hardwoods often shipped rough.
Flooring, ceiling, finish, shingle, moulding, door and window stock shipped in boxcars. Dressed boards preferably shipped in boxcars especially if it was 1". Timbers and poles almost always shipped on flatcars; long lengths (greater than 40’) spanned two flatcars with swivels. Rough lumber shipped both flatcar and boxcar, in part depending on what kind of empty car supply happened to be available from the railroad and on length. Wood box blanks shipped in boxcars. Wrapped lumber on flatcars had not appeared at this time as a regular practice. Bulkhead flats were becoming more common but a substantial amount of lumber and timber moved on plain flats – with shifted loads an all to frequent occurance.
ICC statistics for car loadings circa 1955 showed for every 100 cars moving loaded or empty, 119 were being loaded, 119 were being unloaded, 164 on repair tracks, and 680 standing idle in yards.
46% of all lumber used in the U.S. in this era was used by farmers.
Average length of haul of lumber by rail was 175 miles.
Coast-wise shipping moved substantial quantities of lumber along and between t
“Timber” would be the logs going into the sawmill, “Lumber” would be what would come out.
50’ double-door boxcars were often used, some boxcars had end “auto doors” that made unloading lumber easier than using the side doors.
Great info!
I recall my dad saying how my grandpa would help at the local lumberyard unloading a boxcar FULL of lumber (of all sizes) for some extra$.Dad said the cars were literally packed to the ceiling, and it would take a day or two to unload them (by hand)drive a few blocks in a truck and sort/stack it all at the yard, which did not have its’ own spur.
Been there! Done that! Bought a T-shirt!
Got twenty-five bucks for two days work in Roberts, Idaho in the summer of 1956 - wasn’t bad wages for a 16 year old even though I worked my buns to the bone earning it. There were four of us working so it cost him about a hundred bucks to unload the car.
Based upon what I have learned since becoming a model railroader/railfan I would guess the car to be a fifty-footer with double doors. The logo on the side said Northern Pacific - I didn’t have the slightest idea where Northern Pacific was in those heady days of yesteryear; I only know it came into town on a southbound freight from up Butte way and was dropped at the team track. The lumberyard owner didn’t like to pay demurrage fees so he wanted it unloaded in two days but he only had one truck available so we were only able to haul two loads a day - one in the morning and one in the afternoon - and we didn’t finish unloading the truck until near dark on both days. I didn’t take an exact count but I’ll bet that boxcar carried a thousand 2Xs if it carried one.
That boxcar, by the way, was still sitting at the team track a week after we had it unloaded
Hi there
Thank you all so much for the information.
Very helpfull and will assist me greatly in ensuring my early 50’s layout looks correct.
And yes, I’m from the other side of the pond…Australia.
It’s already 2008 here…you aren’t missing much. Still the same old same old !!
cheers
During the late '50’s I lived about 1/2 mile from the Idaho Northern line of the UP. I watched many carloads of logs being shipped to the Boise-Payette lumber mill in Payette Idaho. Most logs were shipped on flats but some in gons.
The school that I went to visited the mill on a field trip. The first question asked was, “How do you get the long boards through the doors of a box car?” The guide had some fun with that question and kept postponing the answer. Finally at the end of the tour we saw them loading the boards end-wise about 12 at a time through the door. Turns out the guide was a loader.
IIRC they loaded each end of the 40’ box with 16 foot boards and then filled the gap in the middle with 8 footers.
dd
I remembered that about the end doors because someone wrote something about that (I think in our regional NMRA newsletter??). They worked one summer unloading cars at a lumber dealer. One day a car came in a he and another guy were assigned to unload it. Being a model railroader, he recognized the end doors on the auto box and was very happy to learn they doors were not locked. He said they unloaded the car in about half the time it normally took.[:)]
I spent two hours flipping through photographs of lumber mills and railroads in the West in the 1945-1960 time period and observed the following:
Boxcars make up more than 80% of all the cars loaded with lumber.
Plain, 40’ single-door boxcars make up about 80% of the boxcars loaded with lumber. The remainder are mostly 50’ double-door.
Foreign-road boxcars were more common than I had expected them to be, dominated by PRR, NYC, and Burlington, then Erie, Lackawanna, and other Official Territory and Granger roads. Maybe 20% of the cars are foreign-road cars. Almost needless to say, foreign-road western cars are not seen much on any one of the western roads for lumber loading; e.g., if one is on the SP one doesn’t find UP, NP, GN, WP, or MILW cars being loaded with lumber.
Gondolas are at least as commonly used as flatcars for lumber, on SP and UP at least.
There’s hardly a bulkhead flat to be seen.
Most of the lumber loaded on flatcars is rough-cut, timbers, or poles. Up-close photos aren’t common so I can’t be positive that none is dressed, but every one where I can tell for sure if it’s dressed or rough, it’s rough. Random lengths are the norm as would be expected for rough-cut. Side stakes are used including in gons. Banding doesn’t seem to appear until the late 1950s.
In that era it was very common for even small lumberyards to buy much of their inventory as rough-cut, and resaw and dress for each individual customer order. Resawing and dressing was often done on individual job sites.
Another peculiarity is side stakes. Like grain doors, the consignee was supposed to return them and rarely did, then grumbled about being charged for them.
RWM