Reefers and stock cars need attention enroute, reicing, watering, feeding, so having them on the head end let them be spotted or set out for servicing more easily.
Then when they get to a terminal, they can be cut out for an expedited connection more easily.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusman wrote:Reefers and stock cars need attention enroute, reicing, watering, feeding, so having them on the head end let them be spotted or set out for servicing more easily.Then when they get to a terminal, they can be cut out for an expedited connection more easily.Dave H.
Either or both depending on the situation and where they are going.
Normally local jobs will be picking up/setting out loose cars. These will be gathered at a terminal or small industry yard for pickup by a road freight. However, special conditions will be a cause for changes.
The Soo Line had a road freight that 'started' at Swift Packing(on the CGW). A light 4-8-2 and caboose would go to the CGW 'Park Yard' and pick up a block of Swift meat reefers, and then pick up the rest of its tran at Cardigan Jct(A transfer had moved the rest of the train there). This continued for many years, until the Soo lost the contract and the train started at Shoreham Yard, as most train did.
When I worked for the CB&Q, I was working as a fireman on #82(a hot St Paul -Chicago time freight). We got 7 loaded cars of 'livestock' one afternoon. This was placed on the head-end of the train. We had to run 'wrong main' so we could spot the cars at the 'Wertheimer Spur'. This involved spotting a car, unloading it, moving to the next car, etc.. We took a 3 hour delay to unload the beef. A normal run for the 130 miles was 3-4 hours! The 'local' was an overnight train(usually called for 2 AM) and the livestock had to be unoaded for feeding/watering before that time frame - hence the road freight had to do the 'short work'.
Jim Bernier
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Loaded stock cars were handled at the locomotive end of mixed freights for another reason - the need to minimize slack action. The slamming back and forth which the cars could get farther back could injure the animals.
I can see where meat reefers loaded with hanging carcasses could have an allied problem. If the carcasses started swinging in unison, they would exaggerate the forces on the draft gear. Reefers loaded with boxed or crated products wouldn't have similar dynamics, hence could (theoretically) be anywhere in the train - but always blocked together to minimize separate moves to icing facilities.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Andy Sperandeo MODEL RAILROADER Magazine
Plus, if you were riding in a caboose with the windows open on a warm day, would you want a dozen or so loaded cattle cars right in front of you in the train??
wjstix wrote: Plus, if you were riding in a caboose with the windows open on a warm day, would you want a dozen or so loaded cattle cars right in front of you in the train??
I never rode in a caboose, but I've driven behind trucks carrying livestock and experienced a brown, watery spray on my vehicle.
Mark
Yes we are on time but this is yesterdays train
To the original question-generally it's easier to make pickups and setouts from the head end. The cattle cars may have been on the hind end due to the yard arrangement at East Side yard in Philadelphia. East bound freights had to pull past the yard and back in. Having the cattle on the rear probably made it easier for a yard crew to grab the cars and take them to their final destination.
IIRC some of the cars were B&O cars and some were lettered for Food Fair (a regional supermarket chain).
DSO17 wrote: To the original question-generally it's easier to make pickups and setouts from the head end. The cattle cars may have been on the hind end due to the yard arrangement at East Side yard in Philadelphia. East bound freights had to pull past the yard and back in. Having the cattle on the rear probably made it easier for a yard crew to grab the cars and take them to their final destination. IIRC some of the cars were B&O cars and some were lettered for Food Fair (a regional supermarket chain).
It's not unknown to see "hot" cars on the front end of a train--for example, auto parts need for an assembly line in high cube box cars at the front of an intermodal.
John Timm
In Northern California, back when Southern Pacific and Western Pacific were in the refrigerator car business, produce trains were handled over the Sierras in solid reefer blocks as 'extras'. From what I understand, most of these trains were handed over to the Union Pacific in Ogden and Salt Lake City for shipment east, since UP had the easiest passage through the Rockies via Sherman Hill. However, Rio Grande picked a lot of produce traffic for connection to other midwestern markets via their connections in Denver and Pueblo. Rio Grande always ran these reefers at the head of their manifest freight trains. In one of my many Rio Grande books, I have a photo of one of the big Rio Grande L-105 Challengers thundering through the Utah desert with a solid block of PFE's behind it--both SP/UP and WP. Pretty spectacular railroading in my book.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Near the end of steam on the SP a West Oakland yard crew had tacked twenty loaded SP cattle cars, from some resent incoming train, to the headend of a San Jose bound mixed frieght. An old 2-8-2, still sporting a Hodges trailing truck with canted springs, clanked and wheezed down the yard lead and onto the train. At the yard office Espee tainmen were busy buying into a pool as to how far they'd get before the old Makado fell apart. After an air test and wihistle off there was a hefty chuff, then a second, and others followed as the slack pulled out there were more and louder moo's. The train cleared the yard and nothing remained but wispes of smoke rising from the concrete canyons of Oakland.
I've always wanted to model scene, that train. I've gone from HO to 1:29 and I still want to model that train. I have an Aristo 2-8-2 with sound and a string of cattle cars with sound. Now I just need to finish the details; oh and those trainmen placing their bets.
G.Gauge--
Just goes to show that you could NEVER under-estimate an SP steamer, even at the end when they looked like rolling junkyards, LOL. That old 2-8-2 probably made it down to San Jose with lots of time to spare. SP engineers really LIKED their lokies and took good care of them mechnically as long as they could, even if they didn't run them through the washer too often.
Intresting. But I['ve been told (apperently incorrectly) a looonnnngggg time ago that cattle cars up next to the big noisy steamer was a no no for whatever fears of startling the herd, busting up the side of the stock car, and finding out whay that's Sherman Hill.
And would the drovers still ride in a back caboose, would there be a head end coach so they could be near the livestock, or did they just get left behind on the long trains?
-Morgan
Flashwave wrote: Intresting. But I['ve been told (apperently incorrectly) a looonnnngggg time ago that cattle cars up next to the big noisy steamer was a no no for whatever fears of startling the herd, busting up the side of the stock car, and finding out whay that's Sherman Hill. And would the drovers still ride in a back caboose, would there be a head end coach so they could be near the livestock, or did they just get left behind on the long trains?
AFAIK the drover's would still be at the back, in the caboose or an old coach. Over time the need for them became less. As trains ran faster, the railroads could often get the cows to their destination quickly enough to not need to be removed from the cars to be fed and watered...which was the reason the drovers (cowboys) would be on the train, to help remove the cows and then get them back on after their rest break.