shipping cotton

[doctorwayne]

Anybody out there have any information on how cotton was shipped to textile mills? I'm modelling the '30's and am mainly interested in the car types: wood, single or doublesheathed, or steel boxcars and the most common car lengths: 36',40', or 50'. Also, what roads were the major shippers of this commodity? Finally, what were the dimensions of a standard bale of cotton and how much did it weigh? By the way, my layout is set in southern Ontario. Thanks for any info provided.
Wayne

[leighant]

Hoooboy, I started reading your question ready to answer but the farther i got....

I am in deep south Texas, a cotton growing region. Cotton is/was more often shipped not directly to a mill by railroad, but to a port for export.
Usually shipped from a gin. Or from a cotton platform provided by the railroad or a coop in a growing area.
Bales came in two kinds. The "gin bale" was bigger and less dense than the same bale after it went to a cotton compress. A steam-powered compress would squeeze the bale so that the same weight of cotton would fit in a smaller space for shipment by ocean. Large compresses often located at seaports.
(I am planning to model one on the layout I am starting)
http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/ael.jpg

Cotton production in US (1954)
total 13 2/3 million bales
Texas 4 1/4 million
other southern states 6 2/3 million
output to US mills 9 1/2 million bales
(85% of that to 4 states: Alabama, Georgia, N & S Carolina)
export 5 million bales
Yearbook of Agriculture 1954 p.449

80% of the nation's cotton textile spindles and 82% of the looms in the Southern states (1955). North Carolina is heart of the cotton- textile industry, followed by South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts.
The Life and Times of King Cotton, David L. Cohn, Oxford U.Press,
1956

photo of Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills plant in New Orleans for cotton, burlap & paper bags (advertisement) Business Week Nov.12, 1955 p.75

STRUCTURE REFERENCES RE COTTON
Compress, Belen NewMex pix RailModJournal Apr93 p.10
Compress, Corpus Christi, Aransas Compress
(near present Harbor Bridge) blt 1928
12' high concrete walls, 4' raised clerestories,
16' firewalls between sections.
Sections 250' wide, 150-250' long/section
100' space between rows of sheds.
data from _Sanborn Fire Insurance Map_, 1931

Compress, Corpus Christi, Gulf Compress
located on 19th street and Tex Mex tracks
14' high concrete walls sheds 250' wide
100' space between rows of sheds
data from _Sanborn Fire Insurance Map_, 1931

Compress, Galveston
interior view, _Ray Miller's Galveston_ 2nd edition p.87

Gin by Durrenberger _MR_ June82 p.70
Gin by E.L.Moore, _ModRRer_ Sept78 p.54

[orsonroy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by doctorwayne

Anybody out there have any information on how cotton was shipped to textile mills? I'm modelling the '30's and am mainly interested in the car types: wood, single or doublesheathed, or steel boxcars and the most common car lengths: 36',40', or 50'. Also, what roads were the major shippers of this commodity? Finally, what were the dimensions of a standard bale of cotton and how much did it weigh? By the way, my layout is set in southern Ontario. Thanks for any info provided.
Wayne

In the 1930s, the most common boxcar would be the 36-foot double sheath, followed closely by the 36-foot single sheath. 36 footers made up over 55% of the national boxcar fleet, with 40' steel and wood cars (double and single sheathed) making up around 40%. Since there were so few 50-footers, and they were reserved mostly for auto transport, you'd probably never see those cars in cotton service.

If modeling Ontario, don't use Canadian cars for the cotton service. Use cars native to the major cotton growing areas for a visual clue as to what the car is carrying. Likely examples would be the ATSF, SP, T&P, MP, IC and Southern. All these roads had plenty of 36 foot boxcars (except for the IC, which only had 40-footers). Since the IC was the major north-south link between the Gulf coast aodn Chicago (and from there to Canada), I'd have most of the traffic routed from the feeder roads (SP, ATSF, Southern, T&P, Georgia RR, SAL, ACL, etc) to the IC, and handed off from the IC to the GTW at Chicago for transport north.

Turning on the mighty power of Google for cotton bale data, I came across these figures:

According to the Farm Press, cotton bales weigh just under 500 pounds:
http://deltafarmpress.com/mag/farming_ginners_opposing_new/

According to the Cotton Council of America, cotton bales used to measure 90 inches to a side:
http://www.cotton.org/tech/bale/specs/index.cfm

The CCA kindly provided us with a visual chart on bales as well:
http://www.cotton.org/tech/bale/bale-description.cfm

[jrbarney]

Doctor,
Granted it's not Canadian, but here's the one article citation found at the Index of Magazines, using "textile mill" as the search term:

New England Textile Mill at Lowell, Massachusetts Railmodel Journal, July 1992, page 24 ( DRAWING, "KYPER, FRANK", MILL, STRUCTURE, TEXTILE, PROTOTYPE, RMJ )

Bob
NMRA Life 0543

[dehusman]

Compressed cotton bales are also not "soft" they are very hard, almost like a solid block of wood. The steam powered compresses were huge machines, almost 2 stories high. Unfortunately on my last trip to Galveston it started to rain before I could take pictures of some of the old compresses that were about to be scrapped.

Dave H.