In the early 80s I was working for Southern Ry in New Orleans. During the winter months there was a race track that shipped horse manure out in gons. Since race horses are fed with high quality feed, this was consider top quality manure. It was shipped up to someplace in Pennsylvania I believe where it was used to grow mushrooms. It was trucked from the race track to a siding and loaded it with a front end loader. They would mound it up a foot or so above the sides, cover it with straw, and then chicken wire over the top of the straw to keep it from blowing away. If the temperature was down in the 30s you could spot where the cars were in the train by the steam coming off of the load.
I bought a bunch of waybills from the 1900 era. At least 2 of them were for car loads of manure. The Reading Co Tech & Hist Society found a letter in their archives from the early 1900's about moving a depot or team track because they loaded manure there and the smell was bothering the residents. So yes it was commodity and it was shipped.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Where to start? Ok..Back in the 50s I recall seeing PRR gons filled with dirty hay and manure removed from stock yards and cleaning out of stock cars. I will never forget the smell. I haven't seen any on the rails since the 50s.
Manure can be process into dry bagged fertilizer so,yeah,there's a after market for the manure but,I suspect its trucked in semi dump trailers like they use to haul coal in from the mine to a truck to rail dump or river port....
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
This will likely prove useful:
https://extension.umd.edu/sites/default/files/_docs/publications/EB%20420-%20Manure%20as%20a%20Natural%20Resource_0.pdf
Ed
There's a thread in gen. disc.. The OP wanted suggestions to model manure from a packing plant being shipped in a gon.
Was this a common practice?Seams to me costly,Wouldn't they contract with local trucks to local farms to get rid of it.?
With the cost of labor to load and unload, plus shipping, I wouldn't think manure was worth that mutch.