I’m not an expert on this but I think they had their own siding and the train crew stayed with the stock cars to frequently reposition them because they had limited loading points and several cars to load. Also there were rules about how long the livestock could be in a car. The train couldn’t just drop off cars and pick them up the next day. It was more like a passenger train for animals. Load it up and move them out.
Generally, a stock pen that generated significant traffic was located along a house track or other double-ended siding to facilitate quick loading. The law limited the number of hours stock could be confined aboard the train without access to food or water, so time was generally of the essence.
Yes, in a few cases, single cars might be spotted for loading and later pickup, but this needed to limit time sitting waiting for the same reasons as above. More typically, several herders or one larger seller would ship all their marketable stock together, that year's calves or lambs would all be ready at about the same time.
Often, the MT stock cars would travel in the train and be loaded as the run proceeded, again because of the pressure of time.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Hi all,
Where along the tracks in small western/midwestern towns were railroad owned stock pens usually located? Would they have been on the house/team track or their own siding? I know not all towns were the same and it probably differed by railroad, but I wasn’t sure if there was a common stock pen location.
Also, I’m assuming that stock cars were spotted at the loading shute and then picked up later? (I only ask because I thought I read somewhere that stock cars were loaded similarly to small LCL shipments or unit grain trains [to use a modern analogy] in that the train pulled up to the pens, the stock were loaded on, and the train continued on its way, but I don’t know that that was the case.
Thanks for any suggestions anyone has.