Atlantic and HiberniaI recall reading that the last major movements of livestock in the United States were on the Penn Central. I wonder if there was ever a solid string of Penn Central Deepwater Green stock cars running eastward to markets in New York of Philadelphia?
Now in the the Eastern US, I dunno. For some reason I swear I saw an HOGX car in the Kearney Yards (NJ) in the late 1980s, but maybe it had been repurposed by then for non-livestock usage. There was mention of ConRail handling livestock for Kosher butchers in Philadelphia & NJ, but not sure about that.
I recall reading that the last major movements of livestock in the United States were on the Penn Central. I wonder if there was ever a solid string of Penn Central Deepwater Green stock cars running eastward to markets in New York of Philadelphia?
Perhaps a Penn Central expert on this forum can contribute some information?
Kevin
It depends.
If you are modeling the 1800's you will have more variation in stock cars and it will be more likely you will have a stock car train. If you are modeling a more modern era you will have less variety because there weren't livestock trains and there were fewer stockcars so the chances for vareity weren't there. Which cars are in the train depends on where the livestock came from. Railroads had VERY small fleets of stock cars (the rarest car types other than railroad owned tank cars) so if a railroad had stock cars they kept them close to protect their loadings. If a railroad had stock cars it was only because they had stock moves
If you are modeling the 1970's or 1980's, there was one stock move by rail so it wouldn't be a train and it would be just one or two series of cars because that was all there was in the whole US.
If you are doing what you want then the answer doesn't matter because you are making it up.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
That is a perfect answer, Thank You/
Caldreamer
Caldreamer, I will answer your question this way. A shipper calls your railroad for thirty single deck stock cars to ship cattle eastward. Your railroad has 22 cars in the yard so, it must come up with eight more. Calls are made to nearby yards and six more cars are found and are put on trains to your yard. Still two cars short, you call the XYZ railroad across town and find the two cars you need to make 30. At no time was reference made as to who owned the cars. The driving factor was the need for 30 cars. Most likely the 22 cars in your yard were home road cars but the other eight were cars that just happened to be handy and could belong to any railroad. The cars from the XYZ could belong to them or any other road that owned single deck stock cars. Stock cars often traveled against the normal flow of from provider to market, hauling feeder cattle to be fed to marketable weight, as replenishments of depleted herds, or breeder stock. The railroads other than yours in this picture don't object to another railroad using its cars (unless that railroad is experiencing a shortage of that car type) because as long as that car is off home rails, it is earning per diem. The majority of the cars would probably be home road but, the car police will not descend on you for having ATSF, GN, MP etc cars in that string of 30.
Trains of just stock cars were once very common in America.
At one time, the largest stockyard complex in the world was in South St. Paul, MN. Entire trains of stockcars would come there from hundreds of miles away. The stockyards were served by the Chicago Great Western Ry., whose president was a major investor in the stockyard company. No doubt cars from many different railroads would travel over CGW tracks to reach the yards.
a lot would depend on the era amd railroad location . take the after decentralization of packing plants,D&RDW cars tended to stay on areas serviced by them as there were large packing plants in denver aera before the when packing plants were in few areas then you wpuld see trains of solid one rail road cars delivering to central aeras , i've seen photos of santa fe and up trains would think that other western roads did the same thing. do know that the sp had drover cabooses as did the santa fe and up. as for the east don't know what happend there.as moving livestock on by rail waned would think stock cars would be on local trains .
Both.
Sometimes all the same. Sometimes not. It certainly wouldn't have been a one-of-every-road train, though.
The SP&S didn't own any stock cars. But they DID handle them. Usually, they were GN or NP--the SP&S's parent roads. But I've seen a photo with an ATSF in the string. And I expect there would have been SP. The "other" road names would tend to be connecting ones. Probably not a UP, as that was the competition.
I suppose there were livestock "trains". Most of what I've seen in photos has been a few on the front. I kind of think maybe I've seen photos of a UP full stock train. That would be the most likely railroad--remember the old TV shows with their stock drives up to "the railroad"? UP was typically THAT railroad.
On the front because either the conductor got all huffy riding behind the smell and/or because the stock might have to be switched out for their rest period.
Ed
Would all of the cars on a livetock train be from the sam railroad or wheould they fe of mixed road names?