I am in the process of building a modest N scale switching layout with my grandson. Set in Maine circa 1960's I am planning on the Sunrise Feed Mill, Sicken Tire, Central Gas & Supply, and Walton & Sons for the railserved facilities. The rolling stock associated with Sicken, Central Gas and Walton are pretty straight forward in my mind, but I am wondering what rolling stock would serve and be served by the feed mill. Box cars? Era appropriate covered Hoppers? Gondolas? All of them? None of them?
Bear "It's all about having fun."
Bearman: I no not think that any grains would be transported in gondolas. They do not need to be rained on.
If I remember a museum visit correctly, this was about the time that boxcars carrying grain were being replaced by covered hoppers.
You could also consider it to be bagging small animal food for retail sale.
I agree, but many 40' boxcars saw feed/grain service into the seventies. I'd go with early covered hoppers and boxcars. remember, many mills didn't have facilities to handle grain from covered hoppers.
In the 60s feed mills received bagged farm and pet feed by boxcar and bulk farm feed came in covered hoppers..
As a side note bagged farm and pet feed can still arrived in 50' boxcars.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
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I think things way up in Maine tended to transition more slowly than maybe more heavily trafficked areas. I would go with new covered hoppers and the older 40 foot grain boxcars. And boxcars for the bagged stuff.
- Douglas
So far so good, but the responses beg the question is a grain box car any different from any other box car except for maybe some specialized interior equipment and/or cleaning requirements. Covered hoppers I assume would be no more than 2 bays. Finally, I assume that a feed mill would accept delivers of bagged goods, and raw materials, ie grain, which it would bag for retail sale. Am I correct?
A grain hauling boxcar needed to be a high quality (but maybe not tip-top quality such as newsprint warrants) car, very clean and uncontaminated and well-coopered to avoid loss of product during transport. Cars in food service were usually restricted to food service, so would probably be routed back home empty.
Into the 1980s we'd still see 40' boxcars in grain service here in Milwaukee, most with 6 foot doors, because there were so many branchlines with light track that could not handle covered hoppers. I believe that also extended the lives of 40' boxcars in Canada.
The short two bay covered hoppers with round hatches are for heavy loads such as sand or cement and were not used in grain service. Grain covered hopper cars have the trough type hatches and are longer cars, 3 or 4 bays at bottom. Again, in dedicated food service.
One unique type of grain boxcar, which Athearn blue box had in its line, was a boxcar with a plug door but near the top of the plug door was a small "inspection" door. On arrival the grain would be sampled and evaluated before the load was accepted. In cases where the boxcar had the normal boxcar door but the grain was held in place with signode reinforced paper doors, or wood grain doors nailed into place, the inspector would have a tall ladder and reach into the car over the top of those temporary doors. The special small inspection door was easier.
I do not know if Athearn has kept that car in its line. You still see 'em at swap meets.
Dave Nelson
bearmanbut the responses beg the question is a grain box car any different from any other box car
Short answer, no, however a 6 ft door is the preferred car. 8 ft doors are better for merchandise. Double sliding doors would be too wide to install a grain door.
bearmanCovered hoppers I assume would be no more than 2 bays.
2 bay covered hoppers are for dense materials, such as sand, roofing granules, cement, etc. Medium density commodities, such as grains, would be in larger 3-4 bay covered hoppers. Very light density commodities such as plastic pellets are in the largest capacity covered hoppers.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
I have a couple of grain boxcars. I think they are Milwaukee Road, and I got them from Walthers.
They look like normal box cars. They do have operating side doors, manual operation, and inside the normal door is a "grain door" which you would only see if you had the car parked and open, say at a loading dock.
As I recall reading somewhere, these were just normal box cars which were pressed into service during harvest time by adding the doors, made of reenforced cardboard or plywood, just for the season. They were not dedicated to grain service all year long.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Hi,
I would highly recommend Jeff Wilson's book "The Model Railroader's Guide To Grain" from Model Railroader's Kalmbach Books. It's a very excellent source for just about everything you want or need to know about moving grain in any time frame you model.
Really some good information on moving grain in 40' box cars and how they were prepared. I got some great modeling tips like using the 40' cars with the 6' doors and how the grain doors were made. (In the early 70's BN even used some old stockcars with plywood sheathing behind the horizontal slats to move grain on lines with lighter rail). This also made for some important scenery details like stacks of lumber next to the tracks that was removed from the grain doors and set aside where grain was loaded and unloaded for reuse later because anything that could be reused was.
Anyway, the book is really a good read and source for information. Hope this helps.
Ralph
This link has been posted before, but is again appropriate for the topic.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_elevator/
At about 4 mins 45 secs it shows a grain door being installed in a box car.
Jeff
Thank you all, I think I have enough to go on.
I was going to suggest the video that Jeff linked to.
Bearman, haven't seen you in a while!
Mike.
My You Tube
I have had some substantial family and personal issues to tend too, including breaking my foot. But all's well now.