Flour delivery by rail

[rayw46]

I know that before the use of covered hoppers grain was delivered by rail in boxcars, but how was flour, salt and sugar delivered. I have found one site that mentions boxcars loaded with flour sacks and barrels. That sounds reasonable, but were these commodities ever delivered in bulk in a boxcar; how were they loaded and unloaded; how was the sanitation issue handled? Even before the EPA and other watch-dog agencies, someone must have cared. I am particularly interested in the late 40's through the 50's era.

[marknewton]

I'll make an educated guess here and say probably not - although I'm happy to be proved wrong![:D]
I've seen numerous photos of boxcars in assigned flour service, and they all appear to be carrying packaged flour rather than bulk. But if you are interested in the late 1950s, then certain specialised covered hoppers were starting to be used to move bulk foodstuffs such as flour and sugar. These were mainly General American Airslides, and their predecessors, the Trans-Flo.

As for salt, I've just finished watching a DVD featuring operations on the Salt Lake, Garfield & Western Railway in Utah. They were using boxcars to serve a salt works in the 1970s, so I reckon it's a safe bet they did so in the period you're interested in as well.

All the best,

Mark.

[wjstix]

I can't remember ever seeing anything on sugar being shipped 'loose' in a boxcar, I'm sure it was in sacks.

BTW I suspect a boxcar full of sugar would be an ant's idea of Heaven. [dinner]

[rayw46]

Didn't you ever see the movie, "Them?"

[Anonymous]

In the 1940' s and early 1950'd my father owned a wholesale grocery business. I don't know how the sugar, flour and salt got in the bag but I have sure emptied a lot of boxcars full of bags of 25 lb, 50 lb, and 100 lb ( 10 10lb bags) of salt, sugar and flour. I remember all to well the summers in Texas when I worked side by side with a young black man unloading flour. At the end of the day we were both white with flour paste.

[Anonymous]

Wanted to chime in here. In the mid 1960's before an underground river broke into the salt mine at Winnfield Louisiana and flooded the mine all salt from the mine was loaded into box cars. The salt was sent up to the top on conveyers. Once it reached the top it was growned up and then bagged and pallatized. Once on pallets it was loaded into boxcars with a fork lift.The day crew idd the drilling and the night crew did the bagging and loading. Water broke in on the night watch and no one was hurt. I know this because my Father in Law at the time was in charge of the night crew.[:)][:)]

Hope this helps!

[csxjohn1948]

all the commodoties mentioned were one time shipped bulk in boxcars. a cardboard-steel strapped GRAIN DOOR was affixed to the door on the opposite side from loading, completely covering and sealing the door. the loading door was partialy closed with the same type grain door then filled with grain, sugar, corn, wheat, salt--etc. to the top of the door. Loading door closed, holding the cardboard device in place. Cars were dedicated, fumigated and cleaned. inside was lined floor, sides and end with wood, tongue and groove, about 1 1/2 inches thick.

[rayw46]

I appreciate the information. It was pretty much as I expected, but I couldn't document it; and like a lot of us I just needed someone to pat me on the back and say, "Ray, you really know what you're talking about." My layout is a small HO 2' x 8' switching layout with a removable 4' (necessary because a door) staging/fiddler yard at one end. The industry in question will be a food processing plant called, "Sadie's Kitchen," after a nic-name for my daughter Sarah. The plant will need deliveries of flour, salt, sugar, vegetable oil, produce, vinegar, packing supplies, etc. This will furnish a destination for boxcars, tankcars and reefers. I have planned a 20" long space on a siding but now that I think about it, I could have dedicated the entire layout to this one layout industry. Machinery could occasionally be delivered by flatcar and I could even include coal hoppers to service a small power plant to the industry. That would have used my entire rouster of rolling stock, with the exception of inter-modals and covered hoppers. Oh, Well!

[Max_Cox]

When I first went to work in the mid-50's, commodities were mostly being shipped in bags in box cars. We were not handling food grade products. These bags were mostly 100#, but some were 200#. The 200# ones were burlap and mostly for export. Because the stacks of bags didn't fit the cars tight enough to prevent shifting, dunnage was used to keep the loads from shifting during shipment.

An interesting little detail could be stacks of the lumber and corragated board used to build the dunnage, good stuff at the shipper and junk at the reciever. There was always a bunch of broken and spilled bags laying aroung the unloading dock.

Dunnage was expensive, not to mention the cost of the bags, it's no wonder the switch to bulk hoppers was pretty quick.

[Anonymous]

Grain shipments in Manitoba to Churchill (on Hudson Bay) are in box cars (or at least were in the mid 90's when we traveled up that way). I was surprised to see no covered hoppers. The terminal has equipment to hold the cars in place while tipping and rotating them to permit the grain to exit the doors. I did not ask why they used boxcars, perhaps someone on the list knows.

BTW, I recommend the trip on the local from Waboden north to the bay. We rode on a mixed consist of mostly freight and an old combine car, and had a chance to ride in the caboose and engine cab, as well as a chance to see polar bears in the wild. One of our best family vacations.

[twcenterprises]

Southern Railway had several boxcars fitted with round roof hatches to allow loading of bulk flour. The idea was to haul bulk flour one way and boxcar freight the other. These ran through the 70's into the 80's. For your time period, bulk loading of grain and flour as you described was somewhat common, but I suspect for a smaller bakery, the bags probably would have been more commonly used. After all, loading in bulk would require having a dedicated unloading facility, a car tipper and shaker, or some guys in very clean clothes and shoes with shovels and brooms to get the car completely empty. As was mentioned earlier, the floor and sides were wood, which had to be very tight to keep out the water and the "critters". Cars in this service tended to stay in this service, the insides were messy and not suitable for most other kinds of loads. Any load that could have been loaded in one of these cars tended to be "rough" loads, but RR's could not allow anything that would contaminate or leave odors. Even if a suitable load could be found, there was the issue of car cleaning on both ends. It's easy to see why covered hoppers became so popular so quickly. Unloading facilities could be as simple as hooking up a hose and turning on a pump, manual labor was greatly reduced, cars were designed and built specifically for the task, virtually eliminating contamination and "critters", and so on.

Brad

[leighant]

ATSF class GA-93, Santa Fe's 1st Airslide® covered hopper, used for flour. 50 cars, built 1955.
N scale model from Atlas with minor modifications--


I remember an HO model, Tyco I think, advertised in Model Railroader about 1960, of "Holly Sugar" 2-bay covered hopper. I have a very similar N scale Rapido model I plan to letter for a sugar company, a real sugar company that existed in 1920s, Booth Open Kettle Sugar of Fort Bend County, Texas. My layout will assume it continued into 1950s when it had covered hoppers. Private owner reporting marks for Booth Open Kettle Sugar-- BOKX. So it would be a COVERED HOPPER that is also a BOKX car. (!?)

[Anonymous]

Just some things to consider for bulk loading...
How to keep the (powder) load in... I would anticipate all boxcars carrying loose loads would be double sheathed.
How to keep water out... you need tight doors and/or seals
How to get the load in... and, more important, out... completely... any product remaining in cracks, corners etc would rot and contaminate other loads.
A good guide may be to look for things like the air pressure systems to blow bulk loads in/out.
Sacks, barrels and either palletised served very well for decades until the seals between pipes and cars made air (and vacuum) systems effective.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by JohnDodgeJr

Grain shipments in Manitoba to Churchill (on Hudson Bay) are in box cars (or at least were in the mid 90's when we traveled up that way). I was surprised to see no covered hoppers. The terminal has equipment to hold the cars in place while tipping and rotating them to permit the grain to exit the doors. I did not ask why they used boxcars, perhaps someone on the list knows.

At a guess, I'd say the rail on that stretch was too light to handle the heavier loads of covered hoppers. CP Rail, up until recently (and possibly still) maintained a shrinking fleet of aging grain-door box cars for this purpose.

-- Paul