Moving agricultuer procucts in the 50's

[Anonymous]

My new layout, which is set in the mid to late 1950’s, will feature a moderate sized feed mill. This facility will receive bulk gain and other agriculture products and process them for local use. My question is how were these materials moved other then your standard 40ft boxcar.

[GN-Rick]

In the late 50s (1957-8) covered hoppers began arriving for grain service.
Specifically the early versions of the Pullman-Standard PS2-like the new
Athearn model. However, 40-foot boxcars were still widely used until the
early 70s for grain shipments-largely because the light trackage on the
granger branches wouldn't handle a 100 ton hopper, but easily handled
50-ton boxcars. You mention you are modeling a feed mill. If you are
"producing" flour, you might ship it out in the early style of Airslide hopper,
the 40-foot version. Other than those, I foresee a long procession of
boxcars, unless you are planning some othe commodity.

[orsonroy]

If you're trying to accurately represent the loads in and out of a 1950s feed mill, you'll only see boxcars: loose grains in (feed isn't just oats), alfalfa bales in (to be pelletized into feed) empty bags in, molasses barrels (wood!) in, bagged mineral supplements in, and bagged finished product out. Waste grain byproducts would be sold to local farmers for hog feed, burned, or just dumped in a local stream (this is WELL before the EPA).

Long covered hoppers WERE just beginning to appear on the rails, but they were (for the time) HUGE outlays in capital, and wouldn't have been seen at some rinky-dink feed mill in the middle of nowhere. They were kept in captive service for HUGE operations, and used mostly for human-consumption grain products. Think Kellog's Corn Flakes, not Purina Goat Chow. Besides, you have to have the machinery to properly UNload those covered hoppers, and that costs money: more money that it took to hire some guys to unload a boxcar by hand way back in the 1950s.

So for your feed mill, stick with plain old 40' boxcars (and I do mean old; the newer all-steel cars would be reserved for shipping finished product OUT, not schlepping loose grain around. Older cars get that duty, and in the 1950s, that usually meant 40' single sheathed cars)

[Eriediamond]

One thing worth mentioning about boxcars hauling loose grain. The door ways had 2X12 boards stacked on edge to keep the grain in while the doors were opened and filled by a large hose or tube from an elevator. For unloading, it was either vacuumed out, the boards removed and poured out, or hand shoveled out. At large facilities like at seaports or ports on the great lakes the cars were placed on a machine that would mechanically tilt the car to the side and from end to end to get the grain out. Ken

[Anonymous]

WOW!!! thanks for all the info. Looks like I'll have to make some more waybills a LOT MORE LOL.

[Anonymous]

The B&O among a few others had convertible boxcars that had small loading doors up high and a floor that converted into hoppers for unloading. They could be used as regular box cars in the off season.

[nobullchitbids]

I recall touring the Quaker Oats facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in about 1962. Quaker had a rotary car dumper inside which simply clamped a box car full of oats, spun it around, and dumped the oats out the side, then righted it and sent it out the door. The unloading process took less than five minutes.

I recall MR once had an article re building such a dumper, although it was for coal; but, I would assume the article readily could serve for a modified version applicable to grain box cars. Andy: If you're monitoring this, can you give us a cite? The dumper really was spectacular (it actually worked) and readily could be a main focal point of a grain-hauling operation.

[joseph2]

I work at a grain elevator that used to store the grain for an old feed mill. We used to unload boxcars with a rotary car dumper,but in the 1950's also used board scoops powered by an electric winch Two bay covered hoppers like the ones Bowser makes appeared in the 1950's and were used for grain ,feed and feed ingredients.