Walthers makes "Red Wing Milling" and "Centennial Mills" if you're looking for a kit to base grain operations on. They are pretty much the same, but Centennial Mills is a background flat.
I made mine into the Powder Milk Biscuit Company, but the kit comes with several different decal sets of its own.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I would highly recommend the purchase of Jeff Wilson's "The Model Railroaders Guide to Grain" from Kalmbach Books. It has lots of pictures of box cars being loaded with grain in addition to several pictures of flour mills. It has discussions of the use of both wooden grain doors and later corrugated paper grain doors. There is an entire chapter on flour milling with some pictures of box cars being loaded with floor in cloth bags.
Like you, I have an interest in grain handling and found this book very informative.
Jim
I've got a couple of grain-service boxcars. They are from the Milwaukee Road. I think they were Walthers products from a few years back. I got a great price on them but I believe they were closeouts.
These cars have operating doors, and inside you can see the "grain doors" that come about halfway up the inside. You can buy grain doors as an add-on accessory, but I'd just use a sheet of wood planking.
Dave,
I'll bet that Milwaukee would be one of the places where the last of the 40 footers off the C&NW and the other "Granger" roads ended up, along with Duluth in the US and Thunder Bay in Canada. Of course, there things would be simpler than at a flour mill, as the boxcars with incoming grain would be emptied and then it would -- after passing through whatever grain handling system was in place -- be dumped right into a lake boat to forward to Buffalo or other port on the lakes or down the St. Lawrence to connect with salt water transportation overseas.
RRR_BethBrMy era of interest would be late 1940s or early '50s, just before dieselization really started in.
That early and it's pretty much all about boxcars. Covered hoppers were still off in the future for nearly all grain and most flour shipping. But the fact that boxcars are classified differently depending on the intended lading helps add operating interest. You might see three boxcars that all looks pretty much the same, but reading the fine print of the placarded lading and service restrictions requires they be treated differently.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
My subject of interest may be something of an oddity (or maybe not), in that it seems to have been both an 8-silo elevator, and a mill. It was located directly on a B&O mainline, and local sources indicate that at the very least it shipped flour out by rail for export.
Located in an agricultural area, it appears to have been an all-purpose facility - that is it accomadated grain storage, flour milling, and animal feed production. In addition to the rail connection, it had road-side loading/unloading (trucks) and a retail store all in one site.
So there's probably a lot of lattitude in modeling this industry, I just want to be sure there's a plausibility in what I work out (and design the siding for). My era of interest would be late 1940s or early '50s, just before dieselization really started in. Looks like I should probably seek out one of the books on modeling the grain industry, as long as they're era-appropriate.
All of this (and more) is explained very nicely with good photos in Jeff Wilson's book on Grain, published by Kalmbach. Basically farmers brought their grain to the elevators by trucks or wagons, and it was shipped out in boxcars, which arrived as very clean empties. But the car would be "coopered" so there were no leaks and the grain would fill the box car, not bagged. That was an earlier era.
Hence the need for grain doors (wood planks, later reinforced paper) covering the openings - it had to be a tight seal to keep grain from leaking. A flexible tube from the elevator would be pushed into the opening and moved around to fill the car. Sometimes at old and abandoned elevators you can still see that tube hanging down.
The boxcar would then go either to an end user such as a bakery or brewer or other large customer, or would go to still larger elevators such as at seaports to load ships.
There was still plenty of grain being shipped by 40' boxcar into the 1980s at least to the huge collection elevators here in Milwaukee. Likely that is because the various branch lines in grain country could not handle the big covered hoppers. Both boxcars and covered hoppers were seen at those elevators. And by the way plenty of grain DID leak and at night in the headlight of a locomotive switching the elevators you could see a sea of rats scampering around the rails. Not a great place to be a brakeman!
Wilson's book nicely covers the transition from the old "prarie skyscraper" type of wood elevator to the modern huge elevators that can load an entire unit train.
Dave Nelson
Yes "LO" is a covered hopper. The letters used to designate car types don't necessarily mean anything...that is, R does refer to Reefers, but X for boxcars or N for cabooses doesn't relate directly to the name of the cars.
I found others who asked a similar Q on other forums. Here's one answer that might help: http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/board/index.php?topic=2710.0;wap2
Others more versed in grain operations can validate the accuracy.
hon30critter'LO' - please tell me what that stands for
Covered hopper. Any type of cargo from lightweight stuff like grain to heavy like cement. Cement hoppers would be physically smaller due to the greater density of the load for the same design Load Limit
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
OK guys, help me out here:
My mind is blank (which is nothing unusual).
'LO' - please tell me what that stands for. (I'll probably feel like a fool when I find out but that is nothing unusual either)
Thanks
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Usage of the 40' box cars for grain was certainly fading by the early 70s. They probably lingered as long as they did many places because the industry wasn't exactly rolling in extra cash to buy all the new LOs needed.
Ultimately, the deciding factor was the track conditions on many lightly used branch lines where grain was gathered from seasonally. IIRC, the C&NW and some other Midwestern roads had to deal with this and kept the 40' boxes in service to meet those requirements. The big three-bay LOs were just too hevay once loaded.
The last to fade were such ops in Canada, where some lasted into the 1980s for the same reasons they lingered in the US so long -- the 40' car was the only thing light enough once loaded with grain able to navigate some branch lines.
I seem to remember the final two seasons that box cars were used for grain loading were 1967 and 1968, at least in my locality. The car distributers were having difficulty finding suitable box cars from the xm pool, and the carmen were being pressured to inspect the interiors. to comodify them, that is, classify them suitable. Some of these cars found their way back as empties and were consigned to a cleanout track to remove grain doors and other dunnage, before they could be used for paper loading. Cars used in sugar and flour loading were in a separate pool stenciled to return to the mill or sugar refinery, rather than general service.
I think Stix has it. Another factor is that flour was shipped in cloth sacks in the past and in paper bags more recently. By the 60s, this was pretty much all palletized, except for bulk shipments which had already started moving in covered hoppers assigned to this service.
A grain car merely needs to be tight and uninfested. A car for finished product would need to have a smooth lining. Typically, grain box cars were older, maybe even used just for this seasonal service. Cars assigned to food service would run all year around and were probably far less numerous because flour is only part of what grain is used for and because this required a higher class car. Another factor with palletization would be the shipper would increasingly expect a load divider or other means to limit shifting of the product, so that would also be something a typical grain car would not be equipped with.
I wouldn't think a boxcar would come in with grain, and go out with sacks of flour. The boxcar would need to be cleaned out, as the grain it had been loaded with wouldn't be entirely clean. The car could have dirt, insects etc. left over from the grain. My assumption would be the cars picking up flour would be delivered empty and clean for just loading with flour.
I understand that up until the 60's, most grain was shipped in 40' boxcars fitted with temporary wooden 'grain doors' affixed to the interior lining. There would be dropped off at a mill and unloaded (usually by hand) - and then what?
Since the finished product (eg: bagged flour) was also shipped by boxcar, would those empties just get kicked down the siding and re-loaded with flour out the other side of the mill? Or would there be a reason the RR would pick those empties back up and/or spot new ones for finished flour/feed/etc coming out of the mill?
I'm contemplating modeling a midsized suburban/rural mill in the Eastern Mid Atlantic, based loosely on a real one that existed from about 1910 on in the town where I live. It unfortunately burned down in the 70's, so there is no infrastructure left. I've found a few pictures from the local historic society, but none on the "railroad side" of the complex, so aside from a general idea of what it looked like Im basically on my own in regards to how to model its operations.