Grainy questions

[Uncle Jake]

The film gives an unloading time of seven minutes per car. I have a book about Cargill written by Wayne G. Broehl, Jr. that says when they built a new terminal elevator in Omaha in 1930, it had a car dumper installed that could "...clean the car in less than four minutes from the time it was placed in the dumper and the car dumper could handle ten card in an hour, or some 200 to 240 cars per day. " p. 377

[wanswheel]

 

 

[Leo_Ames]

That's indeed it, thanks.

Would be hard pressed to find a better video demonstrating this style of unloader than that one. 

[jeffhergert]

Leo_Ames

There's video of these unloading machines somewhere. I watched an old government documentary about the Canadian grain industry on YouTube a while back and there's footage of these unloader rockers that were used to unload grain from boxcars. 

I'll see if I can track it down.

Edit:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_elevator/

This was interesting, but I've yet to find what I watched. 

 

Is this it?  About 19 minutes in shows the box car at the terminal elevator and how it's unloaded.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_handling_in_canada

Jeff

[Murphy Siding]

     How did grain in boxcars off branch lines compete with grain handled more efficiently in bigger covered hoppers loaded on mainlines?

[Leo_Ames]

While I don't know about plywood in earlier times, in later years of boxcar usage for hauling grain they utilized heavy duty paper/cardboard doors that had some steel reinforcement straps, that were stapled in place. 

Paul of Covington

Silly question:  After the man nailed the grain doors in place inside the boxcar, how did he get out?

Since I think this went unanswered, he just climbed out of the top of the door. They didn't utilize all the volume available. 

[Semper Vaporo]

CShaveRR

These were inspections of the grain itself.  Not sure what they expected to find that a cursory inspection could handle, but someone may know.

The inspection was at least three things...

One was a a cursory look to see that the commodity was what it was supposed to be... i.e.: if it as listed as corn it had better not be beans instead.

Another was to look for excessive non-product contaminants... i.e.: if is as supposed to be shelled corn then it should not have bits of cob, leaves and stalks in excessive amounts.

Lastly, they took a scoopful of the product periodically throughout the loading process and put it in a bucket, being sure to catch some of the product from many segments of the load; this was then weighed in a fixed volume to be sure the whole load would be within the load limits of the RR car and again, as expected for the product.

They might also have done a moisture content test or some other more detailed tests, but that might have only been done at the receiving end or a large bulking facility.

[BOB WITHORN]

  Silly question:  After the man nailed the grain doors in place inside the boxcar, how did he get out?

Paul, the car door strap/corrugate or boards only when up maybe 3/4 of the way. The guy crawled out over the boards.

[CShaveRR]

These were inspections of the grain itself.  Not sure what they expected to find that a cursory inspection could handle, but someone may know.

[Murphy Siding]

CShaveRR

......  I didn't read up on this or anything before shooting off, so outright contradictions or minor corrections would be welcome......

 

  Thanks.  That was enlightening.  I hope someday that I'll know enough about something, anything , to be able to explain it as well as you did off the cuff.

      Inspections?  Was that a railroad man inspecting the loading, or a grain man inspecting the grain?

[Murphy Siding]

BaltACD

 

Deggesty

Carl, I looked in Wikipedia, and found that plywood, which was invented in England near the end of the 18th century, was introduced into this country in 1865. I, too, had thought that it was a more recent innovation.

 

 

There is generally a signifagant time difference between something being invented and it becoming a commonplace product.

 

      Commonplace product would have put you sometime in the 60's.

-Lumber guy

[Murphy Siding]

mudchicken

Well into the 1980's you had rural elevators that could only handle boxcar loading (Think of the old timber w/ tin siding anachronisms)...then again when hoppers were in tight supply, the boxcars and wine door (tilting floor) gons would appear out of nowhere in grain rush season. Where I was it was more of an elevator issue than a track condition issue.

 

  In the mid-eighties I was still selling lumber and tin for a couple of new anachromisms!  I bet those are still sitting next to where the tracks used to be.

[BaltACD]

Deggesty

Carl, I looked in Wikipedia, and found that plywood, which was invented in England near the end of the 18th century, was introduced into this country in 1865. I, too, had thought that it was a more recent innovation.

There is generally a signifagant time difference between something being invented and it becoming a commonplace product.

[Deggesty]

Carl, I looked in Wikipedia, and found that plywood, which was invented in England near the end of the 18th century, was introduced into this country in 1865. I, too, had thought that it was a more recent innovation.

[mudchicken]

Well into the 1980's you had rural elevators that could only handle boxcar loading (Think of the old timber w/ tin siding anachronisms)...then again when hoppers were in tight supply, the boxcars and wine door (tilting floor) gons would appear out of nowhere in grain rush season. Where I was it was more of an elevator issue than a track condition issue.

[Paul of Covington]

   Silly question:  After the man nailed the grain doors in place inside the boxcar, how did he get out?

[CShaveRR]

Whoa!

Let's bring things down to earth and solid roadbed...not every unloading facility would have had tipping machines like that.

First of all, Norris, not plywood.  How recent an invention was that:  the 1940s, maybe?  Thirties at the earliest?  You would use regular lumber cut to a length that would fit the width of the car, and they would be put in on top of each other to within a couple of feet of the height of the door (enough for an inspector to fit in...those boxcar loads all had to be inspected!)  The chute from the elevators (or a conveyor from a truck) would easily fit into the small opening remaining, and the grain could be pushed to some degree, when loading was almost complete, to fill in the corners.  Think a solid rake or squeegee, to push it away from the doors a small distance.  It probably wasn't much of a problem, anyway, because the weight limit was likely to be reached on a 50-ton car before the thing was completely filled.  A well-designed grain car would have slots by the door edges into which these lengths of lumber could be slid.  A bit of coopering might be needed if leaks became evident.

Both Union Pacific and Soo Line had series of box cars with grain doors near the top of the standard plug doors.  They were basically a pair of square doors next to each other, two or three feet square.

Later on, cardboard grain doors were designed, as noted above, to cover the door openings, attached with staples, nails, or whatever.  I saw plenty of these by the time I was working, and C&NW also used expanding foam to fill in cracks around the openings.

Unloading:  Spot the door over an opening, open the door, and let gravity do its job.  You could open the door board by board (another reason plywood wouldn't be the best--lots of pressure on that would keep it from moving).  Empty as much as possible, followed by shoveling/pushing, followed by sweeping.  With a single-use cardboard grain door, one could use box-cutters to slit an opening.

As recently as the 1920s, box cars were used for just about anything that could go through the doors.  I'm pretty sure that hopper cars with roof hatches (for cement) didn't appear before then, and that's what they were...coal hoppers with a roof added.  It was in the 1930s that purpose-built covered hoppers first showed up, again for cement and sand.  They were too small for grain to be carried efficiently.

That may be part of what was happening and why it took so long:  covered hopper cars didn't approach the volume capacity of box cars until the 1960s.  Where I came from, covered hoppers were used for beans by that time, along with a few box cars with roof hatches.  The Big John cars held roughly double the amount of a typical cement covered hopper, and had double the capacity--100 tons.  When the volume and weight limit of a covered hopper exceeded that of a 40-foot box car, the die was cast.

Rules for inspection also had to be loosened to make covered hoppers work, as the interior space was tightened.

We used to send loads of grain to a "bulk" track, where they would be inspected before moving on to their consignees.  Covered hoppers, on the other hand, were allowed to go directly to their consignees.

Roadbed conditions would also play a role.  In the 1970s and 1980s there were still plenty of branch lines (you know, in the land where there be elevators) that could handle only 70-ton cars, which was about the upper limit for the 40-foot box cars but not enough for the typical grain-carrying covered hoppers.  That kept box cars around a bit more, since railroads pre-Staggers weren't exactly rolling in dough (just raw grain) enough to upgrade the roadbed.  

Somehow, somewhere, the evolution the grain handling followed all makes sense.  I didn't read up on this or anything before shooting off, so outright contradictions or minor corrections would be welcome.  But I suspect that this is how it happened.

[Leo_Ames]

There's video of these unloading machines somewhere. I watched an old government documentary about the Canadian grain industry on YouTube a while back and there's footage of these unloader rockers that were used to unload grain from boxcars. 

I'll see if I can track it down.

Edit:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_elevator/

This was interesting, but I've yet to find what I watched. 

[Semper Vaporo]

As I understand it, the tip table could tip both ways to get the grain from each end to exit via the center door.  I have always wonder just how fast the table tipped.

[Murphy Siding]

Semper Vaporo

I found this photo of a boxcar being tipped.

 

http://portlandwaterfront.org/old_gallery/mid_20th_century/images/104.jpg

 

 

     That looks extreme.  If the door is in the center of the side of the boxcar we can't see, wouldn't tipping a car like this push a lot of the grain to the front of the car nearest to us in the photo?  Do you suppose every car had to be switched in and out, one at a time to the tipping table?

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

BOB WITHORN

As I recall, SOUTHERN came up with the original cov. grain hopper and got in a big years long battle with the ICC??

Southern was the one of the first to use large covered hoppers (Big John) in unit train service and was famous for the rate case involving them.

[Euclid]

One advantage of a boxcar over a covered hopper is that people don’t pepper the outside of a boxcar with hammer dents in order to release grain stuck to the inside of the walls.

[Semper Vaporo]

And here is a link ot a 15 minute video of a man loading grain into a boxcar:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_elevator/

BORING as all getout, but quite informative!

[Semper Vaporo]

I found this photo of a boxcar being tipped.

 

http://portlandwaterfront.org/old_gallery/mid_20th_century/images/104.jpg

 

[BOB WITHORN]

    How much tilt did it take to make grain run downhill?  Did they just raise the 4 foot grain door, and most of the grain slid out on it's own?  I bet some guy had to get inside with a shovel and broom to finish the job?

 

 

Not very much. The stuff flows very easy. I learned you don't crack open the rear gate on a loaded wagon - You'll close it when the grain decides to stop flowing and then you can get a shovel and put it all back in, (before grandfather got back).

Yes, workers got in side with shovels and brooms.

As I recall, SOUTHERN came up with the original cov. grain hopper and got in a big years long battle with the ICC??

[BOB WITHORN]

Euclid

The corrugated across the doors I mentioned earlier actually was what looked like 2 sheets of corrugated glued together with steel straps maybe 6" or so apart. The straps had hole pre-punched about 1 1/2" apart. They stretched the sheet across the door and then they would pound nails through the strap into wood on either side of the door opening. I think Interlake Steel made them for 6", 8" and maybe 10' doors. They used the grains weight to hole it against the opening which made it a project to get the dorr closed on a partially loaded car.

[BOB WITHORN]

When I was 9 - 14 years old as slave labor on my grandfathers farm, I drove the tractor and wagon to the Richmond, Mi. elevator with loads of wheat. sometimes while sitting in line, waiting my turn to dump, I would watch them prep the empty boxcars on the GTW siding. They nailed what looked like corrugated box material across the door opening. When they loaded the cars, they swung the elevators grain chute in to the door opening. People got inside and had an extension on the chute to direct the grain to the car ends. When thegrain was high enough, they got out and closed the door. In the door was a loading hatch to put the chute from the elevator through. I suppose they just pumped the grain in until it started flowing back out. There was always a lot of grain on the ground next to the car doors. In 1976, 77, one of the products available from our steel strap mfg. was CAR DOOR STRAP for grain box cars.

[Euclid]

Murphy Siding

   

     What took so long for covered hoppers to be invented/widely used? 

 

That is a question I have wondered about.  There was plenty of ingenuity in rolling stock going right back into the 1800s, and more variety of cars and cargo by far.  So what took so long to come up with a covered hopper?  Shipping grain in boxcars with temporary “grain doors” and all of the labor seems ridiculous after about 1870.  Yet it continued for another 100 years. 

Another problem with grain doors is that they were vulnerable to shift from slack and switching impact, and begin to leak generously.  I recall occasional mounds of of grain along mainlines where trains had stopped and a leaker piled up several cubic yards in one place.

[Murphy Siding]

     I was reading something that made me realize how little I understand about how grain used to be shipped in boxcars.

     I understand that the shippers had to put plywood grain doors in to contain the grain.  I read the grain doors were about 4 feet tall, and that a man had to get inside the car while loading, to make sure the grain was spread somewhat evenly on the floor area.

      How deep was the grain put in?  Just four feet?  How was the grain put in?  Chute?  Auger? Shovel?  I take it the man inside leveling grain was using a scoop shovel?  Wouldn't grain tend to slf-level itself on rail with joints every 39 feet?

     Tilt tables were used to angle the boxcar floor and make it easier to unload grain.  What?

     How much tilt did it take to make grain run downhill?  Did they just raise the 4 foot grain door, and most of the grain slid out on it's own?  I bet some guy had to get inside with a shovel and broom to finish the job?

      Covered hoppers eliminated the labor intesive and switch intensive use of boxcars for grain shipment.  I suppose it also made tilt tables obsolete.

     What took so long for covered hoppers to be invented/widely used?  Currently unit grain trains shipped out of our area are priced in increments of 26 cars.  26,52,&104 being most common from what I understand. 

       Where did the lucky number 26 come from?