Another load that I didn't see mentioned was woodchips. Some railroads used repurposed hoppers with extensions and some have special cars designed for woodchips. (PACCAR and FMC being two companies that manufactured those cars.) I grew up with a woodchip plant west of where I live. Anytime I traveled west I made sure I observed that plant. I think always seeing that plant influenced me to have lumber and lumber products as one of the main commodities on my road.
Sort of a side question about iron ore. Was iron ore generally shipped in pellet-form? Or, did it come in other sizes as well? From a Wiki page it looks like the pellets were ~1/4" OD.
I'm mainly interested in what form it would have been transported in hoppers in the early 40s in the NE/Midwest region. Thanks.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Somebody from iron ore country could give you a more definite answer re. the change from raw ore to taconite, but I believe the change came about in the 1950's or thereabouts. During the period you model, I think raw, red ore would be much more common.
Someone mentioned sulfur. Shipments were frequently received at a Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing plant on the AC&Y at Copley, Ohio in open gondolas. The bright yellow sulfur was shipped fairly long distances without any covering.
The differences in the weights of various ladings reminded me that AC&Y bought 100 former coal hoppers (essentially PRR GLa clones) from the Cambria & Indiana and had them rebuilt for dolomite (limestone) service out of Carey, Ohio. Their AC&Y numbers were 5000 - 5099. By the end of May, 1937, all had been rebuilt and were in AC&Y serevice. Within a year, the cars' old Enterprise door locks, which had been fine for coal service, began to fail while on the road. I'm not aware that any derailments were caused, but the road began to retrofit the cars with the much sturdier Wine door locks in March, 1938, and completed the conversions in July. That solved the problem, but the cars were used hard, and began to be retired during WWII. The last two were reassigned to work service by July, 1950. Limiting their capacity might have lengthened their lives and made the door lock conversions unnecessarey, but it would have required more cars to do the job.