Jason
Modeling the Fort Worth & Denver of the early 1970's in N scale
doctorwayne wrote: The car that my model was patterned after was originally a Grand Trunk car, so it had been built sometime before the 1923 Canadian National take-over. A friend owns the book with the information (and photo), and although I borrow it often, it's not here at the moment. The CNR rostered a couple dozen of these cars in at least two classes, and some were still in use at least into the 1990s, although by that time, it was work train service and the cars had been cut down to flatcars. Wayne
The car that my model was patterned after was originally a Grand Trunk car, so it had been built sometime before the 1923 Canadian National take-over. A friend owns the book with the information (and photo), and although I borrow it often, it's not here at the moment. The CNR rostered a couple dozen of these cars in at least two classes, and some were still in use at least into the 1990s, although by that time, it was work train service and the cars had been cut down to flatcars.
Wayne
You mean they'd been "blue skyed"? Sacrilage!
Wayne,
Yes, I saw your photo. They make them a lot bigger in Canada than in Oz. Different era I think. The one I put in a photo of is 19th century. Running until that traffic moved off the rails though.
cefinkjr wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: A very few horses and stud animals would travel in passenger rated cars. ... Due to the length and operational use of US passeneger cars there were relatively few purpose built passenger rated cars for animal transport - there's an awgul lot of 60' car for one horse. Have to correct you on this, Dave. There were a number of cars built specifically for moving horses in the US. Think race horses. They were moved by rail from one track to another because they were too valuable to entrust to trucks and, well, we just didn't have a whole lot of suitable airplanes then. I have a 1940 Car Builders Cyclopedia that shows several different horse cars. They look much like 70' or longer baggage cars on the outside but have varioius arrangements of stalls inside. Most of them seem to have movable stall partitions. I would guess that would be to allow easier cleaning. Chuck
Dave-the-Train wrote: A very few horses and stud animals would travel in passenger rated cars. ... Due to the length and operational use of US passeneger cars there were relatively few purpose built passenger rated cars for animal transport - there's an awgul lot of 60' car for one horse.
A very few horses and stud animals would travel in passenger rated cars. ... Due to the length and operational use of US passeneger cars there were relatively few purpose built passenger rated cars for animal transport - there's an awgul lot of 60' car for one horse.
Have to correct you on this, Dave. There were a number of cars built specifically for moving horses in the US. Think race horses. They were moved by rail from one track to another because they were too valuable to entrust to trucks and, well, we just didn't have a whole lot of suitable airplanes then.
I have a 1940 Car Builders Cyclopedia that shows several different horse cars. They look much like 70' or longer baggage cars on the outside but have varioius arrangements of stalls inside. Most of them seem to have movable stall partitions. I would guess that would be to allow easier cleaning.
Chuck
Hey, guys, pay attention! I posted a picture of just such a car, in this thread, several posts back. The model was built using a photo of the prototype as a reference, and is a fairly accurate rendition.
Dave,
In NSW they had a couple of codes of horse carriages. I think they were classified as coaching stock and would certainly have beeen run in passenger trains. Not quite as imposing as the 70' cars that Chuck wrote about in the States, but certainly for the same purpose. Moving thoroughbreds to race meetings.
One is preserved in the Thirlmere museum (Googleable) and a horse and strapper (1'=12" models) are included with the door open so we can see the internal arrangement. I was sure I took a photo, but seems to be lost. Horse stalls at either end and the humans in the centre compartment., with the windows. Horses must not have enjoyed a scenic journey.
A model.
ChuckAllen, TX
1435mm
You say
"All that said, moving live poultry by rail, while it did happen, was of such small volume in the whole scheme of railroading as to barely exist. In 1941, using the ICC statistics for Class I line-hauls, live poultry moved by rail in the U.S. totaled 17,503 tons against a total tonnage that year of 1,227,650,428, or 1/1000th of 1 percent of all tonnage. By comparison, cattle and calves were 3,529,039 tons; sheep and goats 947,325 tons; hogs 2,054,557 tons, and horses, mules, ponies and asses 128,539 tons. And dressed poultry accounted for 266,431 tons, or more than 15 times the tonnage moved live. Assuming the chicken net weight per car was around 5 tons, that means nationwide in 1941 there were 9 carloads of chickens loaded per day. This was not a common commodity by any measure".
That sounds like a huge bucket of chicken to me! How much dip does it need?
Also, you must recall, that the weight should be doubled... to allow for the ones that were frightened and trying to fly... so they didn't register on the scales. Natuarlly the RR persoannel would try to keep them calm to maximise the weight but the shippers would let off fire crackers... can't say i've seen this modelled...
How'd you get a five ton chicken in the oven?
bush 9245
You say:
"Tell me I am wrong, but I cannot imagine a train rolling down the track with the cattle lowing as it goes. " src="/trccs/emoticons/icon_smile_tongue.gif">"
At least if they were lowing you wouldn't have to worry about striking bridges the way some excess height cars do...
Hey Guys,
Going right back to the start of this thread: "BLI now offers cattle cars with three different sounds (cattle, hogs, and chickens)." I wonder why they would offer such a thing, or more pointedly, why would anyone buy them?
As far as I recall cattle did not make a lot of noise while cramped into wagons. And once the train was moving I think they were so frightened they made no noise.
Tell me I am wrong, but I cannot imagine a train rolling down the track with the cattle lowing as it goes.
Dave-the-Train wrote: orsonroy wrote: Otto Ray Sing wrote:I heard that towards the end of passenger service that some of the railroads actually ran livestock cars at the end of passenger trains. I find this quite hard to believe I've heard that rumor too, but have never seen any real evidence to back it up. I suppose an occasonal mixed local could pick up a stock car or three along its route, but that would be about the only time livestock and passengers would occupy the same train. but I suppose there's a prototype for everything. No there isn't. Great material Orsonroy! Thanks! Stock cars would not travel in anything other than a slow mixed passenegr/freight train (as distinct from a freight train of mixed loads/cars) because of the different draft gear, suspension and brake ratings. It is much more likely that frieght and passenger of all kinds would mix in earlier periods when everyone was happy to be moving without walking and being there before you left was less in demand. People used to enjoy travelling as an adventure! Before the age of the tractor horses were four footed tractors for everything. Whereas a tractor gets built in a factory and shipped on a flat car horses could be "built" or rounded up from wild locally. Until the rail system really developed locomotives were made locally and originally on the company's property from exactly the same practice. A very few horses and stud animals would travel in passenger rated cars. These were valuable animals owned by rich people. For most of history owning a horse worth carrying anywhere has been more like owning a Rolls Royce. Ordinary horses were cheaper to hire or to buy on arrival and sell on departure for most people. Due to the length and operational use of US passeneger cars there were relatively few purpose built passenger rated cars for animal transport - there's an awgul lot of 60' car for one horse. I suspect that horses may have been carried in baggage cars but have no evidence of this at all. I do have a drawing somewhere of a combined horse and carriage and groom car. These would have been run in private trains or as a private addition to a scheduled train. Imagine the bill! Some early box cars could be converted to stock cars. In the 1880s some of these were classed as farm moving cars and could carry not just stock, implements and fodder but the families as well. They were an improvement on walking west behind an ox hauled cart all day every day for months. (More wagons were ox hauled than horse hauled... oxs are tougher). As time moved on horses (and maintaining them) was a lot more expensive and more effort than the modern keeping of an auto. this is why Interurbans, trolleys and the rest did so much business... and why they died out. It occurs to me that circus trains carried animals in passenger rated stock... this might be a lead on baggage cars being adapted for horses. A related place to look would be the horse racing world. Moving to pigs and sheep... Double deck cars required double deck chutes at both ends. you wouldn't want to throw 60 hogs up into the upper deck... and they won't jump... they're just plain 'ornery and unhelpful. Did the UP Hog Palaces have three decks? I would still like to find a model of one of these. As far as I recall John Allen's G&D had a double chute... can anhyone confirm this? During WW1 unbroken horses were shipped to US and Canadian ports in anything that they would survive in for delivery to ships to Europe. I must disagree on your last point though... for a thing to exist there must be a thing... therefore there is a prototype for every thing
orsonroy wrote: Otto Ray Sing wrote:I heard that towards the end of passenger service that some of the railroads actually ran livestock cars at the end of passenger trains. I find this quite hard to believe I've heard that rumor too, but have never seen any real evidence to back it up. I suppose an occasonal mixed local could pick up a stock car or three along its route, but that would be about the only time livestock and passengers would occupy the same train. but I suppose there's a prototype for everything. No there isn't.
Otto Ray Sing wrote:I heard that towards the end of passenger service that some of the railroads actually ran livestock cars at the end of passenger trains. I find this quite hard to believe
I've heard that rumor too, but have never seen any real evidence to back it up. I suppose an occasonal mixed local could pick up a stock car or three along its route, but that would be about the only time livestock and passengers would occupy the same train.
but I suppose there's a prototype for everything.
No there isn't.
Great material Orsonroy! Thanks!
Stock cars would not travel in anything other than a slow mixed passenegr/freight train (as distinct from a freight train of mixed loads/cars) because of the different draft gear, suspension and brake ratings. It is much more likely that frieght and passenger of all kinds would mix in earlier periods when everyone was happy to be moving without walking and being there before you left was less in demand. People used to enjoy travelling as an adventure!
Before the age of the tractor horses were four footed tractors for everything. Whereas a tractor gets built in a factory and shipped on a flat car horses could be "built" or rounded up from wild locally. Until the rail system really developed locomotives were made locally and originally on the company's property from exactly the same practice.
A very few horses and stud animals would travel in passenger rated cars. These were valuable animals owned by rich people. For most of history owning a horse worth carrying anywhere has been more like owning a Rolls Royce. Ordinary horses were cheaper to hire or to buy on arrival and sell on departure for most people. Due to the length and operational use of US passeneger cars there were relatively few purpose built passenger rated cars for animal transport - there's an awgul lot of 60' car for one horse. I suspect that horses may have been carried in baggage cars but have no evidence of this at all. I do have a drawing somewhere of a combined horse and carriage and groom car. These would have been run in private trains or as a private addition to a scheduled train. Imagine the bill!
Some early box cars could be converted to stock cars. In the 1880s some of these were classed as farm moving cars and could carry not just stock, implements and fodder but the families as well. They were an improvement on walking west behind an ox hauled cart all day every day for months. (More wagons were ox hauled than horse hauled... oxs are tougher).
As time moved on horses (and maintaining them) was a lot more expensive and more effort than the modern keeping of an auto. this is why Interurbans, trolleys and the rest did so much business... and why they died out.
It occurs to me that circus trains carried animals in passenger rated stock... this might be a lead on baggage cars being adapted for horses. A related place to look would be the horse racing world.
Moving to pigs and sheep...
Double deck cars required double deck chutes at both ends. you wouldn't want to throw 60 hogs up into the upper deck... and they won't jump... they're just plain 'ornery and unhelpful.
Did the UP Hog Palaces have three decks? I would still like to find a model of one of these.
As far as I recall John Allen's G&D had a double chute... can anhyone confirm this?
During WW1 unbroken horses were shipped to US and Canadian ports in anything that they would survive in for delivery to ships to Europe.
I must disagree on your last point though... for a thing to exist there must be a thing... therefore there is a prototype for every thing
orsonroy wrote: 1435mm wrote:Chickens? By rail? Only chicks in the express car. Not in stock cars. Chickens simply don't tolerate transportation Not true. See my previous post. And apparently, you've never been stuck on the interstate behind a semi full of turkeys! and they're so cheap and easy to raise that there's no economic value in moving the live bird more than a few miles to a processing plant. Actually, quite the opposite is true. Until the advent of mechanical freezing, chickens were EXPENSIVE. The "Sunday chicken dinner" was a big deal until the 1960s, simply because chicken was so expensive, due to the high shipping costs. Rail shipping of chickens was mostly from rural areas to large cities, and was economically feasable because of the high per pound costs of the birds. Chickens were a home and small-farm sideline industry until the 1960s with the advent of combined feeder/processing plant operations, which postdates the stock car. My grandfather had chickens in Chicago, well into the 1960s. They raised them because of the high cost of the birds otherwise, and gramps had a shotgun loaded with rock salt to deter chicken rustlers. It was the advent of Purdue's flash freezing process in the late 1950s, coupled with mechanical refrigerator trucks that made chickens easier to transport, more attractive to raise, and the main meat potein source on the planet today.
1435mm wrote:Chickens? By rail? Only chicks in the express car. Not in stock cars. Chickens simply don't tolerate transportation
Not true. See my previous post. And apparently, you've never been stuck on the interstate behind a semi full of turkeys!
and they're so cheap and easy to raise that there's no economic value in moving the live bird more than a few miles to a processing plant.
Actually, quite the opposite is true. Until the advent of mechanical freezing, chickens were EXPENSIVE. The "Sunday chicken dinner" was a big deal until the 1960s, simply because chicken was so expensive, due to the high shipping costs. Rail shipping of chickens was mostly from rural areas to large cities, and was economically feasable because of the high per pound costs of the birds.
Chickens were a home and small-farm sideline industry until the 1960s with the advent of combined feeder/processing plant operations, which postdates the stock car.
My grandfather had chickens in Chicago, well into the 1960s. They raised them because of the high cost of the birds otherwise, and gramps had a shotgun loaded with rock salt to deter chicken rustlers.
It was the advent of Purdue's flash freezing process in the late 1950s, coupled with mechanical refrigerator trucks that made chickens easier to transport, more attractive to raise, and the main meat potein source on the planet today.
I built these stockpens for my Lowbanks Stockyards, using Evergreen strip styrene. The double-deck chute is from an amalgamation of plans from both MR and RMC. While I found this style best suited for my situation, there were also moveable chutes, which could be raised or lowered, to allow loading, in turn, of the upper and lower decks of stockcars.
(click on images to enlarge)
As for horses, many large railroads ran express horse cars: these were essentially baggage cars that were fitted with collapsible stalls. I don't have a floorplan available to check, but there may have been provision for tack and equipment, and perhaps an attendant. To the best of my knowledge, these were used primarily for racehorses, and possibly "show" animals. When not in use for livestock, they could serve as regular baggage/express cars. Here's a model of a CNR express horse car that I built, using a Rivarossi heavyweight coach as the starting point.
Otto Ray Sing wrote:I heard that towards the end of passenger service that some of the railroads actually ran livestock cars at the end of passenger trains. I find this quite hard to believe, but I suppose there's a prototype for everything.
I've seen pictures of "pigs" at the rear of some main line passenger trains. They weren't the kind that go "oink" though.
Jeff
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
wjstix wrote:Keep in mind too that the stock cars designed for pigs would be two-level, for cattle, one level.
Double-deck stock cars also handled sheep and calves (veal)
BTW what about horses??
Except for the Soo Line practices you referred to, shipping horses by rail was rare, except when they were to be used as meat sources. Due to the large numbers of first-generation European immigrants into the USA until about WWII, there was a large business in edible horses. After WWII, the horse traffic remained, but it mostly went to dog food plants.
Dave-the-Train wrote:Did chickens really travel in stock cars? Presumiably in baskets? I do have a drawing (c1890) for a "Poultry Car" complete with attendant's compartment mid car. What a job!
Poultry (chickens and turkeys in the USA) moved by their own stock cars, called, appropriately enough, poultry cars. They looked nothing like conventional stock cars, being wire enclosed. The animals were kept and stacked in wire cages (much like today), and there was an attendant riding in each car, to feed and water the animals (poultry is much more delicate than are mammals). Poultry shipping started dying during the Depression and the improvement of road shipping. But poultry rail shipping did last into the 1950s, especially in the Midwest and South.
Trynnallen wrote:I am still waiting for the sheep sounds. Sheep wasn't often shipped to the slaughterhouse, but they were often shipped from praire to praire.
The Chicago Union Stockyards could store and process 30,000 sheep a day, all handled by rail. One double deck stock car could hold roughly 120 sheep.
Leon Silverman wrote:BLI now offers cattle cars with three different sounds (cattle, hogs, and chickens). Distributing these three cars throught a sting of cattle cars would imply that you were simultaneously running a train containing all three types of livestock in sections of that train. Could this have ever happened in actual operations or would any group of cars contain only one type of livestock.
Not usually. Stock usually moved in small car strings, since it had to be moved fast. Since different animals have different growing seasons, roads usually only shipped one type of animal at a time. You would see strings of different animals coming out of stockyards that were primarily brokerage and retaining yards.
Similarly, would a cut of these cars ever be included in a mixed frieght, or were these cars the orignial "unit trains".
No such thing as unit trains before about 1960, by federal law. All freights were technically mixed freights, even if they were composed of all the same car type (N&W coal drags or NKP meat trains all "look" like unit trains, but they're not. Therefore, stock cars were added to the next available train, usually in the front to facilitate quick switching at the next yard.
I am aware that livestock has to be periodically unloaded, exercized, fed and then reloaded back into the cars
Yes, after 26 or 32 hours (IIRC). But that almost only hapened west of the Mississippi, where distances were greater. Since railroads lost money when they had to stop and rest stock, they did everything possible to avoid doing it.
Leon Silverman wrote:BLI now offers cattle cars with three different sounds (cattle, hogs, and chickens). Distributing these three cars throught a sting of cattle cars would imply that you were simultaneously running a train containing all three types of livestock in sections of that train. Could this have ever happened in actual operations or would any group of cars contain only one type of livestock. Similarly, would a cut of these cars ever be included in a mixed frieght, or were these cars the orignial "unit trains". I am aware that livestock has to be periodically unloaded, exercized, fed and then reloaded back into the cars.
Chickens? By rail? Only chicks in the express car. Not in stock cars. Chickens simply don't tolerate transportation, and they're so cheap and easy to raise that there's no economic value in moving the live bird more than a few miles to a processing plant. Chickens were a home and small-farm sideline industry until the 1960s with the advent of combined feeder/processing plant operations, which postdates the stock car.
Hogs and cattle could move at the same time in the same train.
Everything is dependent upon location and era. Just to pick one example, the Great Basin and Intermountain West in the 1950s, there were heavy seasonal moves of calves, cows, and sheep, and some long-distance through moves of hogs. Livestock typically moved in regular trains or in extra trains during the fall rush. Even in the extra trains there would often be fill tonnage of whatever was in the yard.
S. Hadid
Trynnallen wrote: My grandfather used to ride the rails between State Fairs when he showed cattle back in the day. From his recall it wasn't often but he could recall cattle and pigs being mixed, in long strings, but chickens were rarer. I am still waiting for the sheep sounds. Sheep wasn't often shipped to the slaughterhouse, but they were often shipped from praire to praire.
My grandfather used to ride the rails between State Fairs when he showed cattle back in the day. From his recall it wasn't often but he could recall cattle and pigs being mixed, in long strings, but chickens were rarer.
I am still waiting for the sheep sounds. Sheep wasn't often shipped to the slaughterhouse, but they were often shipped from praire to praire.
In the UK livestock were marshalled next to the loco in freight trains - so that the wagons took less banging about as the drawgear ran in and out (in US terms). I'm pretty certain the same applied in the US.
For distance this would mean that all the (occupied) livestock cars would run on the head end. For local traffic (slower moving over a shorter distance) the head end would still be preferred but some variation might occur to assist switching out cars en route.
Of course the big thing today would be all sorts of precautions to not mix stock from different sources so as to avoid the spread of any disease.
Did chickens really travel in stock cars? Presumiably in baskets? I do have a drawing (c1890) for a "Poultry Car" complete with attendant's compartment mid car. What a job!
I believe that sheep moved "prairie to prairie" for fattening... a process known in Europe as "Transhumance"... isn't it amazing the completely useless things we can recall from school days? Now... how do I figure part of the circunference of a circle for the length of a curve on my layout?