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Wake Up and Haul the Bacon

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  • Member since
    August 2003
  • From: Antioch, IL
  • 4,371 posts
Posted by greyhounds on Monday, June 10, 2013 9:28 PM

rrnut282

greyhounds

Semper Vaporo

 

 

hee hee hee... you ain't never lived downwind from a hog lot!  Ick!Wilted Flower

Oh, I grew up in hog land.  They called it the smell of money.   We call it the same thing, too.

There is a great picture in the book "Chicago and Illinois Midland" of a passenger train ready to depart Peoria with a carload of hogs cut in ahead of the two car "first class" consist.  I grew up in a very small town served by the C&IM thinking Peoria was the ultimate big city.  So I know the smell. 


 
putting hogs in front of the First Class cars?  What was the conductor thinking? 

Well, a couple things come to mind.

If you study old pictures you'll see that loaded livestock cars were placed immediately behind the engine.  This would minimize the effects of slack action.  Slack action could knock the critters off their feet and hurt them.  Humane considerations and the fact that the railroad would face a claim for damaged freight would dictate a rule that livestock be placed immediately behind the engine.

Second, the hogs were to be set out en route.  Where else would you put them?

Railroads expedited livestock and made sure the cars kept moving.  Why else would a passenger train get a load of hogs?  That car, I reckon, got all kinds of special handling in Peoria.

I've got a friend who farms in central Illinois.  Like me, he's now in his 60's.  But he was a farm boy and worked the farm basically since he could walk.  He remembers getting sheep from the C&IM and driving them down the road to the farm.

"By many measures, the U.S. freight rail system is the safest, most efficient and cost effective in the world." - Federal Railroad Administration, October, 2009. I'm just your average, everyday, uncivilized howling "anti-government" critic of mass government expenditures for "High Speed Rail" in the US. And I'm gosh darn proud of that.
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Posted by Convicted One on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 9:24 AM

I always thought "Pearl" was the better Tejas beer.

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Posted by Convicted One on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 10:37 AM

rrnut282
putting hogs in front of the First Class cars?  What was the conductor thinking?

Swine before pearls?

  • Member since
    March 2002
  • 9,265 posts
Posted by edblysard on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 4:17 PM

Lonestar isn’t really beer, its simply drunk fuel in a can.

Pearl is like Jax…if there is nothing else, at all, left….

23 17 46 11

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Posted by Convicted One on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 5:36 PM

Well, I DO hope that a railroad is crafty enough to get the land side transportation of this export once it ramps up. it'd be nice to think about at least a chunk of the money staying on these shores. It would make a nice backhaul for those containers of frozen shrimp Kroger is bringing  stateside.

  • Member since
    March 2002
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Posted by edblysard on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 5:49 PM

Not just shrimp, is it?

I thought they were also importing crab and something else, cant remember what it was.

I would imagine, if US pork production ramps up as much as the articles hint at, about the only way this could work is if rail does the land haul part, I don’t think they could run that many trucks fast enough.

23 17 46 11

  • Member since
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Posted by Convicted One on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 6:01 PM

You're probably right. I just said "shrimp" because that is what I buy most often.

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