Yes passing a livestock truck could result in your car needing to go to a car wash and if you forgot to roll your windows up when one passed you, it could have been a bigger problem. However, I have never forgotten standing on the platform at Grafton while taking the B&O's National Limited and watching it being serviced and someone did not heed the DO NOT FLUSH WHILE STANDING IN STATION sign. Felt sorry for the car knockers and others. AT least the retention toilets have cured that issue. As Amtrak found out after some boaters under a bridge got dumped on by a passing train with heritage equipment. This could be a subject for a new thread.
Thank You for the info on the other uses for an upper class car when not in horse service, and they could be Expedited on a Psgr right to down town on the same train cast was on?
B&O hauled hogs into Highlandtown, MD into the mid 70's for SK Meat Packing.
The meat distribution industry changed and the railroads provided what the customer wanted and didn't provide what they didn't want. The meat industry didn't want to transport livestock anymore and the livestock cars went away.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
ALL:
The changing meat processing market caused livestock to be processed near the place of slaughter. I remember one cattle move after the 1970 merger and that was it. Two cars of cattle came from Willmar to the CNW in Minneapolis, only to be told that the CNW accepted cattle at Sioux City or Omaha only, so the car was returned to Willmar. I worked an afternoon inbound clerking job at X-GN Minneapolis Junction. All the waybills were housed there. The BN learned a lot from the PC debacle---keep all waybills in a central location and messenger the bills and wheel reports to the trains
A steer or heifer ready for slaughter will drop 100 pounds or so during the first 24 hours of transport. Since the owner of said bovine has just spent a lot of time, effort and money putting weight on the critter, this is troublesome. Normal slaughter weight for live cattle is around 1,200 pounds, so a 100 pound loss is significant.
The solution is to greatly limit live transport and minimize the weight loss. A steer or heifer will normally get two truck rides in its life. One from the cow and calf operation (ranch) where it is bred and born to a feed lot. The second from the feed lot to the slaughterhouse.
Keeping both transport operations as short as possible is both humane and profitable. The large cattle plants supplying most of the US beef are mostly located in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Texas panhandle. (OK, they slaughter old dairy cows and cattle in other places. But the concentration is in NE, KS and TX.) That's where the cattle are bred, born, raised, fed to weight, and slaughtered.
The railroad opportunity is in moving the slaughtered meat, not the live cattle. (Or hogs, or sheep, whatever.)
While shipping animals long distance by rail in the US has stopped. There is a large business in transporting sheep from Austrailia to the Middle East.
http://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/committee/history/animalwelfare_ctte/export_live_sheep/03ch3.pdf
Most of the beef processed by the big packers -Tyson, JBS, etc-is shipped out as large cuts in boxes to the local grocers and butchers, who do the final cuts-chops, filets, T-bones, etc.
When the stock cars went away, so did the meat reefers, which shipped beef as sides hooked to rails inside the cars. A lot of those reefers were still wood (on steel underframes) and lasted into the early 70s.
Cattle Inventory 2015
US total 89,800,000
Rank
State
2015
% Of U.S.
1
Texas
11,800,000
13.14%
2
Nebraska
6,300,000
7.02%
3
Kansas
6,000,000
6.68%
4
California
5,150,000
5.73%
5
Oklahoma
4,600,000
5.12%
6
Missouri
4,000,000
4.45%
7
Iowa
3,900,000
4.34%
8
South Dakota
3,700,000
4.12%
9
Wisconsin
3,500,000
3.90%
10
Colorado
2,600,000
2.90%
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
And here's the cattle slaughtered by state in 2015. As you may see, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas account for 61% of the US beef production. They kill 'em where they raise 'em now and avoid long haul live transport as much as they can.
State Head Percent of US
The Union Pacific has several large cattle processing plants located along its main line between Omaha and North Platte. And on line at Dakota City, NE. And at Ft. Morgan and Greeley, CO. The railroad makes no effort to develop the beef business. It almost entirely moves by truck.
This irritates me.
Railroads were once also known for carrying poultry. Poultry, of course, requires much more attention than say, pigs or cows; and the poultry cars were crewed by some poor soul to clean the car, cull any dead birds, as well as feed and water them- all on his lonesome.
It's no wonder railroads gave it up once reliable highway transportation and refrigeration came into play. I think we can all agree that this was for the best.
greyhounds And here's the cattle slaughtered by state in 2015. As you may see, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas account for 61% of the US beef production. They kill 'em where they raise 'em now and avoid long haul live transport as much as they can. State Head Percent of US Nebraska 6,552,171 23% Kansas 5,678,665 20% Texas 5,042,407 18% Colorado 2,345,810 8% California 1,181,631 4% Wisconsin 1,116,336 4% Washington 1,007,851 4% Pennsylvania 941,523 3% Arizona 542,458 2% Utah 537,130 2% The Union Pacific has several large cattle processing plants located along its main line between Omaha and North Platte. And on line at Dakota City, NE. And at Ft. Morgan and Greeley, CO. The railroad makes no effort to develop the beef business. It almost entirely moves by truck. This irritates me.
Very irritating to say the least. I think it shows a lack of initiative on Marketing's part or at the very least an unwillingness to look at some of the different options out there that they could capitalize on.
FWIW, I still think there's some opportunities with livestock by rail as well although even I'll admit those opportunities are limited.
To answer the OP's question.. they had to stop the trains occasionally to allow the critters to get on and off.
Agreed. Not sure what the reason is, but Nebraska slaughtered more cattle than their inventories, while TX slaughtered far less than theirs.
schlimm greyhounds And here's the cattle slaughtered by state in 2015. As you may see, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas account for 61% of the US beef production. They kill 'em where they raise 'em now and avoid long haul live transport as much as they can. State Head Percent of US Nebraska 6,552,171 23% Kansas 5,678,665 20% Texas 5,042,407 18% Colorado 2,345,810 8% California 1,181,631 4% Wisconsin 1,116,336 4% Washington 1,007,851 4% Pennsylvania 941,523 3% Arizona 542,458 2% Utah 537,130 2% The Union Pacific has several large cattle processing plants located along its main line between Omaha and North Platte. And on line at Dakota City, NE. And at Ft. Morgan and Greeley, CO. The railroad makes no effort to develop the beef business. It almost entirely moves by truck. This irritates me. Agreed. Not sure what the reason is, but Nebraska slaughtered more cattle than their inventories, while TX slaughtered far less than theirs.
Yes, the numbers tell a story, but there is always more to the story.
Look at the cattle populations of Iowa and South Dakota. They're in the top 10 states for cattle population. Then do some more digging and realize that there are no major cattle slaughter facilities in either Iowa or South Dakota. But those states do border the number one beef slaughter state, Nebraska. It's a short truck haul to a beef plant in Nebraska.
For example, Tyson has a huge beef facility in Dakota City, NE. It's located in the north east tip of Nebraska. Just a few miles from both Iowa and South Dakota. It's the miles that matter, not the state lines.
Same with Texas and Oklahoma. Those are big places. The large beef plants in Kansas are just over the state line. In fact, Liberal, KS is on the state line.
There's always more to the story.
And it still irritates me that the railroads don't haul a good bit of the killed beef. It moves in large volumes long distances to human population centers on the east and west coasts.
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