Transporting racehorses by rail

[Charles H Bogart]

At one time both the C&O and the L&N had special baggage cars for transporting race horses. When did this sop and what were the rules for transporting racehorses in these special baggage cars? Now dats racehorses are transported by truck or aircraft.

[Overmod]

There's a thread on this already - it may be over on the MR forums.

The cars had special stalls to keep the horses upright during rough track or longitudinal shock.  The ones I saw had a 'central watering system' with an overhead tank and lines to troughs at the stalls.  I don't know if an organized system of feeding was fitted to some of the cars.

ISTR that some of the cars were fitted with stalls that could be knocked down to allow the car to be used for other purposes.  The water system was arranged to facilitate this.

Considering how much the horses were worth, and how fragile some Virginia Thoroughbreds can be, there might have been some form of air conditioning in hot weather, and special train-handling instructions above and beyond 'normal' passenger operation.

[wjstix]

Horse cars were once more common than you might think, I believe both Pennsy and New York Central had horse cars.

Of course the famous trotter, Dan Patch, had his own private car:

http://www.danpatch.com/dan-patch-rr-car.html

...and railroad:

https://slphistory.org/danpatch/

 

[tree68]

There were other specialized cars, too (not to take anything away from the race horse cars).  "Theater cars" had doors in the ends to allow for the loading of theater scenery "flats," which could be quite tall.

[Charles H Bogart]

Thanks will check out MR forms 

[BaltACD]

I suspect, but don't know for a fact, that when horse racing organizations were shipping their horses that they also had a employee of the organization accompany the horses as a 'rider' to insure their proper handling during transport.  Suspect the rider was also a 'friendly face' to keep the horses calm during transport.