Nostalgia & History > Grain transition to covered hoppers

When I was in school in Kansas (from 1942 to 1960) all the wheat in that state and probably many others was loaded into boxcars with Signode grain doors.  Between the Santa Fe, UP, MoP, and Rock Island I wouild hate to think how many boxcars roamed the plains during wheat harvest.  Sometime after that, all the grain movement was transitioned to covered hoppers and I didn't even notice it as I was living in California.  Also, many Santa Fe branch lines in Kansas were closed up and trucks took over a lot of the local grain movements.  I thought maybe somebody a little younger than me could put some dates on the "great disappearance" of boxcars on the plains.
Joe Watts
Blissfield, MI

I can't comment regarding the lines you mentioned. I know that at least until the mid 1970s, the Illinois Terminal was delivering box cars for grain loading to the elevator they served north of my hometown (Carlinville, IL).

The conversion to covered hoppers started in the late 1960s, and was pretty much complete by the mid 1980s. There was some delay in the conversion due to many branch lines in the grain collection areas being light rail and poor condition that couldn’t handle the larger covered hoppers, so 40’ boxcars continued to be used. After Staggers act in 1980 many of those lines were abandoned and use of unit grain trains composed of the 100 ton capacity covered hoppers from larger elevators accelerated.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/24 10:00 by czephyr17.

I saw a lot of 40-foot grain shipments in Texas in 1974-75 but when I returned in 1980 they had vanished.
In particular there were large mills and elevators in Ft. Worth that had a lot of them.  
MKT in particular seemed to be mostly box cars for local grain.
As trucks and highways got better, and when truck rates for agriculture goods were basically unregulated, the economics of handling these "loose cars" running at low rates (because they were agricultural products under old ICC rate rules, semi-finished and finished goods always had higher rates) got too bad, the RRs had to get the tonnage/volumes in 100 ton hoppers to compete.

I should know but I don't.

When did ATSF first buy covered hoppers which were suitable for hauling grain?

How did they load boxcars with grain?
Blow it in there somehow?

When the car reached its destination,
how common were those tilting car
unloaders? If an elevator didn't have
that, how did they empty a car?

Though I think some railroads were already using covered hoppers for grain, the Southern Railway's "Big John" case focused attention on using large covered hoppers with multiple car rates in the grain trade. I believe that Southern Railway's results probably sped up the conversion to the  using large covered hoppers in lieu of boxcars.

ts1457 Wrote:
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> I should know but I don't.
>
> When did ATSF first buy covered hoppers which were
> suitable for hauling grain?

Most likely the GA-122 class built in 1959 by Pullman-Standard. They had a capacity of 3215 Cu Ft.

PHall Wrote:
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> Most likely the GA-122 class built in 1959 by
> Pullman-Standard. They had a capacity of 3215 Cu Ft.

Thanks. I am guessing that they were intended for both potash and grain service. 

Also it did not take too long for the railroads to start buying cars with over 4000 cu. ft. capacity.

timz Wrote:
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> How did they load boxcars with grain?
> Blow it in there somehow?
>

Go to that famous video site and type “Canadian Film Board Grain Elevator” to bring up an interesting video from the 1981* which shows the inner workings of a prairie grain elevator including loading a boxcar.

Can’t help with the unloading part.

*Thanks timz for corredting the date of the film, I thought it was the 1950s. So certainly was filmed near the end of boxcars for grain in Canada.

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/24 17:36 by czephyr17.

I still have a wooden grain door for SF and access to a few rolls of coopering. upkpfan

There might have been different ways to do it, but I've seen photos of what looked like a vacum operation.

Victor Baird

czephyr17 Wrote:
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> 
> Can’t help with the unloading part.
>
> Posted from iPhone

timz Wrote:
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> How did they load boxcars with grain?
> Blow it in there somehow?
 That is why the prairie skyscrapers were tall.  There were a number of wood crib bins inside the grain elevator.  Off to the side of the bins there was usually a metal lined sloped pit.  When grain was delivered to the elevator, it was dumped into the pit.  From there an elevator leg that was essentially a vertical bucket conveyor pulled the grain from the pit and lifted the grain up to the top of the elevator.  The operator would ride a small man lift up to the top of the structure where the top cone on the elevator leg could be turned  to a specific downspout that directed the grain to a desired bin.
   Loading a boxcar with grain was basically the same process.  The elevator operator would open a trap at the bottom of the grain bin and the grain would flow into the pit where the leg once again took the grain to the top of the structure.  This time the cone at the top was turned onto the spout that gravity fed the grain into the boxcar.  Some more modern elevators had a trip scale to measure how many bushels were loaded into the boxcar. 
   One other reason why hoppers were slow to make an appearance out in the country was due to the height of the down spout that loaded the boxcar.  Some of the older country elevators had to modify the loading down spout to a higher location in order to load the hopper.  Instead of loading into the side of the boxcar, they were now loading into the top of a hopper car.  That started the demise of the country elevator.
   The switch to hoppers up here started  in the late sixty's into the 70's.  Not to much after that the first 52 car unit train grain loading facilities started to come on line.  Instead of hauling my grain a mile to sell I found myself going east down the highway 30 miles to one of the first 52 car unit train loader facilities.   

Unloading that I saw at feed mills in upstate NY (up to the early 1980s) was with shovels. 

Basically, open the sliding steel door, puncture the paper sheet behind the door, and let as much grain as would flow by gravity, flow out the door.  Then get the youngest, strongest,  and cheapest laborer at the mill and have him push as much as he could toward the door, using either shovels or tools that looked a lot like a sidewalk snowplow.

There were tilting tables at larger installations.
A segment of track could be tipped to the side where the receiving hopper was, then the table could be rocked fore and aft to induce almost all the grain to pour out the door.
There were devices to secure the car to the table while this was going on.

Dad was coopering boxcars in the early 70’s when he worked at the local elevator. This was north central Iowa. By 1980 coopering boxcars was all but done in the Midwest.

Unloading was as described, some big mills had “power shovels” or vacuum unloaders or the car tilters.

I never understood why in the hell the industry didn’t switch to covered hoppers by the 20’s or 30’s. 🤷‍♂️

Regards

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Drknow Wrote:
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> I never understood why in the hell the industry
> didn’t switch to covered hoppers by the 20’s
> or 30’s. 🤷‍♂️
>
> Regards
>
> Posted from iPhone

Because labor was cheap then. After WWII the cost of labor went up a lot.