Nostalgia & History > Freight Car Friday HOGX

Here we see the famous 'FARMER JOHN" Pig train headed for processing at Vernon, CA. This weekly scheduled train brought Pigs from North Platte for years, and the plant closed in 2023!. It was considered a "Priority" train and crews loved it because the dispatcher wouldn't stop them very much!

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I can smell them distinctly. 
I hired out in LA with UP in December, 1990, so I missed out on the yellow stock cars. In the last years, 50' rebuilt boxcars were used, painted in BN-like green with actual HOGX reporting marks. Taking the almost mile long shove up "The Flood" lead along the LA River to the plant was a trip in itself. 
Disgusting hanging on to the side of the car with what might be the "A" end or the "B" end of a pig inches from your face was ... an experience. Shoving up the lead past a beef slaughtering plant was  "The Hide Slide" outdoor water flume with a cow hide sluicing down it to a waiting truck every so often, then the "Grasshopper", a vibrating box draining the feed straw of the cow's last meal, and finally, "The Gut Wagon," the Archimedes screw transferring all the rest of the cows' internals into a truck bed for future rendering. 
When you got the cars on spot, fusees were lit to smell something other than pig excreta.
You would be right in guessing some of the other more delicate extra board employees would lay off on this call....

Bob Davis They used to go through San Bernardino around midnight, because they wanted to cross the Mojave Desert after sundown. Back in 1981, I took the Desert Wind from Ogden to Pasadena, and saw a platform equipped with water hoses out in the boonies many miles east of Las Vegas. I later learned that the Farmer John Speicial would stop here to replenish the water supply for the piggies. In 1990, my fiancee and I were traveling from New England to Southern Calif. We stopped in Gibbon, Nebraska where hog drovers were loading the livestock cars for the one-way trip to Vernon. By then UP had sold the cars to Clougherty Packing and they had HOGX reporting marks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/26 21:21 by Fiftyfooter.

Good recollections you have. 
In my time, the westbound Z  probably the NPLAZ,  brought the hogs in to LA with an early morning hours arrival schedule. Dry Lake, NV was the watering location. 
The Z would pull through the "Drotts" (Named for Drott Travelift, the overhead load/unloaders), spotting the piggybacks. Then pull to the West end of the yard and cut off. Yard job YLA79, on duty 23:59 hrs the night before, would be waiting to grab the cars and go down the San Pedro Branch a short ways to shove up The Flood to spot the cars. Each car was spotted individually once the hogs were driven out of the car. Once unloaded, the empties were left at Clougherty for "cleaning?" and  the afternoon industry switcher would usually go pick them up.
I believe the last pig by rail moves were in about 1995/1996 and it closed out the era of livestock by rail in the US. 
 

Looks to be Riverside Junction by the looks of the landscape.

Jim Baker, Whittier CA

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA