What are today's livestock/cattle cars?


M

MHinLA

Guest
It just dawned on me that since we no longer (I think) see cattle cars with open-slatted sides and poltry shelves inside, what kind of today's freight cars carry livestock/cattle/chickens ? Or is it just that because I don't live in farm country I don't see them, and they still are open-slatted sides ? IE. What do today's cattle cars look like ?
 
The steer probably never makes it out of the state of Texas alive. Poultry moves by rail were very rare. The last livestock moves in the US by rail were hogs from Nebraska to California in HOGX cars back in the 1980's. Steers stopped being moved by rail in the 60's or 70's.
 
They look like this:

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At this point, things have already gone horribly wrong from the cow/chicken/pig's point of view.

From a quick glance at WikiPedia, it appears the last holdouts were the HogX cars in the 1990's, but even then they were pretty rare.
en.wikipedia.org

Stock car (rail) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
I'm glad I don't pay much attention to eras when collecting and running trains so perhaps run my expensive Broadway Limited stock with a sound decoder. Hardly ever use the darn car. I just may ship it to Montana knowing how much Chet likes to hear the cows mooing on the Livingston Club layout.

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Greg
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HOGX cars were purpose built to carry the Farmer John hogs, they were rebuilt from former MP 50 ft boxcars.

Another interesting story is the ARMN reefer. The UP has moved all its reefers to the ARMN initials. ARMN traces its roots back to the American Refrigerator Transit Co or ART in the late 1800's. It was owned by the MP and WAB, later the MP and NW and finally just the MP. After the UP merger, when the UP and SP broke up PFE into UPFE and SPFE, the UP moved its reefer fleet into the old ART origin initials.
 
MHinLA said:
It just dawned on me that since we no longer (I think) see cattle cars with open-slatted sides and poltry shelves inside, what kind of today's freight cars carry livestock/cattle/chickens ? Or is it just that because I don't live in farm country I don't see them, and they still are open-slatted sides ? IE. What do today's cattle cars look like ?
Click to expand...
The 28hr law shut down a lot of livestock transportation ,The last to be used was in the 1990's, HOGX cars https://www.flickr.com/photos/emd111/7821055360/in/photostream/, Overland Models made some brass models of these.
 
On the G.G.&W. Division of the "Q", we are hauling cattle to the Oscar Meyer processing plant at Galesburg. The farmer hauls his beef cattle to the siding where a couple of stock cars are waiting. You can even hear one cow mooing! (When I turn on the power to that branch.) Of course, this is the 1950's on the layout.
 
Last visit a year or so ago one of the beef processing plants was still standing and I'm sure it will be gone in the near future to make way for new development. In Wisconsin, we still have numerous small processing plants that double as retail meat markets. These are found in small, rural communities.

On a model railroad, I believe having stock cars add interest to the trains and look great spotted on a siding.

I built the Walther's cattle pens and have nowhere to place it at the moment on my layout. The expands are will definately have a place for this neat addition.

Greg
 
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