Rail industries through the years


VTRailway

VTRailway

Active Member
This is a spin off from a question I posted that may help someone else that finds themself in a similar situation. I'm a newb to the world of trains and model railroading. As a result I don't always understand what industries are often rail served or even how this service is performed. To complicate things, industries changed with time and I'm sure region. Would it be possible for people to give a general list of industries that would be typical and what era they would be applicable too? To get deeper into this, how they would have been operated. This information would assit me and I'm sure others.
 
Take a look at the database that Bigfoot13 posted in the other thread. It appears to be searchable which would narrow down your choices. Some industries will work in all eras and railroads like grain elevators, fuel distributors, coal mines, scrap metal or iron ore. There are many others, although equipment might change depending on the era. For example, grains were shipped in boxcars up until the mid-50's or so, when covered hoppers came into use. Automobiles were in boxcars before auto racks came into common use.
 
Design a main line you'd like to see your trains traverse..Don't worry about 100% realism.. You're new to it... If it's an oval of some kind merely add switch tracks here and there with spurs to anything you'd like, such as a lumber yard, a cannery, a dairy, a piano factory...Obviously cars are spotted at these industries and retrieved later on at any intervals you choose.
Have 2 opposing switches on the main to form a passing siding to allow 2 or more trains to go around one another...Do ANYTHING YOU like !! ...
The main thing you must be careful with are 'reverse loops' in track which turn trains from running say, clockwise to counterclockwise, as this causes a potential polarity clash in the rails which requires special electronic treatment and is easiest to remedy if you are newer DCC control as opposed to earlier analog DC control..Next to this are grades. Too steep grades will cause trains to slip wheels on them..
Finally, the wider the curve the better...Too tight curves can cause a number of problems..
Oh, and decide what benchwork: table top, open grid, L girder, shelf/around the walls.. Then just dig in and do it...It's all changeable later on anyway..
You're bound to make same mistakes we all have. You'll learn from them and become better at the hobby. Dat's jus da way it iz !!!
 
The question you asked is more like "describe the history of all industry in the United States for the last 175 years in 25 words or less".

In the 1800's, there was no highway system so the vast majority of freight traveling more than 50 miles moved by rail. Every commodity, every industry. There was something called LCL, Less than Car Load, which was all the shipments too small to be shipped in there own car. Traditioanlly there is a book of railroad rates, tariff rates, that say how much railroads will charge for moving a certain commodity between point A and point B and it is charged by weight. They have a certain minimum weight for car load service. It also doesn't matter how far the railroad has to go. If the tariff says that it costs $1 per 100 lbs to ship bags of flour between Chicago and Los Angeles, the ATSF with a 1500 mile route can charge $1 per 100 lbs and the UP with a 2000 mile route can still only charge $1 per 100 lbs. Quantities less than the tariff minimum moved on LCL rates. That could be 1 box of nails weighing 5 lbs or 6 crates of nails weighing 5 tons. LCL was taken to the freight houses and the railroad consolidated the shipments, then moved them to the destination freight house and the customer came to the freight house or arranged for delivery from the freight house. LCL wasn't expedited per se, it moved in regular freight trains.

After the highway systems were improved all that LCL moved to truck. Then when intermodal equipment was perfected, a large part of the boxcar business moved to intermodal. Where a train in the 1950's would have 100 boxcars, today that's moved to double stacks and TOFC. The freight houses and LCL died out about 1975-1980.

Many railroad customers looked like they were truck served but were actually rail served. Railroads had tracks called team tracks or public tracks that any industry could use to load or unload cars (mostly boxcars or reefers). The industry would use a wagon (hence the term "team" as in team of horses) or truck to move their good to or from the industry to the team track.

Today, most railroad customers are those that ship or receive commodities in increments of 50-100 tons or more at a time. The modern commodities tend to be bulk commodities (coal, grain, soda ash or potash, ores, oils, chemicals) or intermodal shipments. There are still public tariffs, but after the 1980's laws were passed (such as the Staggers Act) that revised how railroads did business and now they can also have private contracts for rates.

Industries change for lots of reasons, technology, economics, mergers, etc. Many railroad customers went to truck and many appear to have gone to truck, but in reality, they went to intermodal.
 
I did look at Bigfoot's posting. This is helpful. Dave your explanation in 25 words or less was great. As for the now what, I'm going to take PowerCab's suggestion along with the other information provided and attempt to start laying out some track. I can always cut the flex track and add in some industry spurs. I typically wing things in my life anyway, this shouldn't be any different.

I didn't know boxcars transported such a diverse amount of goods including but probably not limited dry goods, automobiles and grain. Probably lot's of other things too. I just assumed grain hoppers were always around. When did the shift to grain hoppers start happening? How was the grain moved and loaded/unloaded in box cars prior to the introduction of grain hoppers; sacks? Also curious how automobiles were put into boxcars without damaging them. All I can picture is trying to squeeze a 1960's Cadillac into a boxcar without scratching it! To me this would be like stuffing marshmallows into a parking meter. The answers to these kind of questions are not only interesting but will also likely help steer me into industry's on my layout.
 
Up until the mid-50's grain was always loaded in boxcars. From the inside, the doors were sealed with boards or cardboard up to within a foot or so of the top. Then grain was loaded using an auger driven system, or in some cases by gravity. Upon reaching its destination, the boxcar was positioned over a pit and the boards were removed to let the grain flow out. Then crews with brooms and shovels and later vacuum cleaners went to work.
1672604258056.png

This lasted at some places until the late 70's.
Automobiles were simply driven into double-door boxcars or flatcars until primitive Autoracks first appeared in the early 60's. I think that on some railroads, there were racks inside some boxcars that allowed stacking of the autos.
 
Where my father worked for a small oil company served by the READER RAILROAD, other than tank cars for liquid products - asphalt for roofing shingles and car batteries was shipped via boxcars in cardboard containers.
 
VTR, if, IF you are going to have 2-4, 3 foot flex pieces forming a huge curve, lay them out straight first, and solder them end to end including rail joiners..This way when you do go to curve them there will be no kinks in the curve...You also need Xuron Rail Nippers to clip off excess rail after bending...If you do, the flat side of the jaws face the good rail, and the concave side, the tossed rail pieces..And you cut top to bottom, not side to side of rail... Finally: After cutting any rails take a tiny file to them to remove any burs..
 
VTRailway said:
I didn't know boxcars transported such a diverse amount of goods including but probably not limited dry goods, automobiles and grain. Probably lot's of other things too. I just assumed grain hoppers were always around. When did the shift to grain hoppers start happening? How was the grain moved and loaded/unloaded in box cars prior to the introduction of grain hoppers; sacks? Also curious how automobiles were put into boxcars without damaging them.
Click to expand...
Pretty much everything went into a boxcar. The earlier the era, the more likely it could be in a boxcar. For example I model the 1900 era and acids (sulphuric, nitric) would be moved in a boxcar. They were shipped in large glass bottles (carboys). Lumber moved in boxcars, coal, oil (in barrels).

Grain was shipped in two ways, bagged and bulk. For bulk grain they would nail boards across the doorways, about 2/3 the way up and pour grain into the car. Later there were "grain doors" that were heavy paper with steel bands in it and they were nailed across the door. When the car got to destination you knocked out the bottom board or cut the paper and the grain would pour out. The wooden boards were saved up and shipped back to the elevators to be reused. That's why the midwestern roads had a gazillion boxcars with 6 foot doors, they were perfect for grain loading, while many of the eastern roads had 8 ft doors, better for loading machinery and other goods.

Watch this:

Covered hoppers for grain really started to be popular in the late 60's and early 70's. Canada and Mexico used boxcars for grain loading in to the 1980's. By the early 1980's pretty all the US domestic bulk grain business was in covered hoppers.

Autos were loaded through double door or end door boxcars, many of them 50 ft long. If the boxcar is stenciled "Automobile", then it had special racks in the car that allowed autos to be loaded 2 high inside the car. How did they load cars, through the 16 ft wide double door opening, carefully.

0cartrainloading-003.jpg


Grain boxcar story: In December 1979, I was Asst Trainmaster at Durand, KS and got a call in the middle of the that a grain train for Mexico had derailed. Drove out there and found a train of MP 40 ft boxcars loaded with corn for Mexico. On end of one car was down and the truck on that end was buried in a pile of corn. The car had had a hotbox (journal overheated) and the end of the axle had burned off allowing that truck side to drop to the ground, That caused the floor of the car to hit the wheel and bust a hole in the wood floor of the car, allowing the grain to pour out and bury the wheel and truck. We started to dig into the car to find the axle. We knew we were getting close to the hot journal when we hit popcorn.
 
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I KNEW IT !! I knew I'd seen earlier box cars which open at the ends for auto-loading ! Went looking all over for an example for OP, yesterday, but couldn't find one. Then, WHAM !! Here it is next day !!!
 
PowrCab said:
I KNEW IT !! I knew I'd seen earlier box cars which open at the ends for auto-loading ! Went looking all over for an example for OP, yesterday, but couldn't find one. Then, WHAM !! Here it is next day !!!
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That photo isn't an open end door though. It's a double door car being loaded through the side doors.

If the car in fact has an end door, it's not seen in this photo.
 
The way the pic above is taken, or at least, framed, caused me to think I was looking at the end of the car..(should have noticed the flooring).
Thus I guess I never did in past see a box car open at its end, like I'd thought..Or, maybe I did, but was more modern 1960s-70s or later.
 
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Hey guys. Sorry I haven't replied until now. Real life took over. I'm blown away with how goods were moved prior to specially designed cars. Thanks for educating me. The video provided about the day in the life of a grain elevator operator was really neat to see. The first thing that popped in my head after watching was me trying to picture young people today doing this job. I know there would be a few that could and would but I can say for certain, NOT ONE OF MY 4 DAUGHTERS WOULD DO THIS!
 
PowrCab said:
I KNEW IT !! I knew I'd seen earlier box cars which open at the ends for auto-loading ! Went looking all over for an example for OP, yesterday, but couldn't find one. Then, WHAM !! Here it is next day !!!
Click to expand...
The Hudson’s Bay Railroad still uses those cars, I just watched a video of them unloading in Churchill on a program called “The Mightiest“.
 
VTRailway said:
This is a spin off from a question I posted that may help someone else that finds themself in a similar situation. I'm a newb to the world of trains and model railroading. As a result I don't always understand what industries are often rail served or even how this service is performed. To complicate things, industries changed with time and I'm sure region. Would it be possible for people to give a general list of industries that would be typical and what era they would be applicable too? To get deeper into this, how they would have been operated. This information would assit me and I'm sure others.
Click to expand...
Another thing suprising me was loading pulpwood and bolts into box cars. While living in Warroad MN in 1983 the cafe talk was a man that loaded box cars with popple (aspen) bolts (small sawlogs, 8' long) alone. He would load these cars without any assistance. This information came first hand by one of his peers, also an old timer, who was aware of the goings ons around the rail siding. It was Marvin Box and Cedar company which later became the large window maker Marvin Windows. They started out making wooden crates for the war effort also sold cedar posts and poles.

What surprised me was first of all they were not using gondolas but box cars. This would have been 1940's. They must have had lots of box cars available but not a lot of gondolas. The second thing was that a man would insist on handling those heavy pieces alone. They said the man was rejected by the Army something to do with his physique however he had this immense strength almost like the fictitious Hulk, but this is a real person.
 
dave1905 said:
Pretty much everything went into a boxcar. The earlier the era, the more likely it could be in a boxcar. For example I model the 1900 era and acids (sulphuric, nitric) would be moved in a boxcar. They were shipped in large glass bottles (carboys). Lumber moved in boxcars, coal, oil (in barrels).

Grain was shipped in two ways, bagged and bulk. For bulk grain they would nail boards across the doorways, about 2/3 the way up and pour grain into the car. Later there were "grain doors" that were heavy paper with steel bands in it and they were nailed across the door. When the car got to destination you knocked out the bottom board or cut the paper and the grain would pour out. The wooden boards were saved up and shipped back to the elevators to be reused. That's why the midwestern roads had a gazillion boxcars with 6 foot doors, they were perfect for grain loading, while many of the eastern roads had 8 ft doors, better for loading machinery and other goods.

Watch this:

Covered hoppers for grain really started to be popular in the late 60's and early 70's. Canada and Mexico used boxcars for grain loading in to the 1980's. By the early 1980's pretty all the US domestic bulk grain business was in covered hoppers.

Autos were loaded through double door or end door boxcars, many of them 50 ft long. If the boxcar is stenciled "Automobile", then it had special racks in the car that allowed autos to be loaded 2 high inside the car. How did they load cars, through the 16 ft wide double door opening, carefully.

0cartrainloading-003.jpg


Grain boxcar story: In December 1979, I was Asst Trainmaster at Durand, KS and got a call in the middle of the that a grain train for Mexico had derailed. Drove out there and found a train of MP 40 ft boxcars loaded with corn for Mexico. On end of one car was down and the truck on that end was buried in a pile of corn. The car had had a hotbox (journal overheated) and the end of the axle had burned off allowing that truck side to drop to the ground, That caused the floor of the car to hit the wheel and bust a hole in the wood floor of the car, allowing the grain to pour out and bury the wheel and truck. We started to dig into the car to find the axle. We knew we were getting close to the hot journal when we hit popcorn.
Click to expand...
I loved the video of the grain loading. Where does he find time to browse the web and read the forums!
 
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