Can someone identify this livestock car?

http://rrpicturearchives.net/r...x?id=GASX&cid=29

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here's a cool pic

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Sorry I don't have info but there are some cool pics

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ERRENCE ROBLE General I did not know livestock cars made it into the 90's still in utilization, "HOG" how fitting. 10/20/2011 7:17:48 PM   Alexander Schwarzmueller General It was a brief experiment conducted by Union Pacific. They built a handful of stock cars and ran them with intermodal trains. Even with fastest service, railroads cannot meet the standards demanded by today's standards for animal treatment and the experiment was terminated. 8/15/2015 6:11:54 PM

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Needs gi-raffes.  ;-) 

Mitch

Looks like two levels, so it was designed for hogs. UP had an express hog train from central Nebraska to the west coast about 20 years ago.  Could have used a version of these but i have no pics to verify that the same type of car was used.

Does anyone run livestock trains any more?  

Apart from me running gi-raffe unit trains, that is.   

Mitch 

M. Mitchell Marmel posted:

Does anyone run livestock trains any more?  

No.

Mitch 

 

M. Mitchell Marmel posted:

Does anyone run livestock trains any more?  

Apart from me running gi-raffe unit trains, that is.   

Mitch 

No  maybe  the odd exception but stock from the west to the east coast would have to be  spotted at  stock pens un-loaded , fed   watered re-loaded  every so many hours...(Perhaps 24)

Thing of the past. Interesting car though, I've never seen one quite like it.

wb47 posted:

Looks like two levels, so it was designed for hogs. UP had an express hog train from central Nebraska to the west coast about 20 years ago.  Could have used a version of these but i have no pics to verify that the same type of car was used.

That's correct. They made the run to Farmer John in Vernon, CA. Farmer John switched over to locally-raised hogs which are brought in on trucks (I see them from time to time on the I-210 freeway and make sure the windows are up and vents closed).

That photo appears to have been taken in the 1970's (looking at the pickup truck in the background) and is definitely designed for hogs. I was surprised to see a livestock car that big. Changes in shipping rules for live animals over the years plus the proliferation of more meat packing facilities and refrigerated transport made it impractical to transport livestock by rail.

 

Joe:

Nice photos. Thanks for posting.

Engineer-Joe posted:

here's a cool pic

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Super cool picture. Cross Bros was one of the last abattoirs in Philadelphia.  Family owned Kosher slaughter house.

Conrail ran 'modern' stock cars on a TV (intermodal) train from Chicago to Newark, NJ

Matt, I believe these were 85 foot cars. Very similar to the Northern Pacific “Big Pig Palace” cars, built by Ortner in 1966. 

Followup: The GASX cars were also built by Ortner Freight Car Co. in 1970. (These must have been the last new stock cars ever made IMO. ) 

They were the last livestock cars made before the feds determined they were cruel to livestock. Like sitting in traffic on the 405 was any better. Oscar Meyer had a processing plant in Southwest Philly were my neighbor worked, it was closed because the building was built for railroad cars not trucks, my neighbor lost his job.

John Pignatelli JR. posted:

They were the last livestock cars made before the feds determined they were cruel to livestock. Like sitting in traffic on the 405 was any better. Oscar Meyer had a processing plant in Southwest Philly were my neighbor worked, it was closed because the building was built for railroad cars not trucks, my neighbor lost his job.

From what I've been able to gather, it looks like livestock shipping by rail died out in the early-mid 1970's. Don't know when it was officially killed off by regulation. Sadly, it was probably a done deal before the Feds put an end to it because of refrigeration, local processing, trucks, the Interstate Highway System, and the expense of live shipping over long distances.