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Looking for best way to get grain to the brewery. Mostly late 40's to early 50's. Should I go with covered hoppers or did they still use boxcars until 1960? If covered hoppers is the way to go, who make an appropriate one? I don't want one that has a Build Date of 1960 or later.

Thanks for any suggestions, Mike

 

Side note: This drives me nuts, I really wish the build date on the rolling stock was listed in the item description from the manufacturer.

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Originally Posted by vbkostur:

Looking for best way to get grain to the brewery. Mostly late 40's to early 50's. Should I go with covered hoppers or did they still use boxcars until 1960? If covered hoppers is the way to go, who make an appropriate one? I don't want one that has a Build Date of 1960 or later.

Thanks for any suggestions, Mike

 

Side note: This drives me nuts, I really wish the build date on the rolling stock was listed in the item description from the manufacturer.

By the mid fifties steam engines hauling frieght trauns was all but gone on the Pennsy.

I had the same question about hauling grain a while back and by surfing the web I found the information in the attached MS Word file.

 

I think it safe to say that boxcars were the predominant means.  Not so many H32's around compared to available boxcar fleets.  H32's were mostly dedicated to lime and soda ash anyway.

 

Inititally H30's were intended for cement and glass sand.  Some H30 loads were poisonous and so no way they were used for grain on one trip and the poisonous laod for the return.

 

So again, best bet is to stick with boxcars.

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How about the H30, were those only used for cement?

There's a great article from riverraisinmodels.com on the PRR H30 that goes through that car's history and does cover what they hauled. Generally they were used for cement, but other similar dense aggregate was hauled too; pulverized coal, soda ash, lime, sand, sodium nitrate, feldspar & dolomite ores. They don't mention grain at all. While it's possible the H30's were used for grain somewhere / sometime, this article seems to indicate that they were probably not used for that service.

 

Tom

Grain movement was/is seasonal.  Probably more of a PITA for the railroads IMO.  One of the reasons that old box cars were used to move grain, even in bulk for quite sometime. Grain uses to be transported in burlap sacks as much as 100 lbs each.   There was a lot of box cars and with some card board, lumber and fabrication they could be made grain tight.  Someone at the other end would figure out how to get the grain out of the car.   

Last edited by Mike CT
Originally Posted by Mike CT:

Grain movement was/is seasonal.  Probably more of a PITA for the railroads IMO.  One of the reasons that old box cars were used to move grain, even in bulk for quite sometime. Grain uses to be transported in burlap sacks as much as 100 lbs each.   There was a lot of box cars and with some card board, lumber and fabrication they could be made grain tight.  Someone at the other end would figure out how to get the grain out of the car.   

Saw a video about grain loading/unloading using box cars. They put in baffle across the door opening and loaded the car from a chute through the open door over the top of the baffle. At the other end, they'd spot the car over the dump bin, open the door, then knock the baffle loose (or break it) and the grain would start spilling out. After it stopped flowing on its own, the crew would sweep the rest out of the car. The appearance of the video seemed to indicate that it was the 1940's to early 1950's. Atlas 70-ton hoppers indicated being steam era (the trucks reflect it, too) so it's a good possibility that box cars got phased out of grain transport during the early to mid 1950's. But as "K4" said above, steam was going away on the PRR in the 1950's. Can't go wrong with box cars.

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