Paolo Roffo wrote:

Before the advent of center-beam flatcars (let's say early 1950s), how would finished lumber en route to a distributor have been moved? Would it have been stacked inside a boxcar (labor to unload it was cheap back then), or would have been on a flatcar?

Ordinarily rough lumber moved on flat cars, finished lumber in box cars (often with double doors when available), but there were exceptions. And there are lots of photos in the Pacific Northwest of rough lumber in gondolas.

I'm also curious about pulpwood - would logs have been stacked in gondolas back then, or had bulkhead flatcars appeared by that point?

There were early, homebuilt bulkhead flats on several roads by the early 1950s, and certainly gondolas were used too. General steel Castings made a cast steel end for flat cars which could function like a bulkhead, and in the early fifties a number of roads bought them for pulpwood. You can tell they are not for general service because most of them had decks canted inwards on each side.

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