Hello my friends,
FIRST - let me thank all of you who have replied/sent
photos/etc. I
DO appreciate the help. Many of you have sent emails to me off
list and I want to thank those who have done that as well.
****
As is often the case there are some follow up questions/topics
for
further discussion ... and all of it revolves around the changes in
how open lumber loads looked as time passed.
Here are -my- conclusions/observations (for which I'm looking for
confirmation):
1) In the 40's and even in the early
50's almost all of the loads
seem to
all be the result of hand stacking. By that I mean
that the
boards/beams have been put up "one stick at a time"
rather
than being stacked by any machine. And both ends
of the
stack are "ragged" (not lined up at all).
2) In addition to that - the
earlier the picture the more likely it is
that
there was a mixture of dimensions all pretty much just
piled up
... the 4x6s were not stacked with each other etc.
And some
of those ragged end stacks seems to be
"intentional" in that we see some
pictures that show "every
other
board" that is stacked longer/shorter
and where the
ones that
are short are all lined up with each other (more or
less).
3) In the 50's we start to see
more stacks that have just one
end of
each stack that is 'more or less' lined up. Still obviously
stacked
one board/piece at a time ... but with some semblance
of one
end of the stack looking "square" (but only sort of).
4) And there are frequent
examples of loads in gondolas as
well as
on flat cars. Also showing the same lack of the
ends
being 'square' earlier and going towards one end being
more or
less square - but still obviously hand stacked.
But as time passes the use of gondolas for lumber tapers
off.
5) Almost all of the cars - both
flats and gons have two
vertical
4x4s (other sizes?) outside of each stack, and then
an
open space in the middle of the car with two more
verticals.
And
finally and the tops of these
verticals are tied together with
cross
braces of approximately the same dimension.
6) What I also seem to be seeing
is that there is a general
increase
of the likelihood that 'finished' lumber was shipped
in open
loads (as time passes).
7) One last conclusion - it would
appear that the lumber was
also
-unloaded- one piece of material at a time and by hand.
It may
have been to/from a truck or the forks of a loader
but it
was stacked onto and off of the RR car one stick at
a
time. (Essentially similar to how box cars were loaded.)
8) It is also of interest to me
that it appears that the loads
generated
in the West were not significantly different from
those
generated in the East ... and that it didn't really matter
a whole
lot which RR the load was originated on. The entire
industry
(nation wide) appears to have progressed along the
same
lines and more or less at the same pace.
I'm
going to go past the end date of this list to make some
further
observations - because they are important differences
in order
to distinguish what is 'right'/'wrong' for doing loads
for cars
that ARE correct for our era.
Please ignore/skip the rest of this if you are so firmly
locked into the STMFC era that you "don't want to hear it".
*G*
a) In the 60's we start to see
some loads that are obviously
loaded
using a fork lift. Not only are these 'bundled' but
both ends
of the load are square and as we get to the late
60's the
loads tend to be 'all of one (or at most 2 or 3) size
of
lumber.
In
addition we see the introduction of metal banding of
the
sections of the loads. And as time passes we see the
use of
cardboard to reduce the damage that the metal bands
can cause
at the corners.
b) In the 70's we start to see
loads being covered with tarps, etc.
And in
this same time frame we start to see 'load specific' cars
such as
the center beams
introduced.
c) In the 80's we start to see
what are known as "shed packs"
where the
entire package of the individual parts of the load
are
wrapped in plastic (think "Jaeger loads").
****
Do I have it "mostly
right"? Are there some errors or fine tuning
to the above that you would like to
correct/add?
****
It is interesting to think about
the amount of -labor- involved in
loading and unloading lumber in the
STMFC era! It would appear
that the lumber mills shipped lumber in
quantity that was not
sorted by side (the way it came off the
line?) and that the lumber
yards would sort the boards when they
received them! That's a
small army of laborers compared to how
lumber is shipped today.
It isn't horribly surprising - I said it
is "interesting".
- Jim B.
