Re: Photo: Barrels in A Boxcar
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If you are interested in these early HCCX hoppers, Keith
Retterer has a builder's photo of HCCX 1001 in his collection, negative
971. It was built by Std Steel Car in 1928 at Butler works. IRM
Pullman library has a scan of the general arrangement drawing for this car,
SS-53276 along with multiple detail drawings related to that build. 20
more cars were added, using drawing SS-53627 (also scanned and available at IRM)
in late 1928. 29 additional cars were added so that there were 50 in total
by 1931.
Steve Hile
From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io [mailto:main@RealSTMFC.groups.io] On Behalf Of Garth Groff and Sally Sanford Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 12:06 PM To: main@realstmfc.groups.io Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] Photo: Barrels in A Boxcar Jerry and friends,
The unusual Pullman-built Hercules cars are shown in the CAR BUILDERS
CYCLOPEDIA during the late 1930s in Pullman's ads. I have a photocopy and it is
marked as page 329. Since the Hercules car shares the page with AT&SF boxcar
136299 which has a 5-36 built date, we can surmise this was a 1937 or later
edition. The car in question is HCCX 1001, and is marked boldly "HERCULES
PORTLAND CEMENT IN BULK, presumably black lettering on a gray car. The car has
slab sides with no outside bracing. The car body stops at about the truck
bolsters, much like a tank car, and the ladders and end braces slope diagonally
out toward the end sills in an almost European fashion. The trucks are Andrews.
I can't read the build date, but it was probably 1929. A most interesting car,
but already obsolete by the time the ad was published.
In 1932, the C&O began converting small lots of their coal hoppers to
covered hoppers for cement service. The D&H showed a similar converted
car in RAILWAY MECHANICAL ENGINEERING in 1933. And let's not forget that the
D&H also converted boxcars to permanent cement service with hatches and
floor gates, as did some other roads. In 1934 the Erie purchased their series
20000-20049 cars with a 1321 cu ft capacity from Greenville, which except
for its rather small size was similar in appearance to later 70-ton cars. PRR
added their giant H30 class in 1935. By 1937 several major builders were
churning out the 70-ton 1958 cu ft cars we know and love, and there are several
examples in the Gregg CBC reprint for 1940.
Was the idea
new? No. As early as 1898 there were wooden cars being built with the classic
covered hopper features of roof hatches and floor gates. MR had a plan for one
of these in the 1960s, and claimed they were offered in both standard and narrow
gauges. (I built one in HOn3 from that plan, I think my second scratch-built
car, but of course we don't pay any attention to narrow gauge, do
we.)
I suspect
that the massive need for cement during the post-war boom, with ready-mix plants
in every town, made the covered hopper a much more attractive way to deliver
cement. Barrels probably were gone by the early 1950s in favor of bulk or sacks.
Sacked cement was easier to handle for small jobs, no doubt cheaper to package,
and continues to be popular today.
Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆 On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 11:26 AM Jerry Dziedzic
<jerdz@...>
wrote:
A few thoughts to add to Mal's. Cement packaging long relied on barrels and cloth bags. I credit Hercules Cement with the first rail shipments in covered hoppers, in 1929. Tony Thompson has a photo of bulk cement in a boxcar during the construction of Shasta Dam in the 1940's; imagine unloading that one! It's my guess that bulk eliminated barrels, but I don't know when. I don't know when paper sacks replaced cloth, either; about the same time flour made the change? I have LCL waybills from the early 1940's returning bundles of cloth bags to cement mills.
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