Ned Carey asks:

"Were stock cars cleaned just after unloading and on the return trip home be clean? Or would they return home dirty and be cleaned before loading? In other words should empty cars be modeled as clean or dirty inside?"

Richard Hendrickson replies:

"Standard practice on the western RRs, where stock cars could travel
long distances without going off line (or very far off line) was to
clean stock cars at the nearest cleaning facility to the point where
they were unloaded, so that they would be ready for re-loading wherever
they were needed. What other RRs did, especially with foreign road
cars en route back to their owners, I don't know."

Ned's question carries with it the issue of how one should model stock cars...cleaned or dirty? In my own case, stock cars leaving Laramie MT[ which had relatively extensive stock yards...109 pens, 29 chutes capable of loading/unloading 760 head of cattle ] would be cleaned. OTOH, the very small number of cars leaving sites on Sherman Hill...Hermosa, Red Buttes, Sherman and Otto...assuming the number of cars would equate to the number of chutes [?], 5 cars in all on Sherman Hill, these would be dirty since, while there are water plugs at Red Buttes and Otto, there is no water facilities on the Hill for cattle except at the 10 animal capability site of Red Buttes. So...in my case...most MTs would be cleaned, a small number not. My guess is...I'm not gonna notice the difference anyway unless I have the doors open. Probably not.

Mike Brock