First of all, "THANKS" to Tim, Tom, and Dennis for describing how lumberyards worked back in the 1950's.

Second of all, a quick perusal of several UP Frt Conductor's books showed something surprising:

There was PLENTY of lumber shipped in box cars, especially in SP cars (no surprise there).
But there were ZERO flat cars of lumber in the Traud 1951 book. We're talking about 35 trains and 2400 total cars here!

Then I looked at the other UP books (spreadsheets) that I have. ALL of the other books do show lumber on flat cars, in years both earlier and later (1941 Nelson, 1947 Fraley(?), and 1956 Novi).

I'm stumped. Why would there be no lumber on flat cars in Oct-Dec of 1951? Was this the time period after the Streamliner accident (a piece of lumber shifted on a flat car, and broke the windows of a passing Streamliner, showering the passengers with broken glass) ??

Regards,

-Jeff


From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of thomas christensen
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 6:25 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Lumber Loading




--- On Tue, 4/13/10, soolinehistory <destorzek@...<mailto:destorzek%40mchsi.com>> wrote:

Speaking of lumber -- anyone know when the first "wrapped"
lumber loads began? I mean the neat stacks of same-length
pieces, all nicely wrapped up. I'm guessing it was sometime
in the 1950's, since that's when wrapped drywall loads on
flats appeared.

I still remember lumber in boxcars in 1959 or '60, maybe a couple years later. Drywall also originally was shipped in boxcars, which must have been an absolutely miserable job to unload. Drywall lent itself to shipping on bulkhead flats, since it was large flat sheets and it didn't have to be piled very high to max out the car's capacity. Lumber was a different story; while large timbers could and were shipped on flatcars, the pile of dimensional lumber got awfully high and tippy before the car's load limit was reached.

---

We received flat car loads of just about everything (wrapped and unwrapped) - 1x and 2x spruce/pine, timbers, scaffold planking.
Between the different lumber, moldings, and other items, 6-7 cars a week were normal.