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Re: Milling in Transit

Gatwood, Elden J SAD
 

Dennis said that better than I could, and I would only add that I have seen
correspondence that indicated the "what" in what contaminants were, in box
cars, I suspect for those loads not bagged or barreled, and you don't want to
know....

The road had to eat the cost themselves, for loads refused, so there were
periodic campaigns to find those cars that could be categorized "clean".
Some road stenciled "clean loading only", some like NYC had a star, or "A" on
a yellow dot, etc. That practice seemed to vary a lot.

Elden Gatwood

-----Original Message-----
From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of
soolinehistory
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 1:54 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Milling in Transit





--- In STMFC@... <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> , "Gatwood,
Elden J SAD " <elden.j.gatwood@...> wrote:

Jeff;

I don't know if it was common, but I have seen an awful lot of cars
with powdered flour all over them, like a powdered doughnut almost. I
once asked a guy that worked in a bakery (a BIG one), and he says he
worked a summer in which he shoveled out box cars of flour into a
conveyor. I trust the story was true. I also knew a guy that worked
for National Biscuit company (Nabisco in Pgh), and he said that in the
days before the big covered hoppers came on the scene, they got flour that
way.

A while back James Dick of the NP Historical Society sent me copies of a
bunch of 1920's era correspondence from the NP files (some of it concerned
Soo Line cars and was of interest to me) concerning damage to flour loads
from the Minneapolis milling distraict caused by water condensing on the
inside of unlined steel roofs and dripping on the load. In this
correspondence both loads of bagged flour and bulk loads were mentioned.

I suspect that bagged flour went to consignees who now receive bagged flour
by truck, while bulk loads went to volume customers that now receive Airslide
hoppers.

Dennis
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