What makes you think blocking the car doors open was for transport of livestock? Do the rules specifically state anything about livestock? While we can document specific or unusual shipment of livestock in boxcars, I suspect this rules were to accommodate those loads that typically were shipped in ventilated boxcars, ie watermelons. The IC served portions of the south. Many southern railroads had ventilated boxcars. These rules may have been a way to compete when a ventilated boxcar was requested and the IC could not provide it. Doug Harding
I sort of doubt this Doug. The IC made a deliberate decision to eliminate ventilated cars from their roster by 1933 (going from 1120 of this type of car in 1911 to zero in 1933). Any ventilated traffic they might have generated could easily have been transported in one of their stock cars. And since the IC served most of the "hog belt" (Iowa and IL) that stock traffic was FAR more important, so I can see plain boxcars being used for this traffic over occasional loadings of melons.
Most of the photos I have of the IC's South Water Street terminal in Chicago show LOTS of deep south ventilated cars, but no IC ventilated cars after 1910 or so. The couple of good IC VM photos that I have (pulled off LoC downloads) were taken in 1903, and show cars that were also equipped with heaters.
