My dad worked as a butter maker at a creamery in Browns Valley, Minnesota in
the late 20s and early 30s. His dad was one of the drivers who drove a
truck around the farms to pick up 5, 8, and 10 gal cans of cream that had
been separated at the farms. He also picked up cans that came in by train
at the depot. None of this was refrigerated and sometimes a can lid would
be blown off by the gas from the souring (which probably didn't help the
inside of a baggage car either). All this stuff was pasturized and made
into butter and then packed into wooden tubs. The tubs were then trucked to
the team track and loaded into a reefer --- this time with ice. Dad says
the reefers went to Land-O-Lakes for packaging --- he still buys
Land-O-Lakes brand to this day.
Charlie

To those commenting on milk traffic in Kansas and Iowa

I described this before several years ago on the freightcarslist, but the topic
persists and perhaps new readers can shed some light.

1. During World War II, milk traffic out of Rochester, Minnesota, on the CGW
was relatively heavy. The "Minnesotan" from Minneapolis would pick up
refrigerator cars brought down from Rochester to McIntire, Iowa. The train
terminated at Chicago and--so I was told--turned the refrigerator cars over to
the B&O for shipment to Baltimore. This is a long distance for milk to travel
in ordinary refrigerator cars. Photos of the train exist with such consists to
prove that it happened. The cars were loaded at the creamery in Rochester. It
is possible that the part about their being shipped to Baltimore is merely the
figment of someone's imagination, but the cars definitely got as far as
Chicago. Every night the train got at least one or two refrigerator cars and
was known to receive as many as eight.

2. As for milk traffic to Kansas, here is another interesting point: I have a
photo of the Chicago Great Western "Mill Cities Limited" moving across the
bridge at Leavenworth, Kansas, headed back north to Minneapolis. In the
consist are two express refrigerator cars. One was lettered for the
Minneapolis & St. Louis and had the well-remembered "Peoria Gateway" slogan on
one side. The lettering was in gold or in imitation gold leaf. For a time in
1947 and into 1948, the express refrigerator cars were part of the consist both
north and southbound. Where the CGW picked these cars up, no one is sure. It
is possible that they came from Rochester as well, but it is also possible that
the CGW got them at Marshalltown, Iowa, from the M&StL. Perhaps there was a
creamery at Waseca or Albert Lea, Minnesota. It is also possible that the cars
did not haul milk, but the assumption was that they were hauling milk.

Just an interesting note about traffic and freight movements back in the
Forties. Yes, I know: I am talking about passenger trains and perhaps people
on the passengercarslist would be more interested. Don't know, but I find the
topic fascinating.

Tom

Andy-
The effect of the perception of color by the human eye varying by the size
of the object being observed is a function of the amout of light received by
the rods in our eyes....and has been the subject of scientific articles (the
one I recall was in Scientific American within the last five years.....
Yes, the panel on an O Scale car is smaller than a whole HO car. but the
entire O Scale car is going to deliver more light (percieved color) than the
HO car can deliver. You might be right about the hicube 86' car vs. the 40'
car, although at that scale the amout of light being dilivered is not as
great a difference as between a 1/1 car and a 1/87 car.
Others have also mentioned the effect of indoor lighting and different
temperature light sources.....
Proof of this is paint your PRR locomotives with REAL PRR paint.... you will
never see any of the green in such a small sample...yet the prototype, when
clean, has a definite greenish tint to it....
Sometimes you have to use artistic license to make the eye see what you want
it to see......that is why it is called modeling rather than prototype
reductioning!!!
Charlie Vlk

--- In STMFC@..., "James Wolf" <wjimwolf@y...> wrote:

--- In STMFC@..., Richard Dermody <ddermody@r...> wrote:

The actual 6" difference in HO is .069 and all else being equal,
you should be able to see the difference between a 10'0" boxcar
and a 10'6" boxcar.

Yeah, about 1/16th of an inch. Should be pretty easy to see with
the naked eye. If not, I'd rule out surgery, drafting, or tool and
die makeing as a career.

This gets back to the question:
Where do you start in making a model?

I guess to some a rectangular slab of plastic with wheels might
suffice for a box car model; for others, it won't, so the best thing
is to start with as accurate a model as possible with contemporary
technology IMHO. That way, those who care about accuracy will be
satisfied, and those that don't care about these things wouldn't
notice one way or the other. There's no reason for modelers to be
satisfied with models.

I just retired from a large California school district, where I was in
charge of developing the annual budget (last year just over $200
million). For me, coming home and trying to make my models as
accurate as possible was, believe it or not, relaxing, but at both my
desk and my workbench the motto was "Good enough, isn't." I couldn't
be satisfied with anything better than the absolute best, at either place.

Walter M. Clark
Time stopped in November 1941
Riverside, California

Jim Wolf
Otis Orchards, WA

I grew up on Central Iowa in the 40's and 50's and the
Black Angus and Herefords were prime beef, the best in
the land, they were shipped to Chicago to the packing
houses for the city market.
As for cream I never saw a milk or cream truck, we
loaded the cream cans in the old 39 Chevy on Saturday
and went to town. Judging from all the neighbors also
doing this, I'm sure we didn't have milk or cream pick
up.
Its interesting how things are different in different
parts of the country.
Ron Christensen


--- Denny Anspach <danspach@...> wrote:

I believe that the geographic differences in milk
rail transport probably
was at least in part influenced the differing
natures of the dairy
industry in major parts of the country, i.e. milk
produced by "dairy farms"
vs. milk produced by myriads of individual farmers,
each with a few milk cows.

As a child in the '30s and '40s I visited my dear
grandparents, aunts and
uncles in Ida Grove, Iowa for long periods of time.
A prominent industry
in that tiny town was the A&P Creamery (this was
when the Great Atlantic &
Pacific Tea Company was a major player in the
midwest grocery business).
There were no dairy farms, per se that I recall.
However, virtually every
single farmer milked a few cows. Some of the milk
would be used on behalf
of livestock and subsistence (I have drunk more than
my share of raw milk
and heavy cream!), but the excess was an important
source of supplemental
income. After the milk was separated (a Delaval
cream separator was in
every farm kitchen), the excess was placed in cans,
which were then set out
by the road, commonly, but not always on a small
wood platform, where they
were picked up by the creamery truck on its daily
morning rural rounds.
Some would bring their milk into town in horse or
tractor-hauled wagon
boxes (it would have been a rare farmer who would
have owned a truck of any
sort in those days).

Now, this creamery could not survive or depend on
just on the milk from the
farmers in this small county, so a good deal of milk
would arrive by train,
in this case the C&NW Carroll<--->Sioux City local
(a rough remnant of the
late great CORN KING LIMITED of pre-war fame).

I spent a lot of time on my bicycle down at the C&NW
depot watching the
trains (I had retired my horse) . The freights were
OK (picking up, setting
out, switching grain boxes, stock cars, and tank
cars for the oil depots),
but the highlight was the passenger, with its 4-6-2,
RPO, several baggage
and express cars (one apparently through to or from
Chicago), and one or
two of the short (60'?) coaches. Besides heavy
express business (the dwell
time "seemed" to be never less than about ten-15
minutes), a good deal of
time of unloading filled milk cans, and loading
empties. I do not remember
whether or not the cans were loaded or unloaded from
the creamery truck
(the creamery was only a block away), or whether
there was some other means
of transport.

It would be interesting to me to learn how the
railroads charged for this
kind of special perishable transport.

BTW, Doug Harding mentioned some model cattle that
were "S-gauged size",
too large for HO. Well, that surely would have been
so in central Iowa.
However, they would seem to me to be just right for
the famous fat beef
cattle produced for market in northwest Iowa (:-).

Denny
(writing from his other home in northwest Iowa!)

__________________________________
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Larry Jackman notes:

"When I was on the UNPAC in Kansas in the early 50s Bauxite was
shipped
in Box cars from Arkansas to the west."

Mike Brock noted from his 1949 Fraley:

The Fraley conductor book has a string of 26 box cars carrying "ore"
westbound to "Van 6". The book Union Pacific Steam Eastern District
has photos of a train carrying "bauxite ore" westbound on Sherman Hill
in '56. The cars appear to be box cars.

As per the MONON ad in the September 1948 TRAINS, CIL #1 carried a load
of alumina from Bauxite Arkansas to Troutdale OR between April 26th to
May 5th, 1948. The car was routed B&N-MP-Kansas City-UP.

Tim Gilbert

Mike Brock



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Allen, Mike & Tony,

You are all correct. It is alumina that ALCOA in Massena receives
bycovered hopper. Taking a guess from all the information that you
gave me, ALCOA in thr late 50's probably shipped alumina from
Paradise Point via the Pennsy to Williamsport where it was handed
over to NYC for the trip to Massena. This is sometimes like detective
work piecing clues together . .


Thank for all your work,

Dick Murray

Larry Jackman notes:


"When I was on the UNPAC in Kansas in the early 50s Bauxite was shipped
in Box cars from Arkansas to the west."
The Fraley conductor book has a string of 26 box cars carrying "ore" westbound to "Van 6". The book Union Pacific Steam Eastern District has photos of a train carrying "bauxite ore" westbound on Sherman Hill in '56. The cars appear to be box cars.

Mike Brock

On the Santa Fe road, milk/cream was being shipped in baggage cars
from various stations all across Kansas as late as the early 1960's.
A couple of co-workers have also recounted stories of spillage of
soured milk...

Larry Buell

Hi Folks,
I have posted a picture of the Nodaway Iowa depot in 1918. In a
folder named Midwest in the photo section. And I hope that any other
members with pictures from the area would post some of their
pictures of this area. Doc, how about Ida Grove on your bicycle.
This depot was on the CB&Q mainline which even then was double
tracked.

Note the milk cans on the east end of the depot. These would be
picked up by the local passenger train and put into baggage cars. It
would be into the 30's before trucks would be able to take over this
route and the station in Nodaway would be moved to another location
in 1935.
There were
creameries in either direction from this location. Fairmont and
Harding in Omaha and Hurd's in Council Bluffs, next to the CB&Q
fright house. East bound were Farmers COOP in Corning 10 miles away
and then SWIFT Co. and Armour in Creston, 40 miles away. All of
these towns had major cold storage plants as well, for processed
dairy products. The cold storage plant at Malvern could store a
million and a half of processed chicken and about another million
pounds of butter.

There were some billboard reefers painted for some of the larger
creameries and of the cold storage facilities, Omaha Cold Storage
is one. And there are decals avalaible for a number of these
facilities. Art Griffin and Clover House both have pretty good
selections.

George Walls
Treynor, Iowa

Alumina is nearly as light as fly ash; a puff of wind and it's all
over the place. Several years ago, ALCOA purchased Eastalco Aluminum.
EA had plants in Canada and Fredrick, Maryland. Their alumina is
still delivered to Hawkins Point Pier south of Balto. (mostly from
Australia in recent years) and hauled by rail to the Fredrick
facilities. Alcoa closed their old pier (Paradise Point, I think)
shortly after their takeover of EA, and now we also ship alumina out
of Hawkins Point for Massena, NY. Before being bought out, EA leased
about 40 100T (that's two 15 car train sets, and 10 extras for
shopped replacements, etc.) covered hoppers for the traffic. Today
there is a mix of leased CSX cars and Alcoa hoppers in use. I would
think Alcoa would have done about the same thing in steam days. (By
the way, the Alcoa hoppers were built in the middle 60's, and are in
pretty rough shape. MikeBuckelew

Andy Carlson notes:

"I think the most fundamental difference in perceived
color is light intensity. An average train room is lit
about 7 or more F-stops less than the good ol
outdoors. In a marginally lit indoor train room,
lightening the color could be argued as being best FOR
THESE CONDITIONS. However, if one is to view the
exquisit models members of this list are creating
under real sunlight, I maintain the most accurate
color is the one the prototype used."

Perhaps. A couple of things. First, perception indoors is not driven just by the amount of light, it is driven just as much by the type of light. I use florescent warm white to help produce the very reddish look of southeastern Wyoming. Oddly, I paint outside and I've certainly encountered the different appearance of painted objects under 5300 kelvin [ if I recall the temp of sunlight correctly ] and my indoor florescents. Next, as I've said before, the color is very dependent upon atmospheric conditions and sun angles. Having spent a great deal of time shooting photos of Daylight 4449 and "J" 611, I can tell you that the appearance does change. Again, at Toccoa, GA, at around 5PM I turned to watch 2-8-4 2716, painted black, move by at about 100 yds away and was amazed at how grey it APPEARED. Last...while there may be those that build and paint for viewing in direct sunlight, I don't know any.

Regarding Tim's photos and "waning" light, I guess I don't quite get the point. Of course in darkness dark subjects are going to appear dark. So are light colored objects. OTOH, sun angles produce very different results. At midday the side of a black engine will look damn dark. At 5 PM in May in Georgia the side of a black engine will look quite light colored...some shade of grey... if viwed with the sun to your back. The other side will look damn black. Same thing will happen to any other color.

Every 15 months we all seem to get on here with our color ideas. No problem...just a fact. Each modeler has the opportunity to go out in the real world with some painted object, turn it in different directions to the sun, cover it with dirt or dirty water and turn it again. Then they can do it at different times of the day. They can decide for themselves if they think the object's appearance changes with changes in sunlight, sun angle, dirt etc. They then have the difficult task of replicating the colors they think they see inside a train room lit up by all kinds of possible light sources. It's what we do...I guess.

Mike Brock

Dick and Tony,

I worked for Alcoa down in Tennessee in their smelter and often
traveled to the Massena, NY smelter. Tony is correct, the loads coming
in would have been Alumina and they were shipped in covered hoppers
(this HAS to be kept dry). Now, I worked there in the mid-1970's so my
info is from a later period but I think that the concepts were the same.

Alcoa's bauxite was typically minded off shore and coverted in to
Alumina at or near the mines. The alumina was shipped to ports in the
US. The Tennessee alumina did come into Richmond if I recall correctly
and was shipped by Rail to the smelter.

Since Massena is on or very near the St. Lawrence, I would check to see
if their's came in by ship to a port closer to the plant than
Richmond. It would have still been delivered to the plant by rail. I
do not recall Massena having port facilities of their own at the plant
but my memory on this point is vague.

As a side note, as a member of management, I was forced to work two
strikes at the Alcoa, TN plant. My job was to use a Trackmobile to
unload the alumina and to switch cars in the yard. At this time, the
alumina was delivered in air slide equipped covered hoppers.

If you are modeling this traffic, do not overlook the need for heated
black tank cars for petroleum pitch and black nasty covered hoppers for
petroleum coke. Both of these were used to manufacture anodes and
cathodes for the smelting process.

The smelters had pretty large private yards for this traffic. If I
recall correctly, it takes two pounds of alumina to make one pound of
aluminum.

Hope some of this is useful.

Allen Cain

Dick Murray asked:

Does anybody know the service route for shipping bauxite to the ALCOA
plant in Massena, NY on the St. Lawrence Div of the NYC during the
late 1950's? I am assuming it was shipped in covered hoppers, but was
it shipped in just NYC covered hoppers or the covered hoppers of the
different railroads on the service route?

Dick, are you sure they were shipping bauxite to Massena? When I
worked
at Alcoa in Vernon in the 1950s, I understood it was alumina shipped to
the
reduction plants such as Massena.
It matters because bauxite could certainly be shipped in open hoppers,
but not alumina (much more finely divided).

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history


Allen Cain

Denny Anspach said:

The issue of whether any given color photograph may be an accurate mirror
of color is a judgment that almost always has to be made contemporaneously.
Even then, even though judged acceptable, truly accurate matching has to
be rare. I strongly suspect that Tony Thompson's original SP color
photos were left unused and untouched (or almost so) serendipitously in a
cool black file drawer for the next 50 years- another rare circumstance in
any event.

All true, Denny, but those SP transparencies certainly were used for
publicity, at least when they were new. That they may then have been stored
properly attests to what any archivist will tell you: color transparency
film is quite reasonably stable, IF and only IF it is stored properly.
That there may have been some minor shifts in color in the last 60 years
is of course true. The same would be true if the same photos were taken on
the same day at noon and 5 PM. I well realize that color photos are only a
starting point.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history

Andy, I agree totally. As I illustrated with this pic a while ago.
Same car, same day, same roll of film -- change of time only.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFC/files/nyc_40ft_DD_box_Essex_1998.JPG

In the real world, dark objects look dark in the waning light.
-Andy Carlson

Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@...> -->> NOTE EMAIL CHANGE <<--
Sterling, Massachusetts

The generic "Box car red" is misleading.What we really need is more information on the colors (shades or hues ) used by the various railroads.Having that information,we can weather to our heart's content to replicate a particular car.Given the fact that a shade is affected by the light source and a viewer's perception.We need a starting place.The number of historical societies might be the source of this information.A cooperative effort by all could advance the accuracy we are all seeking.The one shade fits all just doesn't do it anymore.If I attempt to model a car of a road that I am not familiar with ,I would like to know that the hours spent building the model is not ruined by an incorrect paint scheme.Unfortunately not all of us have access to color photos of the subject being modeled.Should we consider a standard using a number code ? Armand Premo

--- Mike Brock <brockm@...> wrote:

I believe the point is, while color might not
change, a human's perception of does...depending on
the amount of other light being received at the same
time.

I think the most fundamental difference in perceived
color is light intensity. An average train room is lit
about 7 or more F-stops less than the good ol
outdoors. In a marginally lit indoor train room,
lightening the color could be argued as being best FOR
THESE CONDITIONS. However, if one is to view the
exquisit models members of this list are creating
under real sunlight, I maintain the most accurate
color is the one the prototype used.

Another point; blending paints to achieve color
matches has an inherent problem- using multiple
pigments causes multiple color perceptions when viewed
under varying light sources. I learned this when first
painting with Accu-Paint color mixes suggested to me
as accurate for SP&S Locomotives. The green must have
looked real good to the suggester. I found that
viewing the finished loco in sunlight the green was
horrible. Under incandescent light it was close to
acceptable, and of course under florescent it was
worse still. Following a suggestion from Jack Parker,
who said the real railroads "pullman green" was a
blend of black and chromium yellow (both, incidently,
are mono-pigmented) I mixed my own 2 color PG from
Automotive lacquers, and now have a green which views
favorably under the 3 differing light sources. Less
pigments means less variability. If the green looks
too dark, increase the lighting. In the real world,
dark objects look dark in the waning light.
-Andy Carlson

Andy Carlson writes:


"Color does not have a scale. Colored light does
come in differing intensity, etc. etc., but it does
not scale."

I believe the point is, while color might not change, a human's perception of does...depending on the amount of other light being received at the same time. Hence, if one is so close to a painted object that light from other reflective surfaces does not appear in view, the color one see's will be more dominant than it will if viewed from further away IF, from that view, reflective light from other quite different objects is seen at the same time.

While I can certainly see the need and interest in striving to determine the color of an original car...particularly for newly painted or new condition cars...the many variables introduced to modify the perception and actual color of an in service car seem to make stringent adherence to the original color less important. IMO. IOW, when I view a photo of a train of PFE cars and note untold numbers of different shades of PFE orange or recall watching a very grey "appearing" ex-C&O 2-8-4 2716 [ even though it was painted with rather black paint ]in the afternoon sun, color accuracy seems not as necessary on items operating on a layout in which changing variables ARE present...i.e., weather, variable light, dirt etc.

Mike Brock

I believe that the geographic differences in milk rail transport probably was at least in part influenced the differing natures of the dairy industry in major parts of the country, i.e. milk produced by "dairy farms" vs. milk produced by myriads of individual farmers, each with a few milk cows.

As a child in the '30s and '40s I visited my dear grandparents, aunts and uncles in Ida Grove, Iowa for long periods of time. A prominent industry in that tiny town was the A&P Creamery (this was when the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company was a major player in the midwest grocery business). There were no dairy farms, per se that I recall. However, virtually every single farmer milked a few cows. Some of the milk would be used on behalf of livestock and subsistence (I have drunk more than my share of raw milk and heavy cream!), but the excess was an important source of supplemental income. After the milk was separated (a Delaval cream separator was in every farm kitchen), the excess was placed in cans, which were then set out by the road, commonly, but not always on a small wood platform, where they were picked up by the creamery truck on its daily morning rural rounds. Some would bring their milk into town in horse or tractor-hauled wagon boxes (it would have been a rare farmer who would have owned a truck of any sort in those days).

Now, this creamery could not survive or depend on just on the milk from the farmers in this small county, so a good deal of milk would arrive by train, in this case the C&NW Carroll<--->Sioux City local (a rough remnant of the late great CORN KING LIMITED of pre-war fame).

I spent a lot of time on my bicycle down at the C&NW depot watching the trains (I had retired my horse) . The freights were OK (picking up, setting out, switching grain boxes, stock cars, and tank cars for the oil depots), but the highlight was the passenger, with its 4-6-2, RPO, several baggage and express cars (one apparently through to or from Chicago), and one or two of the short (60'?) coaches. Besides heavy express business (the dwell time "seemed" to be never less than about ten-15 minutes), a good deal of time of unloading filled milk cans, and loading empties. I do not remember whether or not the cans were loaded or unloaded from the creamery truck (the creamery was only a block away), or whether there was some other means of transport.

It would be interesting to me to learn how the railroads charged for this kind of special perishable transport.

BTW, Doug Harding mentioned some model cattle that were "S-gauged size", too large for HO. Well, that surely would have been so in central Iowa. However, they would seem to me to be just right for the famous fat beef cattle produced for market in northwest Iowa (:-).

Denny
(writing from his other home in northwest Iowa!)

The BL ad in either a recent RMC or MR advertised the later scheme
and I ordered one thru Central Hobby supply. I believe it was number
9009. I have not received it yet but my ordering is what provoked my
querry last month about whether BL had improved thier paint and
lettering jobs.

Bill Welch

--- In STMFC@..., Thomas Olsen <tmolsen@U...> wrote:

List:

Branchline had released the Green Bay & Western Reefers with the

1927

paint scheme last year. Recently, I had been told that this reefer

as

going to be released again, but with the later 1940s-50s lettering
scheme.

As I have not seen this car listed on their website, is this

something

that is coming or did I somehow misunderstand what I had been told?

Tom Olsen
7 Boundary Road, West Branch
Newark, Delaware, 19711-7479
PH: (302) 738-4292
E-Mail: tmolsen@u...