Hmmmm... Richard unless someone has seen the bills of lading,
how do we know LV box cars in LA were loaded in Buffalo?

Tim O'Connor

Is there anything that might help speed up the publication of this book? Would pre-orders help? After the first volume, its been high on my "wanted" list.

Rob Kirkham

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Richard Hendrickson" <rhendrickson@opendoor.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 7:15 PM
To: <STMFC@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re:When is the grain rush?

[snip]

the ca. 1938 freight car photos from the Los Angeles area which are to be published in the (as yet still unprinted) Speedwitch Media Focus on Freight Cars Vol. 2 included a number of Lehigh Valley flour cars

[snip]

Richard Hendrickson

mailto:STMFC-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Richard Hendrickson" <rhendrickson@opendoor.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 7:15 PM
To: <STMFC@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re:When is the grain rush?

On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Anthony Thompson wrote:

Dave Evans wrote:

I would assume that large eastern city bakery's would buy the grain
when prices were low, and stockpile it while prices remained low,
perhaps even carrying inventory into the following year's early
harvest period in case prices went high during the initial harvest.

Can I jump in here? I don't know much about the grain business,
but do BAKERIES buy grain? I'd assume they buy flour from the milling
companies who make it from grain, so what BAKERIES think about grain
prices is indirect.

Point well taken. And bakeries bought flour from whoever sold what they needed at the lowest prices. Case in point: the ca. 1938 freight car photos from the Los Angeles area which are to be published in the (as yet still unprinted) Speedwitch Media Focus on Freight Cars Vol. 2 included a number of Lehigh Valley flour cars carrying flour from the mills at Buffalo, NY to a large bakery in Los Angeles. There surely were flour mills much closer to LA than Buffalo, but the cost/quality of the flour from Buffalo apparently made it worth the expense to ship it all the way across the country.
Richard Hendrickson
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links

On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Anthony Thompson wrote:

Dave Evans wrote:

I would assume that large eastern city bakery's would buy the grain
when prices were low, and stockpile it while prices remained low,
perhaps even carrying inventory into the following year's early
harvest period in case prices went high during the initial harvest.

Can I jump in here? I don't know much about the grain business,
but do BAKERIES buy grain? I'd assume they buy flour from the milling
companies who make it from grain, so what BAKERIES think about grain
prices is indirect.

Point well taken. And bakeries bought flour from whoever sold what
they needed at the lowest prices. Case in point: the ca. 1938
freight car photos from the Los Angeles area which are to be
published in the (as yet still unprinted) Speedwitch Media Focus on
Freight Cars Vol. 2 included a number of Lehigh Valley flour cars
carrying flour from the mills at Buffalo, NY to a large bakery in Los
Angeles. There surely were flour mills much closer to LA than
Buffalo, but the cost/quality of the flour from Buffalo apparently
made it worth the expense to ship it all the way across the country.


Richard Hendrickson

I think that I would pay to see Richard doing that<G>!

Tom Olsen
7 Boundary Road, West Branch
Newark, Delaware, 19711-7479
(302) 738-4292
tmolsen@udel.edu

In the Flint Hills of Kansas the wheat rush was in June.
Jared Harper
Athens, GA

Randy Hees wrote:

In the 19th century California had it's own grain rush, from the fields, mostly in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, but also the Salinas Valley and even the East Bay where they grew winter wheat, shipped to Vallejo, Port Costa, Oakland and other deep water ports for shipment via ship around the horn to England for distribution in Europe...

True, but at the beginning of the 1890s Dakota wheat came into large-scale production, at prices no one else in the United States or for that matter in the world could compete with. Shipments from California to Europe or even to the eastern U.S. ended rather quickly, and the Central Valley was soon given over to different crops altogether.
This thread, of course, was about a much later period.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:36 PM, Denny Anspach wrote:

Now, I also detected some invidious comments about "the other shirts"
seen on the backs of handsome worthies on occasion at both
Naperville and Cocoa Beach, i.e. those with the lovely colorful
Hawaiian prints . There is a difference: the Hawaiian shirts are pure
Pierre Cardin, as it says clearly on the labels. If I am not
mistaken, the FFC shirts are instead labeled something like Joe's
Coney Island Tee Shirt & Boiler Shop.

Denny, are you now fomenting shirt envy? For shame, sir. Hawaiian
shirts aren't my style, but they have obviously provided the occasion
for some amusement and camaradarie at Cocoa Beach and need no further
justification. At any rate, the Pierre Cardin label, whatever it
might once have meant, has been cheapened by the fact that there are
shirts with that label in almost every bourgeois shopping mall in the
country, so no big deal. And my FFC polo shirt (which is NOT,
notice, a tee shirt) is by Outer Banks, a maker with a reputation for
quality. So let's hear no more sneering at FFC shirts, just because
you don't happen to have one.

Richard Hendrickson

In the 19th century California had it's own grain rush, from the fields, mostly in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, but also the Salinas Valley and even the East Bay where they grew winter wheat, shipped to Vallejo, Port Costa, Oakland and other deep water ports for shipment via ship around the horn to England for distribution in Europe...

The story is the background in Frank Norris' THE OCTOPUS, (source of Southern Pacific's nick name) and resulted in construction of the Monterey and Salinas Valley (narrow gauge) Railroad.

Then most grain was shipped bagged on flat cars. The distance shipped via rail was short... from the farm west to the nearby ports.

Randy Hees

Denny Anspach (no doubt with tongue embedded in cheek) wrote:

. . . the Hawaiian shirts are pure Pierre Cardin, as it says clearly on the labels. If I am not mistaken, the FFC shirts are instead labeled something like Joe's Coney Island Tee Shirt & Boiler Shop.

Sirrah! I beg to differ with your frivolity on this matter. All the FOTFC shirts have been good quality cotton shirts from reputable labels for same such as Outer Banks. I can personally vouch for this because I dislike the "waffle weave" type of polo shirt and greatly prefer soft cotton knits, and have always specified same. And far from being tee shirts, they have collars and pockets.
Your disappointment at not having acquired a FOTFC shirt of your own can be remedied next time a batch of them is run <g>.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Dave Evans wrote:

I would assume that large eastern city bakery's would buy the grain when prices were low, and stockpile it while prices remained low, perhaps even carrying inventory into the following year's early harvest period in case prices went high during the initial harvest.

Can I jump in here? I don't know much about the grain business, but do BAKERIES buy grain? I'd assume they buy flour from the milling companies who make it from grain, so what BAKERIES think about grain prices is indirect.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

On Oct 13, 2009, at 5:44 PM, Anthony Thompson wrote:

Fred Freitas wrote:

Stop giving Mike & Jeff new ideas for Coco meet! Be careful
of what you wish for, it may come to pass. How much are non-proto
citations anyway ????

RIchard went as far as having fake police badges made, saying
"Prototype Police," and with the slogan "To Serve and Correct." He
made a great sight in his mirror aviator shades, flashing his badge at
offenders <g>. We started to work on a ticket book but decided we were
pushing the boat out a bit far.

I never considered that the Prototype Police act was especially
appropriate at Naperville or Cocoa Beach, but it might have generated
considerable merriment at NMRA conventions and such. Before we could
carry it further, however, the airline security measures that
followed 9/11 made carrying bogus law enforcement badges, shall we
say, unwise. I still have my badge and ID, though, and might
consider bringing them to an appropriate venue that I can attend by
driving or flying my own airplane. Such as the NMRA national
convention in Sacramento in 2011, perhaps? It might be one way to
find out whether the claims that NMRA officials are now more
receptive to the prototype modeling movement are genuine or just
window dressing.

Richard Hendrickson

I looked all through my 1953 Car Builder's Cyc and I couldn't find anything that identified the "heap shields" by name <

The term maybe railroad specific as I have seen it used on equipment

diagrams for hopper cars. Some use the term "heap capacity" to describe
the additional capacity over a level load. The B&O used the term

"piling". <<

FWIW, earlier today while perusing a 1943 CBC, a drawing of an AAR Class HM 55-Ton all-steel twin hopper car presented by Enterprise Railway Equipment Co. carried, in part, this description:

"Cubic capacity, 2,139 cu. ft. level or 2,455 cu. ft. with 12 in. average heap."

(So, is this an Enterprise car design, I wonder, or an AAR car design with Enterprise's tag, since Enterprise hoppers and bolsters were used in the drawing? Or something else? . . .)

-Brian

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa

You can get all the parts from IRC to do it yourself. Alternate doors are
available from Southwest scale models.



Brian J. Carlson, P.E.

Cheektowaga NY



From: STMFC@yahoogroups.com [mailto:STMFC@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Schuyler Larrabee
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 6:49 PM
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [STMFC] Re: Lackawanna XM 1950 and 1955






Brian, the model is an ELHS exclusive.

SGL

Schuyler, hi,

Just explored the IRC site but I'm not sure . . . might I ask you if this

box car modular model is
exclusive to ELHS, or

does IRC offer the model perhaps as an undec? I'm in the market for the

latter.

Thanks much, Brian

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa

. . . Society's latest run of XM cars . . . the combinations of roof,

sides and ends utilized by
Intermountain in

producing this car are correct. . . . This is a great example of combining

modular mold parts. <

E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.1.0.447)
Database version: 6.13480
http://www.pctools.com/en/spyware-doctor-antivirus/

Because of a power outage I am late to this thread.

Although I am a thorough-going Friends of the Freight Car wannabe (I never got a shirt), I surely support Richard's enlistment of the legions to thank the Loftons for their substantial contribution to this demanding end of the hobby.

Now, I also detected some invidious comments about "the other shirts" seen on the backs of handsome worthies on occasion at both Naperville and Cocoa Beach, i.e. those with the lovely colorful Hawaiian prints . There is a difference: the Hawaiian shirts are pure Pierre Cardin, as it says clearly on the labels. If I am not mistaken, the FFC shirts are instead labeled something like Joe's Coney Island Tee Shirt & Boiler Shop.

Denny

Denny S. Anspach MD
Sacramento

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Douglas Harding" <dharding@...> wrote:

There was essentially no "grain rush" as we know it today, in the 30's. Farmers fed their livestock the grain, ie corn and oats,
they raised. It was only after WWII and the need to feed the world, along with the advent of hybrid seeds, that grain production
increased and exports were financially viable. That is when the "grain rush" became a part of railroading.


Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

Doug and Group,

I thought I have read, on this group or perhaps elsewhere, that there was a chronic shortage of box cars during the harvest season - I thought I have seen posts about double-door auto cars being used when the shortage was severe. Perhaps I have mistakenly attributed these situations to include the pre-war era?

There were many grain silos in eastern cities to support local food production (I toured one in Philly in the 60's, and I do not recall it being "new")- one needs to remember that freight movements during the winter months were not always reliable. I would assume that large eastern city bakery's would buy the grain when prices were low, and stockpile it while prices remained low, perhaps even carrying inventory into the following year's early harvest period in case prices went high during the initial harvest.

Bottom line - by definition, if there was a scramble for grain rated box cars, then there must have been a grain traffic surge somewhere. But I think Laramie is west of the bulk of America's "bread basket", so I would expect very different results as the UP main neared Chicago.

Dave Evans

Tim O'Connor wrote:

Ed

I looked all through my 1953 Car Builder's Cyc and I couldn't
find anything that identified the "heap shields" by name --
several drawings showed different types of raised ends but
none identified the raised part.

Tim O'Connor

Tim, Ed and others,

The term maybe railroad specific as I have seen it used on equipment
diagrams for hopper cars. Some use the term "heap capacity" to describe
the additional capacity over a level load. The B&O used the term
"piling".

Bob Witt

Bob Witt

Heap shields were referenced in the book "Freight car Equipment of the
Chesapeake and Ohio railway August 1, 1937" by Carl Shaver. Originally
published by the C&O in 1937 by General Superintendant of Transportation
J.W. King. I never saw reference to heap shields "Styles" other than in this
publication. Radial Arch, Oval notch, Angular peak, were all terms used by
the C&O. Dreadnaught reinforced or Corrugation reinforcement and a
reference of "bib" extensions are mentioned.

Rich Yoder

Derwent are more chalky.

SGL

Brian, the model is an ELHS exclusive.

SGL

Schuyler, hi,

Just explored the IRC site but I'm not sure . . . might I ask you if this box car modular model is

exclusive to ELHS, or

does IRC offer the model perhaps as an undec? I'm in the market for the latter.

Thanks much, Brian

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa

. . . Society's latest run of XM cars . . . the combinations of roof, sides and ends utilized by

Intermountain in

producing this car are correct. . . . This is a great example of combining modular mold parts. <

E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.1.0.447)
Database version: 6.13480
http://www.pctools.com/en/spyware-doctor-antivirus/