Were stock cars cleaned just after unloading and on the return trip home be clean? Or would they return home dirty and be cleaned before loading? In other words should empty cars be modeled as clean or dirty inside?

Thank you,

Ned Carey

Holy cow I love this subject.
And that's no Bull.
In fact I STEAK my reputation on it.
And I wouldn't STEER you wrong.
I know you Herd these all before. . .

But I have to milk it for all it's worth.

On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:43 AM, Ned Carey wrote:

Were stock cars cleaned just after unloading and on the return trip
home be clean? Or would they return home dirty and be cleaned before
loading? In other words should empty cars be modeled as clean or dirty
inside?

Standard practice on the western RRs, where stock cars could travel
long distances without going off line (or very far off line) was to
clean stock cars at the nearest cleaning facility to the point where
they were unloaded, so that they would be ready for re-loading wherever
they were needed. What other RRs did, especially with foreign road
cars en route back to their owners, I don't know.

Richard Hendrickson

Ned Carey asks:

"Were stock cars cleaned just after unloading and on the return trip home be clean? Or would they return home dirty and be cleaned before loading? In other words should empty cars be modeled as clean or dirty inside?"

Richard Hendrickson replies:

"Standard practice on the western RRs, where stock cars could travel
long distances without going off line (or very far off line) was to
clean stock cars at the nearest cleaning facility to the point where
they were unloaded, so that they would be ready for re-loading wherever
they were needed. What other RRs did, especially with foreign road
cars en route back to their owners, I don't know."

Ned's question carries with it the issue of how one should model stock cars...cleaned or dirty? In my own case, stock cars leaving Laramie MT[ which had relatively extensive stock yards...109 pens, 29 chutes capable of loading/unloading 760 head of cattle ] would be cleaned. OTOH, the very small number of cars leaving sites on Sherman Hill...Hermosa, Red Buttes, Sherman and Otto...assuming the number of cars would equate to the number of chutes [?], 5 cars in all on Sherman Hill, these would be dirty since, while there are water plugs at Red Buttes and Otto, there is no water facilities on the Hill for cattle except at the 10 animal capability site of Red Buttes. So...in my case...most MTs would be cleaned, a small number not. My guess is...I'm not gonna notice the difference anyway unless I have the doors open. Probably not.

Mike Brock

Mike,

What determines the capacity of a stock pen? Is it the number of pens
and their respective sizes? The number of chutes? Or something else?

-- Bill Keene
Irvine, CA

Bill Keene asks:

"What determines the capacity of a stock pen? Is it the number of pens
and their respective sizes? The number of chutes? Or something else?"

The answer is simple. The book Historical Inventory of the Union Pacific 1946 reprinted by the Intermountain Chapter of the NRHS. For each location, the number of pens, chutes, and capacity for immediate loading is given. Also, the availability of water and scales is indicated. Included is the following: "For capacity of yards for holding, resting and feeding, use one-half of capacity shown for cattle or horses and one-fourth less than capacity shown for sheep and hogs". This last seems to be rather restrictive for the pens on Sherman Hill and I overlooked this foot note before. The one at Buford...which I moved from Sherman [ modeler's license, of course ]...has the capacity to hold of 14...OHMYGOSH...Wait a minute....OK...whew. I only have 11 in mine.

If you need to know the capacity of a pen, I can tell you. BTW, the very first issue of the UPHS Streamliner has an extensive article on stock operations on the UP.

Mike Brock

It varies with location and purpose. In Amarillo, there were some huge pens that could hold hundreds of heads. The shipper brought in his consignment and it would be loaded into a pen or several pens depending on the type of animal. It they were all one large lot, one large pen would do. If he only had a few head, a small pen would work. If bulls were involved, they needed to be segregated.

When it comes to feeding stations, the pen size was designed to hold the contents of one deck of one car. When a car came in, the contents of that car stayed together as one lot in one pen. A double deck car required two pens, but the animals on each deck were kept separate from each other. After the resting period, they were loaded back into the same car from which they were unloaded unless it was a case of a foreign road car being sent back empty and being replaced by a home road car at the feeding station.

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Steve Sandifer wrote:

It varies with location and purpose. In Amarillo, there were some huge pens that could hold hundreds of heads . . .

I thought they shipped the whole animal??

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
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Publishers of books on railroad history

A friend who grew up during 40s in the small northern Iowa town of
Britt (Hobo Days, still crown Hobo King and Queen).

The Milwaukee would unload feeder cattle from the west. After unloading
the cars were pushed to a siding that was next to an embankment out
east side of town. A man would come and shovel everything out of the
cars. When the pile got too high next to the tracks they would push it
over the embankment.
Clark Propst