Group, during the 1940s and 1950s, would loaded Canadian stock cars and ice reefers have been sent into the United States? If so, what were some of the common service routes? I'd like to be able to justify building some 36-ft stock cars and 8-hatch reefers.

Thanks, Rob Erickson

--- In STMFC@..., "rdepennsyfan" <pattirobpatti@...> wrote:

Group, during the 1940s and 1950s, would loaded Canadian stock cars and ice reefers have been sent into the United States? If so, what were some of the common service routes? I'd like to be able to justify building some 36-ft stock cars and 8-hatch reefers.

Thanks, Rob Erickson

I think during the steam era, all livestock had to be quarantined at the border, at least photos of Portal ND, the border crossing of the CPR / Soo Line show a building that is clearly marked a quarantine shed. So, this would cause any cross border livestock shipments to change cars.

CP express reefers are relatively common in photos of Soo Line passenger trains, surprisingly often in No. 1 & 2 close to Chicago. The story I've heard is they were carrying fish from the lakes around the Winnipeg area to be used to prepare Lox for Chicago's rather large Jewish community. Soo 1 & 2 made a good connection with 109 and 110, The Winnipeger, in St. Paul Union Depot, with an express car also going through.

I don't know the situation with freight reefers.

Dennis

I agree no stock but there may have been ice reefers.The Central Vermont
was heavy with products coming south from Canada: lumber, newsprint,
cars.
Bob Moeller
--- In STMFC@..., "rdepennsyfan" <pattirobpatti@...> wrote:

Group, during the 1940s and 1950s, would loaded Canadian stock cars

and ice reefers have been sent into the United States? If so, what were
some of the common service routes? I'd like to be able to justify
building some 36-ft stock cars and 8-hatch reefers.

Thanks, Rob Erickson

Wheel reports provide evidence that CN,CP stock cars were not uncommon in Vt and Northern NY.Armand Premo

Rob Erickson wrote:

Group, during the 1940s and 1950s, would loaded Canadian stock cars and ice reefers have been sent into the United States? If so, what were some of the common service routes? I'd like to be able to justify building some 36-ft stock cars and 8-hatch reefers.

The 8-hatch cars were predominantly (not exclusively) used for meat and fish. I remember the gray CN cars in Los Angeles when I was a kid in the 1950s (and was excited that Varney had a gray CN reefer model, though on their generic metal reefer body). I don't know for sure but would guess these were probably export meat from Canada.

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@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

On Oct 14, 2010, at 7:56 AM, soolinehistory wrote:

I think during the steam era, all livestock had to be quarantined
at the border, at least photos of Portal ND, the border crossing of
the CPR / Soo Line show a building that is clearly marked a
quarantine shed. So, this would cause any cross border livestock
shipments to change cars.

This has been my understanding as well. However, there is a
surviving conductor's train sheet from the Santa Fe in Texas in the
early 1950s showing an empty CN stock car. How it got there is an
open question, but it was there, apparently en route to being loaded.

CP express reefers are relatively common in photos of Soo Line
passenger trains, surprisingly often in No. 1 & 2 close to Chicago.
The story I've heard is they were carrying fish from the lakes
around the Winnipeg area to be used to prepare Lox for Chicago's
rather large Jewish community. Soo 1 & 2 made a good connection
with 109 and 110, The Winnipeger, in St. Paul Union Depot, with an
express car also going through.

I don't know the situation with freight reefers.

I have several photos of CN & CP freight reefers at locations far
below the border, such as southbound towards Los Angeles on a UP
train at Ogden and at San Diego. It's my impression that these cars
were carrying Canadian fish and meat products, though I can't
document that.

Richard Hendrickson

--- In STMFC@..., Anthony Thompson <thompson@...> wrote:

The 8-hatch cars were predominantly (not exclusively) used for meat
and fish. I remember the gray CN cars in Los Angeles when I was a
kid in the 1950s (and was excited that Varney had a gray CN reefer
model, though on their generic metal reefer body). I don't know for
sure but would guess these were probably export meat from Canada.
Tony Thompson

Tony, That's a good news for me too. I like this car and was wondering if I can use some along SP tracks.
GHQ have a good kit in N scale:
http://www.ghqmodels.com/store/zm18.html
Cheers
Enzo Fortuna
Modeling SP in Italy
http://enzofortuna.altervista.org/MySP_home.htm

Almost out-of-scope for this time period, but I remember being surprised in being able to photograph a 36' (5' door) CP stock car, number 275098, coupled to a much more modern 40' CP stock car on an Illinois Central siding in Osage, Iowa in 1960. The cars were empty, so may have arrived with lading other than livestock. U.S. routing presumably SOO-M&StL-IC.

Dan Sweeney, Jr.
Alexandria, VA

Dennis writes-

CP express reefers are relatively common in photos of Soo Line
passenger trains, surprisingly often in No. 1 & 2 close to Chicago.
The story I've heard is they were carrying fish from the lakes
around the Winnipeg area to be used to prepare Lox for Chicago's
rather large Jewish community. Soo 1 & 2 made a good connection with
109 and 110, The Winnipeger, in St. Paul Union Depot, with an
express car also going through.

Dennis, I believe that you must mean gefilte fish, not lox (salmon).
Such fish (gefilte) usually has to be Kosher where a Rabbi makes an
attestation at the time the fish is killed and processed. My knowledge
of this arcane fish industry at that time is that such attestation was
almost almost always made nearer the point of consumption, such that
shipment of such fish- most commonly carp- had to be made live. This
required at that time cars with recirculating tanks (usually baggage
cars) with messengers on board to look after things. I know personally
examples on the Milwaukee (Milwaukee, NYC, and B&O baggage cars

In this regard, I am doubtful about such fish (processed) from
Manitoba being shipped to Chicago for such purposes.

However, I would well believe that these cars were carrying fresh
Pickerel (English Canada), Walleye Pike (the rest of the world)- same
delectable fish, of which the massive Lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg
still to this day support large commercial fisheries. Whitefish, a
still-prolific fish in Manitoba, and used at times for gefilte fish,
could also have been shipped. However, in steam era times, the Lake
Michigan whitefish fishery was still very active, and the lower
Chicago River would have numbers of commercial fishing boats lined up
hawking whitefish over their rails to eagerly awaiting buyers (my
father among them). Why ship coals to Newcastle?

Nowadays, this industry has changed. Rabbis are now hired to be at the
point of catch-and-processing, and the shipment of live fish for
gefilte fish has all but disappeared. I was once asked by a neighbor
fishery-business property owner in Iowa whether or not I was Jewish;
and if I was, I could earn $60,000/year to help my retirement by
becoming a rabbi and sitting for a few hours to attest to each live
fish at their moment of doom! I told him, regretfully, that I could
not qualify, but that he was very thoughtful to think of me.

Denny

Denny S. Anspach, MD
Sacramento

--- On Thu, 10/14/10, Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@...> wrote:

I think during the steam era, all livestock had to be
quarantined at the border...So, this would cause any
cross border livestock shipments to change cars.

This has been my understanding as well.  However,
there is a surviving conductor's train sheet from
the Santa Fe in Texas in the early 1950s showing an
empty CN stock car.  How it got there is an open question,
but it was there, apparently en route to being loaded.
I have several photos of CN & CP freight reefers at
locations far below the border, such as southbound
towards Los Angeles on a UP train at Ogden and at
San Diego.  It's my impression that these cars 
were carrying Canadian fish and meat products, though
I can't document that.
Richard Hendrickson

This is a good question, since I'd like to have a CN stock car or two on my layout as well.

Breezing through the web finds all sorts of interesting things on historical trans-country stock trade (including the 1952 Mexican hoof & mouth breakout killing the US/Mexican LIVE cattle trade), and a couple of things are leading me to believe that, a) we don't know as much as we think we do about US/Canadian livestock traffic, and b) there's a whole lot of mystery Canadian finished, processed meat that's going SOMEWHERE besides the Dominion of Canada, and we modelers don't know where!

A couple of links worth looking at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-7976.1952.tb02277.x/abstract

I'm not about to buy this book, but "THE TRANSPORTATION FACTOR IN THE MARKETING OF CANADIAN LIVESTOCK" written in 1952 has GOT to be of interest to someone here, and definitely relates to rail movements.

http://www.geog.uvic.ca/dept/wcag/mclachlan.pdf

This is a fascinating article on the growth of Canadian stockyards, and it states that the large yard in Lethbridge was specifically built as a trans-shipment point for US and Canadian LIVE cattle. The article also has some good introductory information on Canadian packing companies. The same site also has several other intersting-looking, rail-related articles:
http://www.geog.uvic.ca/dept/wcag/publications.htm

Next, several sites found quickly referred to breeder herds being developed in twinned facilities in the US and Canada, and stock moving between the two sites. As a quick overview, here's links to articles from 1950 and 2009:
https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/44782/3/SPECULUM_v04_i01_1950_low.pdf
http://www.txfb.org/newsmanager/templates/TXFBTemplate.aspx?articleid=5319&zoneid=109

Finally, I haven't had the chance to dig through this site (yet), but it might be the best of all for our purposes:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-516-x/sectiont/4147444-eng.htm


So at a cursory glance, although it might logically be assumed that Can-Am livestock traffic would be halted & quarrantined at the border for a trade-killing long time, that doesn't seem to be the case (necessarily; a quarrantine might have just been part of the nature of doing business). There are plenty of references to Can-Am livestock trade out there; someone just needs to dig through them all to figure out what was really going on!

Regards,
Ray Breyer
Elgin, IL

There is a photo of a Canadian stock car in the 1920's in Yoakum, Texas on the SA&AP.
 
Cyril Durrenberger

Fellows, It has previously been brought out on the list that stock
cars are sometimes loaded with products other than livestock.
Could the sightings and listings of Canadian stock cars in the US
have been rough lumber or some such?
Chuck Peck

Hay and pulp.Armand Premo

Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 6:43 PM
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Canadian Stock Cars and Ice Reefers in US





Fellows, It has previously been brought out on the list that stock
cars are sometimes loaded with products other than livestock.
Could the sightings and listings of Canadian stock cars in the US
have been rough lumber or some such?
Chuck Peck






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As an addition to the pondering about Canadian stock cars and reefers in the U.S., some years ago we ran an article in CN Lines about loading stock cars with Alberta coal. Plywood sheets were placed against the sides, and the car filled with coal. I don't know if any of that traffic found its way to the U.S., but this is a possibility.

I have also read references to fish being loaded in CN reefers and routed to the U.S., and one certainly can't rule out Alberta beef, which has a certain reputation for quality (although those with memories of more recent years may remember an unfortunate — and fortunately seemingly one-of-a-kind — incident of mad cow disease). One presumes that there were other ladings which found their way south, as I have also seen a number of photos of CN reefers in the deep southern end of the U.S..

Ian Cranstone
Co-Editor, CN Lines
Osgoode, Ontario, Canada
lamontc@...
http://freightcars.nakina.net
http://siberians.nakina.net

Rob,

Canadian stock cars did indeed travel across the border into the U.S. for about a century transporting animals for grazing, feeding and slaughter.

A 44-page Canadian National Railways publication "Rules and Regulations governing Transport of Livestock" includes 22 pages dealing with U.S. government regulations. The imported cattle must be accompanied by various certificates signed by a Canadian veterinarian indicating they are from tuberculosis-free herds. With the required documents animal shipments would proceed without quarantine. Cattle shipments without certificates were detained in quarantine to be inspected. Also shipments of livestock entering at a Canadian port-of-entry but originating from most other foreign countries were subject to quarantine at the port-of-entry. The following states had quarantine stations for animals entering from Canada: AK(2), MT(2) OR(1), ME(15), NY(17), VT(8), WA(12), MI(3), ND(2). The place names are listed.

CP and CN 8-hatch steel reefers were used to ship perishable products in Canada for many years before the advent of mechanical reefers. Perishable products needing protection from freezing temperatures or heat constitute a long list and include fruit, vegetables, canned goods, beverages, eggs, butter, fish, sea food, and meat. It is a myth that these 8-hatch reefers were primarily used to ship meat. Any perishable products of Canada that were exported to the U.S. by rail during that era likely travelled in an 8-hatch steel reefer.

John Riddell

John Riddell wrote:

CP and CN 8-hatch steel reefers were used to ship perishable products in Canada for many years before the advent of mechanical reefers. Perishable products needing protection from freezing temperatures or heat constitute a long list and include fruit, vegetables, canned goods, beverages, eggs, butter, fish, sea food, and meat. It is a myth that these 8-hatch reefers were primarily used to ship meat. Any perishable products of Canada that were exported to the U.S. by rail during that era likely travelled in an 8-hatch steel reefer.

John is fond of referring to this meat shipment idea for 8- hatch reefers as a myth, but it's one derived from the published comments of Canadian railroaders. The point was that overhead ice tanks, as the 8-hatch reefers had, provided better temperature uniformity, a factor in EXPORT meat and fish shipments which might be in the car longer than a normal domestic shipment. No one has said, AFAIK, that the 8-hatch cars were RESTRICTED to meat and fish, but I will stand by the published record that they were PREFERRED for such use, at least for export.
Canadian railroads had plenty of end-bunker ice reefers, which performed perfectly well for perishable shipments which did not remain in the car too long. U.S. reefer operators who were at all progressive adopted car fans to accomplish that desirable temperature uniformity.

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@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Also fruit and vegetables.

Barry Bennett
Coventry, England

Thank you to all of you for your replies. It looks like this year, I may be asking Santa for some "new" stock car and reefer kits.

By the way, Armand, have you posted any of those New York State wheel reports?

Rob

Union Pacific wheel reports show a CP reefer loaded with onions routed between Sherman Hill and Kansas City on Nov 11, 1947.

I found no other CN or CP reefers, nor any CN or CP stock cars in my collection.
On the other hand, there were plenty of CN and CP boxcars, as well as a few flats.

Regards,

-Jeff



From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Armand Premo
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:44 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: Canadian Stock Cars and Ice Reefers in US



Wheel reports provide evidence that CN,CP stock cars were not uncommon in Vt and Northern NY.Armand Premo
----- Original Message -----
From: robertm
To: STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 12:01 PM
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Canadian Stock Cars and Ice Reefers in US

I agree no stock but there may have been ice reefers.The Central Vermont
was heavy with products coming south from Canada: lumber, newsprint,
cars.
Bob Moeller
--- In STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>, "rdepennsyfan" <pattirobpatti@...> wrote:

Group, during the 1940s and 1950s, would loaded Canadian stock cars

and ice reefers have been sent into the United States? If so, what were
some of the common service routes? I'd like to be able to justify
building some 36-ft stock cars and 8-hatch reefers.

Thanks, Rob Erickson

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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.862 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3196 - Release Date: 10/14/10 02:34:00