Hello all -

I'm new to this list, so pardon me if this has been covered before.

Before the advent of center-beam flatcars (let's say early 1950s), how
would finished lumber en route to a distributor have been moved? Would it
have been stacked inside a boxcar (labor to unload it was cheap back then),
or would have been on a flatcar?

I'm also curious about pulpwood - would logs have been stacked in gondolas
back then, or had bulkhead flatcars appeared by that point?

thanks

Paolo Roffo

Paolo Roffo wrote:

Before the advent of center-beam flatcars (let's say early 1950s), how would finished lumber en route to a distributor have been moved? Would it have been stacked inside a boxcar (labor to unload it was cheap back then), or would have been on a flatcar?

Ordinarily rough lumber moved on flat cars, finished lumber in box cars (often with double doors when available), but there were exceptions. And there are lots of photos in the Pacific Northwest of rough lumber in gondolas.

I'm also curious about pulpwood - would logs have been stacked in gondolas back then, or had bulkhead flatcars appeared by that point?

There were early, homebuilt bulkhead flats on several roads by the early 1950s, and certainly gondolas were used too. General steel Castings made a cast steel end for flat cars which could function like a bulkhead, and in the early fifties a number of roads bought them for pulpwood. You can tell they are not for general service because most of them had decks canted inwards on each side.

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

--- In STMFC@..., Paolo Roffo <paolo.roffo@...> wrote:

I'm also curious about pulpwood - would logs have been stacked in gondolas
back then, or had bulkhead flatcars appeared by that point?

thanks

Paolo Roffo

A lot of it depends on which part of the country you're modeling. In the upper Midwest, pulpwood never moved on bulkhead flats. The standard pulpwood log here was eight feet long, and were always a gon load. A line of logs would be stood on end inside the car end and trapped by the bottom layer of logs loaded crosswise to the car; these became a makeshift bulkhead, and the logs were loaded as high as these makeshift end stakes. Lines that had a lot of pulpwood traffic always had a lot of sticks laying along the track, especially around bridge piers that would catch a log slid part way out and knock it off the car. By the sixties, the AAR required the load above the car sides be wrapped with chicken wire, not that it did much good.

Pulpwood was low value traffic, and it was hard to justify new equipment, but the Soo Line did invest in some brand new fifty foot gons with built-in bulkheads, but not until after the era of this list.

The typical steam era pulpwood car on both the Soo and NP seems to have been a extremely ratty GS gon.

Dennis

Plupwood was also shipped in boxcars and stock cars in the 1915-1940 era in
NC.
Fenton Wells

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Paolo Roffo <paolo.roffo@...> wrote:

**


Hello all -

I'm new to this list, so pardon me if this has been covered before.

Before the advent of center-beam flatcars (let's say early 1950s), how
would finished lumber en route to a distributor have been moved? Would it
have been stacked inside a boxcar (labor to unload it was cheap back then),
or would have been on a flatcar?

I'm also curious about pulpwood - would logs have been stacked in gondolas
back then, or had bulkhead flatcars appeared by that point?

thanks

Paolo Roffo

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--
Fenton Wells
3047 Creek Run
Sanford NC 27332
919-499-5545
srrfan1401@...


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The D&IR, DM&N (later combined to form DM&IR) had pulpwood racks installed on many flat cars to haul pulpwood.  These dated back to the 1920's.  They even installed bulkheads on some Russell log cars.  Later, they also used gondolas to haul pulpwood as described below.  They had some gondolas with steel pulpwood ends installed.
 
The SP Atlantic Lines started installing wood bulkheads on flat cars as early as 1917 (there was a photo showing these in an article on this topic in "Railway Age" or some similar magazine).  They also shipped cotton bales and cut lumber on these cars.  But as soon as pulpwood shipping by rail became more common (after paper mills were built in East Texas) they modified some flat cars with permanent bulkheads.  In the 1950's they purchased cast steel pulpwood cars.  This included the whole car, not just the ends.  The deck was steel and slanted toward the center of the car.  They used P as the class designated for pulpwood cars.
 
Cyril Durrenberger

there are loading diagrams (probably earlier than the '50s) that show pulpwood stacked on end in gondolas.

CJ Riley

Bainbridge Island WA

Cyril Durrenberger wrote:

The SP Atlantic Lines started installing wood bulkheads on flat cars as early as 1917 (there was a photo showing these in an article on this topic in "Railway Age" or some similar magazine). They also shipped cotton bales and cut lumber on these cars. But as soon as pulpwood shipping by rail became more common (after paper mills were built in East Texas) they modified some flat cars with permanent bulkheads. In the 1950's they purchased cast steel pulpwood cars. This included the whole car, not just the ends. The deck was steel and slanted toward the center of the car. They used P as the class designated for pulpwood cars.

For anyone interested in these T&NO cars, there are photos in my Vol. 3 on SP Freight Cars (Auto cars and flat cars).

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

<<there are loading diagrams (probably earlier than the '50s) that show
pulpwood stacked on end in gondolas.>>

I recall seeing gons loaded this way in Northern Wisconsin and Upper
Michigan in the 60's and 70's. IIRC, Soo, NP, MILW, DSS&A.

Best regards,

Steve Haas
Snoqualmie, WA

We frequently drove past the Dickman Lumber Co. on the Tacoma waterfront in the 50's and 60s. The siding was immediately adjacent to Ruston Way, so it was obvious what was being loaded. I clearly remember lots of flat cars, but do not have a particular recollection of boxcars. Dickman Lumber mostly cut structural timbers, so the finish was not high quality, and exposure to the elements on a flat car would not result in degrading the value of the lumber while in transit.

As a generalization, I would be inclined to say that boxcars would be used for higher grade lumber, and the longer boards would be loaded through the small lumber door at the end of the car (at least in the early 20th century and before). I am not sure when lumber doors disappeared from boxcars. I am sure it was a gradual process.

Chuck Soule
Gig Harbor, WA

Chuck,

A minor correction, but I have learned (from this group) that lumber doors were not usually used to direct load the car. Rather, long boards would usually be loaded through the regular doors, and slid out the lumber door, in order to get the other end in the regular door, and then of course, slid back into the car.

Regards

Bruce


Bruce F. Smith

Auburn, AL

https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/


"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."

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That may be so, but having worked at a warehouse in my callow youth, I would say that guys who
load or unload box cars probably would do whatever made their job easier/simpler at the moment.
I once witnessed a 40ft combination door NP box with lumber being unloaded, and the boards in the
car were arranged in a way that looked like a bomb had been set off inside the car. Every stick had
to be coaxed out of the car, like a giant pick-up-sticks.

Tim O'Connor

--- In STMFC@..., "timken2626" <timken2626@...> wrote:
...> I am not sure when lumber doors disappeared from boxcars. I am sure it was a gradual process.

Chuck Soule
Gig Harbor, WA

Lumber doors disappeared when the size of the cars grew, and the size of the lumber decreased, to the point where they weren't needed to get the sticks in the car. The longest board that will go into a 34' inside length boxcar with a 5' door is 19-1/2', this at a time when balloon framing was standard practice and 20', 22', and 24' long studs were common. when 40' cars became common, there was a lot less need for the lumber doors; a 22 footer will go into a 40'-6" car easily, and other than specialty items such as 32' 6x6's for porch posts, little finished lumber over 20' was being produced.

A shipper could certainly use the lumber door any way he saw fit, so I suppose there was some operation, somewhere, that had a high platform and pushed the lengths into the car through the lumber door, but if this was common practice, the period photos of planing mills would always show high loading platforms, and they don't.

Finished lumber was a high value commodity, and would degrade in quality if not properly stacked. In the case of the jumbled car Tim mentioned, his boss should have refused the car. Since it was rather common to have a car load purchased by more than one customer, with the broker using the stop-off provision of the tariff to send the partial car load to the second customer, it is possible that someone unloaded part of the car mostly from one side, and didn't properly re-stack the load, allowing it to topple over in transit.

A number of years ago we had a nice account of loading lumber during the fifties, authored by a gentleman named Bob Jack published here. It was an interesting read.

Dennis

Dennis wrote:



" The standard pulpwood log here was eight feet long, and were always a gon load. A line of logs would be stood on end inside the car end and trapped by the bottom layer of logs loaded crosswise to the car; these became a makeshift bulkhead, and the logs were loaded as high as these makeshift end stakes. Lines that had a lot of pulpwood traffic always had a lot of sticks laying along the track, especially around bridge piers that would catch a log slid part way out and knock it off the car. By the sixties, the AAR required the load above the car sides be wrapped with chicken wire, not that it did much good."

The AAR did not adopt an official loading diagram for pulpwood until May 23, 1944. Figure 21 which formerly addressed tan bark and similar commodities was completely revised to cover both peeled and unpeeled pulpwood over six feet long loaded crosswise in gondolas. The load was restricted to being 8' 4" above the car (gondola) floor and could not extend any more than 4' 6" above the car sides or ends. Figure 21 was revised in 1946 extending the permissible height to 9' and adding a requirement for "pulpwood mesh" or boards (18" in height) attached to stakes in order to protect the top of loads. The figure was also changed to cover only peeled pulpwood.


Figure 21 was further revised in 1947 at which time the mesh or boards were required from the top of the car side to the top of the load. This revision was issued in Supplement No. 1 to the 1947 rules on May 15, 1948. The AAR separated commodities into specific manuals beginning in 1950. MD-3, covering forest products, was first issued on June 1, 1951. Former Figure 21 was renumbered 14 and remained as such within subsequent manuals and supplements during the 1950s. In 1959 the AAR's Loading committee returned to the idea of issuing full manuals covering all commodities shipped on open top cars. It was decided that loose leaf manuals would be less costly to print while allowing shippers and railroads to purchase only sections or the entire manual. First issued in 1960; forest products were covered in section 5, former figure 14 was changed to figure 11.


The committee addressed the loading of unpeeled pulpwood several times during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The carriers of pulpwood expressed objection to wrapping unpeeled pulpwood and were surveyed regarding disarranged loads during a six month period of 1952. At the time it was decided the small number of disarranged did not warrant the wrapping of unpeeled pulpwood. If later addressed, it was past 1962 which is the last year of open top loading manuals that I have in my library.


Anyone wanting copies of diagrams may contact me off list. I will email them as soon as I find time and (as of right now) I am pretty backed up with requests.




Guy Wilber
Sparks, Nevada











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I was told that when loading long lengths of lumber into a 40'6" box car through the side door, one end of the lumber was then passed through the lumber door, allowing the other end to pass the side door into the car. The lumber was pulled back from the lumber door and stacked within the car.

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