Photos: Hills Brothers Coffee Boxcars
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Garth Groff and Sally Sanford <mallardlodge1000@...>
Tony, Although I never met Richard, we did correspond from time to time. He was always gracious and generous with his knowledge and his photos. To me he will always be "Richard", never "Dick". In fact, if he hadn't disliked being called so in the train world, I would have used his academic title and last name. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆 On Fri, Jul 2, 2021 at 5:30 PM Tony Thompson <tony@...> wrote:
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Tony Thompson
Actually, Richard very much disliked the nickname “Dick” and really argued with the then-editor of PM, to no avail, as the editor wanted the authors to seem “accessible.” Tony Thompson |
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Hills Brothers Coffee (1938) Photo from the OpenSFHistory website. https://opensfhistory.org/Display/wnp14.2714.jpg Caption: “View west across Embarcadero to bridge, Hills Brothers Coffee Plant with freight cars alongside.” Bob Chaparro Hemet, CA |
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Claus Schlund \(HGM\)
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Hi Garth and List Members,
Thanks for the image of HBCX 162. The San Francisco Oakland Bay bridge can
be seen in the background, giving us a quite exact location for this
photo.
An image of the Hills Bros coffee building in San Francisco can be seen at
the link below. Three boxcars are visible in the photo serving the plant -
two of then are clearly ATSF cars, I cannot discern the road name for the third
one. The web site gives a date of 1940, but the automobiles make me think this
is from an earlier date. The building itself was built in 1930
There is also a video on the topic of Hills Bros coffee at the bottom of
the above linked page - at 6:12 there is a brief sequence showing the Hills Bros
building and some STMFCs in front of it
Claus Schlund
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Garth Groff and Sally Sanford <mallardlodge1000@...>
Bob and Friends, According to the late Richard Hendrickson, these cars were confined to the State Belt Railroad in San Francisco. They shuttled bags of beans from a dock to Hills Brothers' plant which was somewhat inland in the industrial part of The City. Silver Streak and TM both offered (incorrect) HO versions of these cars, and no doubt the "models" wandered around on many a layout as interchange cars. I managed to scare up an online photo of these cars that shows at least car 162 had steel ends. Back in the 1960s my parents took my first girlfriend and myself to San Francisco for the day. We were treated to a tour of the Hills Brothers factory shortly before it closed (it was converted to an office building). She and I were both avid Man From Uncle fans, and had a lot of fun speculating about an episode set in the factory with lots of interesting conveyors and such for knocked out THRUSH baddies to be carried up. On an unrelated point, I was recently looking at old PROTOTYPE MODELER articles on TrainLife, and stumbled across one on Santa Fe freight car detailing written by "Dick Hendrickson". I have no doubt this was one of Richard's early pieces. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆 On Fri, Jul 2, 2021 at 12:01 PM Bob Chaparro via groups.io <chiefbobbb=verizon.net@groups.io> wrote:
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Photos: Hills Brothers Coffee Boxcars Photos from the Protocraft Decals website: https://www.protocraft.com/category.cfm?ItemID=764&Categoryid=20 Caption: “Hills Bros Coffee Company, located on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, owned two wood colorfully decorated boxcars they received in March of 1930. They were assigned road numbers 161 and 162, and restricted their use to the shipment of bags of coffee beans only.” Bob Chaparro Hemet, CA |
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