Howdy!
Here's a quick question, do railroads currently use stock cars for transporting livestock, or is livestock transported by truck? If stock cars are no longer used, when, roughly, was their use discontinued?
Thank You, Greg
Can't answer the 2nd one, but no, railroads no longer haul livestock. These are now hauled by smelly trucks (if you've ever gotten behind one on a highway in the summertime, you'll know what I mean! :)
When I started working as a switchman in 1959, some stock moved by rail but it was much reduced from earlier days when they ran solid stock trains. We had some stock pens in the yard where I worked (for watering and exercising the stock) and those were torn out and replaced with a piggyback facility in about 1961. I don't remember seeing any stock cars after that.
Paul Welsh
Stock cars were very much in use in 1967 and 68 when I worked for the PRR. I was a yard clerk for the Grays Ferry District in Philadelphia, and we handled cars for the Oscar Meyer factory which was located at 34th Street and Grays Ferry Ave at the time (now long gone).
There were all sorts of rules (I think some were laws) about how long the animals could be kept in a car before they had to be unloaded and exercised and watered. We would frequently have to have a crew standing by when the road train arrived just to cut out the cattle cars and get them over to Oscar Meyer before the time ran out.
Actually very little meat of any kind travels live today. Modern refrigeration makes it more practical to do the butcher work close to the ranches where they are raised, and just ship the meat.
Walt
UP has a small yard in Ontario, CA which I used to drive past on occasion when I lived there. Several years ago, perhaps in the '96-'98 time frame, I saw some empty HOGX cars on one of the sidings there. I don't know all of the details, but I've heard that UP used these to run a priority pig train to the Farmer John processing plant in Los Angeles. Farmer John's advertising for its pork products used to claim "The Easternmost in quality and the westernmost in flavor" because they supposedly brought the pigs out there live before slaughtering them.
When I lived in West Chicago, IL in the mid sixties, there were stock pens there and about once or twice a week, two or three stock cars would be set out, I presume for water, feed and excercise, then on to Chicago. This was on the then C&NW.
Don Cardiff Model Railroad Design Kaneville, IL
This is interesting to me from a personal history standpoint. Before my time (I was born in 1957) there was an annual family ritual of selling the fat cattle in Chicago. Dad and his brother farmed in partnership. Part of the enterprise included a herd of fine, pedigreed Aberdeen Angus ("Black" Angus) and every year about 100 +/- were fed out to slaughter weight. The best 2 or 3 were kept back for the family, of course :-) ... I ate well as a youngster. My older brother runs the family farm now. The Angus are still there, but none of those home-grown steaks make it to California :-(
Anyway, I used to hear stories about how in early December the fat cattle would be hauled to the local Milwaukee depot (Cresco, IA, I believe, perhaps Harmony, MN) and loaded for the ride to Chicago. As I understand the story, either dad or my uncle would ride in the caboose with the crew so that he could hay and water the cattle at stops. I have no idea if there was more than one stop on the way to Chicago. It is my understanding that they provided their own hay and loaded it directly into the cattle car, breaking it out at stops. The rest of the family would drive to Prairie du Chien, and take a passenger train to Chicago. They would all watch the auction. Usually, their lots brought the top price of the day. After collecting the check, they would proceed downtown for Christmas shopping.
The auctions would be timed to start early in the morning, so I suspect the trains hauling cattle were timed to arrive the evening before. This would allow the cattle to have an "overnight stand" before the sale, and be able to get feed and water to regain some of the "shrink".
This family ritual ended before I was born. I'd be interested in hearing how this story lines up with reality and actual Milwaukee operations.
-dave
For those of you that have not seen a livestock auction or livestock auction house, it works like this: A lot of live cattle would be driven from their holding pen onto a scale that gates into the auction ring on the other side. The whole floor of the weighing pen is the scale platform. They are weighed while the previous lot is in the auction ring. When the lot is driven in, the weight is posted for all to see, the auctioneer (or assistant) reads a few words of background on the lot, and the auction starts. Bidding is priced per hundred weight. A minute later, the gavel falls, and CWT price X posted weight minus auction fees is the size of the check. Pick it up from the clerk's office in 10 minutes.
----------------- "Paul Welsh" wrote
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In the Fall of '62, '63 and maybe '64 we received feeder calves from the mountains of Montana by way of Great Northern Rwy. We branded and tagged them in the chutes as they were unloaded at the edge of the GN yard (With electrical service available at the rail siding, using electric branding irons was much easier than the normal way of branding except the smell was the same)
If it wasn't a (livestock) sale day, trucking to the ranch was cheaper than having Soo Line move them. GN stock cars were heavily weathered gray; Soo's were white-washed. It must have been near the end of the stock car era because we had two former Soo stock cars (sans trucks) on the ranch as early as '59. Neither was busted up as if it'd been in a wreck.
This brings up the Drover Caboose 'function'.....
Anybody got a web site on Drover Caboose Picts or details??
I've got 50+ O gauge cattle cars... No Drovers Caboose yet....
I have no idea if there was more than one stop on the way to
Here's a page with information about latter-day livestock transport on UP, with a 1994 picture of the HOGX triple-tier 50' hog car (plus some pictures of the Utah Watering facilities). Scroll to the bottom of the page linked below:
Sir=A0Ray wrote: Here's a page with information about latter-day livestock transport on UP, with a 1994 picture of the HOGX triple-tier 50' hog car (plus some pictures of the Utah Watering facilities). Scroll to the bottom of the page linked below:
Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:
My understanding is the drover's caboose was normally an older caboose or even an old passenger car which rode immediately in front of the train caboose. Gene ABV61-1043.001.HCB
A drover is a person who takes livestock to market. A drover car is one designed for the people who take care of the livestock on the train. The drover caboose was simply a combination of the caboose and the drover car into one unit which is cheaper for the railroad. Drover cabooses usually had a cupola for the train crew and sliding baggage type doors on the side for easy loading of tack and food.
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