# Grain operations from boxcars



## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I started researching one of my smallest operations last night -- shipping grain around the turn of the century. Boy was I in for a surprise! I just assumed crops had always been transported in hopper cars, I had never heard of anything else. But no! It turns out they would use cleaned boxcars, open up the doors, and put boards horizontally across the inside of the doorway, leaving a small gap at the top. As the car was filled with grain, the pressure would keep the boards firmly pinned in the doorways. Boxcars were used because crops are only transported during a short period each year, and the railroads didn't want to have specialty cars sitting around empty for the rest of the year. Apparently they found a way around that, because grain hoppers started appearing around the 60's.

Grain elevators were a common place to load the cars from. Farmers would bring their crops via truck and wagon, pull into a covered dock beside the elevator, and dump their load into an underground pit. From there an auger would draw the grains to the top of the elevator where a worker could direct the output into one of several pipes or chutes. The insides of the elevators were sectioned into several vertical storage bins, and they could hold a different crop in each one. When boxcars were brought up for loading, they would dump grain from the appropriate bin into the car through the small opening at the top of the door.

So far so good, but I ran into a lack of details and pictures about how the boxcars were then unloaded. I know roughly that they would pull out the boards from the doors, one by one, then finally go into the boxcar with shovels and brooms to remove the final bits by hand, and that a good crew could empty a boxcar every half hour. I know sometime around the 30's they started inventing methods or either tipping the boxcar to the side, up on end, or rotating them similar to rotary dumps for hoppers.

However I'm looking for information closer to the turn of the century, when unloading was still done by hand. Specifically... WHERE did they dump the loads? Were they taken to another elevator? Some kind of warehouse? Did retailers just back up their wagons to the door and get filled from the boxcar? Were there pits and augers similar to where the original farmers dumped their wagon loads? At this point I ran out of pictures and descriptions. In my plans, I have a spur set aside in the country for farmers to come load up the boxcars, but once the cars are brought back to the big city I can't figure out what to do with them.

Anyone know what happens next?


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Trains Magazine has had several good articles over the years about transporting grain, including information on loading and unloading boxcars. Often times the bottom of the door closure was a sacrificial piece of plywood which was broken from the outside, allowing much of the grain to simply spill out.

I would recommend you go to the Kalmbach website and search their article archives.


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## 1905dave (Sep 18, 2016)

Yes boxcars were used up until the early 1980's. One of the first mainline derailments I even responded to was in 1980, a grain train headed for Mexico with all 40 ft boxcars of corn. It had a burnt off journal and when the car derailed the wheel busted the wooden floor, burying the truck in corn. Digging thru the corn to get to the problem, we knew we were getting close to the hot journal when we hit popcorn.

If they used boards they would nail the boards to the door frames. At some point, at least by WW2, railroads started using "grain doors", they were a heavy paper with steel straps imbedded in it. They would go across the door and the steel strap would be nailed to the door frames. To unload it you just cut the paper between the straps. 

What to do with it depends on where your layout is located. Common users are flour or grist mills, feed mills, breweries and larger elevators that bought and sold grain. Along navigable rivers and seaports there might be an elevator to load grain into ships. In the 1890's, 1900's everything was horse powered and people raised animals even around cities, so feed mills were even in urban areas.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

OK, let's say I'm bringing in wheat for a flour mill (because I have a river going through town and wanted a water wheel somewhere  )... assuming the boxcar is unloaded across town from the mill, how would they get the grain from the boxcar to the mill's wagons?


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## J.C. (Dec 24, 2016)

most mills of any capacity had a rail siding to them, small mills handled one wagon at a time direct from grower , for most using rail service the grower delivered grain to a local elevator that weighed the load then . unloaded it into a holding bin till a rail car was spotted then the car proceeded to mill to be unloaded, the following photos are first a drawing of a small elevator in ill. the next two are unloading area at large elevator. for a small mill the drawing would be the method used just put grated opening under rail car, but photo is of a large mill unloading area. hope this helps. 

photos didn't line up like I up loaded them the first one is should be the last


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## 1905dave (Sep 18, 2016)

Shdwdrgn said:


> OK, let's say I'm bringing in wheat for a flour mill (because I have a river going through town and wanted a water wheel somewhere  )... assuming the boxcar is unloaded across town from the mill, how would they get the grain from the boxcar to the mill's wagons?


So you are saying they are unloading the boxcars at a team track and draying the grain from the team track to the mill.

Shovels. Google "grain scoop". Its shovel specifically designed for shoveling grain.

If the track was at the mill and then had a covered dumping track, then the previous pictures would be appropriate.


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## J.C. (Dec 24, 2016)

1905dave said:


> Shovels. Google "grain scoop". Its shovel specifically designed for shoveling grain.


ugh know about them lot of work. the high point of them is that they can be used as a kina sled in winter


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

@J.C. -- do you happen to have a larger copy of that drawing? It looks like it has some dimensions included on there which could be helpful. I've seen the grain scoops, but this is the first shot I've seen of one being used. Very cool! And that grate on the floor is something like I imagined if they unloaded directly at one of the elevators. The drawing doesn't seem to show it, but I assume there is an auger in the pit underneath the car that draws the grain back up into the elevator? Or are they showing the boxcar being unloaded into a scoop at the dock, sloping down into the pit underneath the elevator itself?

Unfortunately my loading track at the farm is only about 2-3 feet away from the flour mill, so I need to separate them with a short mountain range to give more of a purpose behind carting the loaded boxcars all around the layout. This means keeping the receiving elevator further away from the flour mill, so the crews have a lot more work to do by carting the grain from the elevator to the mill. Or perhaps the elevator is just a common pick-up for livestock farmers as well? I do happen to have a cattle pen right next to where I want to put the elevator, so that could work.

Great info so far, thanks!!! So I think this will work to have the elevator on its own spur, and the covered dock where the rain is unloaded will be near the edge and visible, so I can add some nice details inside. I also have a small road right there leading to a previously unused dock, so that will work nicely to have wagons coming in to be loaded up.

So far the plan is to have heavy coal hopper operations and logging, plus some minor operations of livestock and grain. The coal and grain will be on standard gauges, livestock and a short passenger train will be on narrow gauge, and the lumber will be transferred between both. I'll add in some random flatcar loads, and I believe that will give me quite a wide range of cars and loads to perform operations on.


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## J.C. (Dec 24, 2016)

here is the link to the drawings. down load them as tiff for best resolution.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/il0543/


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

A mountain of info will be found here:

http://www.modeltrainforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=293473&stc=1&d=1489877536


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## tkruger (Jan 18, 2009)

This is a great video on this subject: 



. The complete process is outlined. Check out the method for switching cars at ~8:30. in the video.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I like the heavy duty locomotive they used to move the cars around.


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## tkruger (Jan 18, 2009)

gunrunnerjohn said:


> I like the heavy duty locomotive they used to move the cars around.


I actually saw one of those 'heavy duty' locomotives for sale at the local antique dealer.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

They were selling _John Suprarlo_ at the local antique dealer?  Isn't there some kind of law against that?


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## Shadow001 (Dec 15, 2016)

I never thought I would learn so much when I decided to start model railroading.


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

I'm surprised the Antique Dealer even knew what the thing was! Hopefully the tracks were down hill a little in the full direction. Getting the full load boxcar going must have been a real art.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

@tkruger -- I finally got a chance to watch that video. Lots of cool stuff, thanks for sharing! And I finally figured out what "POOL" means on the side of so many elevators.  Love that little tool he has for getting the cars moving along the track, I wonder how long those things have been around?

They didn't actually show how the boxcars get unloaded though. Oh well.


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

I don't think the box cars were ever unloaded there


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Right, and that makes sense, but they had to be unloaded *somewhere*? At a larger elevator? In some cases directly to the customer? But I would think there are other crops besides wheat that fall under the purview of 'grain'... soybeans and seed corn come to mind immediately, both of which could have been used to feed livestock. Regardless, I'm still trying to understand what happens to the loads once they are in the boxcars. They get dumped into...?


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## AFGP9 (Apr 8, 2015)

I used to live near a grain elevator from 1966 to 1980. The railroad, TP&W, used box cars with boards all the time through out the late 60's to the mid 70's. Grain cars started appearing around 1975.


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## Old_Hobo (Feb 20, 2014)

Up here in Canada, cylindrical grain cars began replacing boxcars in 1972....they were nick-named "Trudeau hoppers" because Trudeau (the father) was the PM back then....

Lots of good info here;

http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.ca/2010/04/canadas-cylindrical-grain-cars.html


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Oh yeah, I've seen cars like that here as well. I had no idea they were for grain, I just always thought they were carrying some kind of fluid like a tanker!


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

For anyone else also looking for info... A few shots from 1903 of boxcars used for grain, including hopper-bottom boxcars!
http://mrrminutiae.blogspot.com/2013/03/grain-car-photos-1903.html

And here's the craziest thing, from a GAME no less, but reading through the page it seems like the author has pretty good knowledge about railroads around 1910. The full page can be found here: https://www.3d-modellbahn.de/community/forums/topic/2019-1910-era-layout/









Basically the contents of the boxcar are scooped out into a bin, then an auger pulls the grain up into the silo. Farmers can back their wagons up to the other side of the silo to load up. The process seems to make sense, and would fit in nicely with the minimal stages I wanted to put into my layout, but interestingly it is backwards from how I originally imagined it... I had through the farmers would store their grain in a silo, which would then load up the boxcars for transport to the elevator. However the other way around works better for me, because on the loading end I actually have more space to set up a nice little elevator. Silos take up a lot less space and can fit better within my yard.

Can anyone confirm if this looks like a reasonable setup for unloading the boxcars? I mean, logically it seems to fit with what I've inferred from my reading, but I know better than to accept something just because my brain says it could work.


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

Seems logical for unloading a boxcar but its unlikely farmers would be the customer. More likely a mill.


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