Covered Hoppers

In the 60s they would be used mostly for unloading corn or fertilizer out of grain hoppers. Plastic pellets didn't come around until the 70s.

A small portable conveyor could be used to transfer the load to trucks.

Tim

Cement?

I would say cement was more than grain would be in covered hoppers.  Covered hoppers for cement (twins) were around since the 1930's, covered hoppers for grain were not that common until the 1970's.  There were also airslides for flour and special cars for carbon black.  The question would be what were you loading the rail cars into and how would you get it into that conveyance?  Grain would be the most team track friendly, since cement would not be happy being exposed to moisture.

A team doesn't really get every type of car.  It can, but the purpose of a team track was to allow customers that did not have a private siding  to ship and receive goods.  A team track would only get the cars the customers in the area shipped or received and could unload.

To unload a covered hopper at a team track you would basically have to dump the commodity on the ground under the hopper and then auger/conveyor it up into a truck or whatever.  Coal was unloaded all the time, grain wouldn't be a problem.  Cement you would have to auger since it would blow away or be exposed to  humidity on an open conveyor.  Carbon black would be a huge mess and flour would risk contamination. 

Sure you don't want to wait a couple decades until the unloading and haul away technologies catch up?

Leased tracks

In addition to team tracks, it is not unusual for railroads to lease a spur track to a company for loading and unloading. 

Occasionally the railroad will provide a ramp or other facilities, but usually the lessor brings in the needed hoppers, conveyors, ramps etc. 

Because the leases change or lapse periodically, a modeler can have hoppers unloading agricultural chemicals for several months, followed by a lumber reload, followed by an equipment dealer or whatever strikes your fancy. Unlike a team track, the leased spur is generally available to a single customer at a time.

Found some old notes: In the '80s the UP was leasing a spur along Columbia Blvd. in north Portland, Oregon, to an outfit that may have been unloading potash using a wheeled portable auger. 

Team track

Team in the 60's

About the only thing unloaded regularly at the team track here in the 60's was lumber and other building products from boxcars or flat cars(some with end bulkheads and some regular flats). Occasionally there would be a load of machinery or other industrial stuff but not very often.

Some of the eastern roads shipped cement in canister equipped gondolas and I've seen photos of them unloading at team tracks, the trucks hooked up large hoses and sucked the cement out, I don't know if this still happened in the mid 60's or if they had switched to covered hoppers by then........DaveB 

Thanks!

Thanks for the replies to my question. I'd like to have a few more places on my layout where covered hoppers can show up, and your info has helped further that aim immensely!

Grain

It was shipped in boxcars through the 60's and in the early 70's grain hoppers started to show up. As far as I know grain was always shipped from a grain silo straight to an end user mill where it was turned into flour.

To get a more multiple use out of a team track have the end of it go out over the end of a drop off and put in a coal or gravel dealer whose deliveries are then dropped through a short trestle and into sorting bins. There were/are different grades of coal and gravel. The car has to be spotted over the correct bin.

Jack

Side Track to the mid 2000's

In Cambridge, MD there used to be rail service (only stopped in like the last year) but going back a few years there was a team track that was served. A plastics manufacturer was located off line by a few hundred feet in a nearby industrial park. They had plastic piping underground coming up at the team track to offload pellets. 

In Strasburg, PA currently there is a team track operated by the Strasburg RR. They have equipment for unloading grain or corn of some sort using a purpose built conveyor from this company http://www.rbtsi.com/MobileConveyors.asp

Although not your era hope that information helps somebody.

@Jack

Era

Things to consider.  Covered hoppers in the 1960's were still pretty new cars, especially the lighter commodities (grain and plastic) in the higher capacity cars (100 ton). They would have mostly been newer cars, which means they were very expensive and the railroad would want to maximize their utilization.  A single car shipment to a team track might not be the best utilization.  Also a covered hopper is a "specially equipped" car, not  a general service car.  A customer just can't load it if its empty, the railroad has control over who gets to use it and where it goes.

One of the reasons that the boxcars lasted so long was that many of the grain shippers and receivers did not have facilities that could load or unload a covered hopper.  Grain was shipped to Mexico in boxcars until the 1980's because some Mexican destinations had facilities that could only unload a boxcar.  Grain was shipped in boxcars in Canada because many of the rural grain lines did not have track that could support a heavy covered hopper.  In the 1960's, if you sent the customer a covered hopper, would they even have the capability of unloading it?  That was a real question. 

Paul

Thanks for the correction. Might be able to sneak a grain hopper on to my layout then. And as Dave pointed out maybe a scene where the receiver comes out scratching his head wondering "what am I suppose to do with that???"

Jack

Hope I didn't sound. . .

I think the last boxcar would be in Canada

I think I read somewhere that in Canada (I think it said Manitoba, specifically) boxcars were used until around 1996 for grain service. I might be remembering this wrong, however.

@meow is right

Found These:

CN Grain Boxcars: Last Shipment 1997

http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.ca/2009/02/cn-grain-boxcars.html

CP Grain Boxcars: Last Shipment 1996

http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.ca/2009/01/cp-grain-boxcars.html

Andrew

Wow!

Paul

No hurt feelings. I was surprised by the time spread though. Just goes to show how long it can take for new technology to erase the old.

Do I remember right that one of the reasons for continued use of the boxcar was because there weren't always enough grain hoppers available?

We're getting off topic here

Jack

Paul, with all the great

Paul, with all the great comments on covered hoppers being special cars, you might have to consider them in a through train going to a sea port on the Atlantic ocean. There was a large flour mill in Roanoke over looking the Virginian facilities there. In your era the Virginian had been purchased by the N&W so a grain train would not have been out of the question. I am sure there were other elevators in the area or along the coast that the train could be forwarded to.

As far as team tracks go think of items that can be transferred directly to a truck with minimal equipment, which would often bee the case in the 1960s.

Leased Track

I've been re-reading all the great info so many have provided on this thread. Thanks to everyone who has posted. 

While I've learned a lot about team tracks, and the operational possibilities inherent in them, I didn't know about tracks being leased as Graham mentioned. I really like the idea of a track being leased to an offline industry for a while, then being leased to a new customer.

I currently have two spurs designated as team tracks on my layout. Having one spur as a leased track gives me a little more variety. It also gives me a chance to re-purpose the leased spur according to my whims for whatever type of car I'd like to see going there. Great idea! I'm surprised I never came across that idea before!

Changing industries

I model the 1900 era so I have to do a lot of research to find stuff.  That means looking at a lot of charts and dta from other eras and working backwards.

One thing I have found is that industries changed names and tracks had different industries in the same place very frequently, about every 10-20 years about half the smaller industries will be different or be under a different name.  The bigger industries about every 25-50 years.  In the last 50 years or so not only have the names been changing but the tracks and buildings have outright been disappearing.

Remember that a team track is for ALL the industries that do not have a private track.  A team track can serve 100 different industries.  If you lease the team track to a private company then its no longer a public track.  It now serves just that one industry.

Reefers?

There is a lot of info here.

I remember as a kid in LA area while driving down the freeway in early mid 60's getting a flaxh look at some guys unloading a flat car of lumber. Not at all sure what they were doing with it.

Reefers---it occurred to me this morning if there were any reefers that loaded produce from a siding delivered by truck. The siding would not be a dedicated produce siding only used during harvest season, but could be used by a few industries in an area. Like a lumber yard, farm equipment dealer, or...

As a side note, I was looking at images of old general stores a couple of weeks back and one had a short story with it. Seems that the store in question had it's own siding for a long time and got deliveries via the RR up into the 1980's, delivered to it's own dock in the rear of the store.

Jack

Replies

Dave - your point is well taken. Is it better to serve a number of offside companies or just one? That obviously depends on what a person is trying to achieve. In my case I was looking for a specific way to increase the opportunities for covered hoppers to be switched on my layout. Having a leased track to a single offline company that shipped or received via covered hoppers seemed like a good way to accomplish that goal. Since I have another team track elsewhere on the layout, I'll use that one to serve a wider variety of companies as you mentioned. 

Jack - Seems like we are thinking along the same lines. I too am going to have some reefers off load meat/produce/fruits at the team track I have near my yard. I figure these shipments will be delivered by truck to an offline meat market, grocery store, food processor, or even a bakery. I'm sure there are some more options besides those I listed, but these are ones that came just off the top of my head.

 "would not be a dedicated

I've seen old photos of farmers loading their crops into rail cars at a team track. The packing sheds around here in the 50's had their own spurs even though they were seasonal shippers......DaveB

Team Track and Covered Hoppers

As a young kid I can remember sand cars being unloaded on team tracks near my home in Georgia.  Southern would shove in a couple of cars at a time and the trucks would park beside the cars and the sand would be augered/conveyored up into the trucks.

I don't recall seeing grain cars being unloaded on a team track, but in the 70's I saw it being loaded on a team track.  The process I saw was almost in reverse of the sand above.  Trucks would come in from a local elevator that had lost its rail service.   The trucks unloaded the cars onto the ground where it was then augured up into the railcars.   I'm not sure how long this continued but I know that for at least a couple of seasons this took place.

Salt for highway department

It was a seasonal move but I saw salt coming into team tracks in the Midwest were it was used on icy roads.  Also saw a regular move of Christmas trees into St. Louis in boxcars from Canada billed to team track consignees.