SP Company Coal

I have a 1956 picture of what appear to be one GS  and one non-GS gondolas on the Western Division loaded with what I think was company coal.  In spite of conversion to oil for locomotives on most divisions around 1900, coal was still used by the SP for building and caboose stoves up into the 1950's.  Coal gondolas would be left at stations for bagging or wheelbarrow unloading to coal bins for company purposes.  I am not sure if roundhouse boilers were converted to oil but that would be more likely as they were located at locomotive fueling points. 

Doesn't answer your question but I suspect gondolas were used as on the Rio Grande for commercial coal traffic in the 1940's or else coal stayed in the foreign road hoppers of the originating carrier. Tucumcari was the Rock Island interchange point. Coal traffic to Douglas would probably be destined for the boilers of mines and smelters.  The coal for the Kaiser Steel mining and smelting operations in Southern California came later. 

In the early 1950's SP apparently had 500 new 41 foot gondolas built for ore traffic. 

Have you tried their Historical society?

Just spitting out ideas here but have you looked for an SP historical society? In the 90's I was impressed by what was being offered by SOO LINE and Milwaukee Road societies.

 Good chance there is someone there who has a good answer to your question. (I'm going with the gondolas)

https://sphts.org/

GS Gons

The 1943 ORER lists only 2 series of hoppers owned by the SP, a total of 34 cars.  Generally west of the Mississippi railroads used GS gons (and other gons) for hauling coal.  The SP owned about 3300 GS drop bottom gons in several different series.

Coal traffic in the West

Aside from some large operations like smelters and the handful of steel mills, coal traffic in the West was very seasonal.  That said, I gather a fair amount of the traffic on the Tucumcari line in those days was coal from northeastern New Mexico to smelters in southern NM and Arizona.   I think it was the main reason the line was built in the first place and why the SP leased the part from Santa Rosa to Tucumcari from the Rock Island.

GS gons (drop bottoms) were the standard western coal car in the middle of the last century.   The SP had a lot of them, and they could be used for a lot of different products.  Hoppers, on the other hand, were rather rare out west back then.

As always, if you have settled on a year or narrow range of years, like you have, it's great to have an Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER, or just the Register for short) for that time frame.  Not always easy to find one that old, but I think Westerfield still sells digital copies of just the car listings for several years back then.  There might be other scanned version out there.

An ORER is an industry publication listing all the cars available for interchange.  I had one on my desk at the Southern that I used about once a month.  Other people used theirs every day.  A shortcoming is that most roads did not list their "non revenue" (maintenance of way and company service) cars.  You have to depend on the individual railroads' internal documents for that, if they still exist.  Some of the historical societies have published them, if they have them.  Hit or miss.

Wasn't the Tucumcari line originally built by the El Paso & Southwestern?  Maybe there's a book about that line.

You don't say what scale you're modeling in.  HO has a couple of GS gons, but none of them are something you'll find every day on hobby shop shelves.  

Scott Chatfield 

What about the ho

What about the ho Intermountain GS gons?  

July 1948 ORER

The SP had about 6,600 GS gons listed in mid 1948.  In 1965 they had nearly 8,000 with just over half of them having extended sides for woodchip loading.

So their fleet of GS gons doubled in just five years, and yes Jim, they are the prototypes for the Intermountain/Red Caboose GS gons.

And for those wondering, "GS" means Gondola, Self-clearing, but as far as most railroads were concerned, it meant General Service, because they could haul almost anything that didn't need to be protected from the weather.

Scott Chatfield 

SP Gons and hoppers

In the mid to late 1950's about half the sand hauled off the Santa Cruz Felton branch went out in GS gons and about half went out in hoppers. The gons were both wooden sided and steel sided and the hoppers were usually 2 bay with side discharge or ballast style outlets. I recall at least one 3 bay offset side hopper showing up ....DaveB 

Scott.  SP GS gons with

Scott.  SP GS gons with extensions used to run by my neighborhood in Davis CA on the way up to the Sprekles sugar plant loaded with sugar beats in the 1970s.  How much of the fleet with extensions were used for sugar beats?

GS gons for chips and beets

The October 1965 ORER shows about 1800 GSS (GS gon, Special service) dedicated to woodchip service, and 1600 GSSs dedicated to sugar beets.  The chip gons were mostly 41-footers, a mix of all-steel and composite-side cars.  The beet gons were all 41-foot composites.

The January 1980 ORER shows about 870 GSS gons, mostly composite side cars, in woodchip service, versus about 1300 GSSs for sugar beets.  All of the beet gons were still the 41-foot composites.  By then the chip gons were all newer, longer cars, and there were also quite a few tight-bottom GTS chip gons.

Scott Chatfield