In regards to the Paper Grain Doors: I was the Plant Engineer/Maintenance Sup at the Kurth Malting Terminal Elevator and Malt House in Minneapolis in 1962 when the first covered hoppers containing barley started coming in from North Dakota. It was a very major change! Unloading a boxcar was lots of hand work after the major unloading by the S/A contraption.
The first covered hoppers were a surprise and the barley buyers warned us that the top hatches had to be opened before the bottom doors. They also had to shift the car to get the bottom hatches over the pit. But, unloading was much faster. As the covered hoppers became more common, the weigh scale rails had to be lengthened to fit the larger and longer covered cars.
The paper doors were reinforced with steel bands that were cut before the paper was "punched" with the S/A unloader.
Hol Technically, those "Cardboard" doors were known as "Paper Grain Doors"...two main manufacturers "Signode" and "International Stanley". This "changeover from Wood to the "paper doors" was going on during my period as Manager Freight Claims" at the Rock Island. The arcane nature of the handling of grain claims involving the different types of doors and various methods of "coopering" cars was a real eye opener for me.
Representatives of the above mentioned manufacturers attended the various Freight Claim "conferences" , supplying "hospitality rooms" and other inducements to "cause" us Claim guys to tout to our "managemnts" the virtues of their products. On the RI there was kind of a "division of territories" for the different manufactures...I think IIRC that one manufacturers doors were used north of Kansas City and the other South of KC.
Your mention of covered hoppers brought back another "recollection" ie When the CH began to be used with increasing rapidity in the transportation of grain in a very rare case of railroad "solidarity"..all of the carriers got together and "conspired" to deny any carrier liability for grain loss from CH's. except in the case of defective equipment where an actual leak was observed. There was much "weeping and gnashing of teeth" from the grain industry, but ultimately the carriers prevailed. and nobody "caved".
I'll be happy to take questions from anyone who has any interest as to how the above mentioned claims were handled when grain was moved in boxcars...It's too lengthy and "mysterious" for me to explain without specific questions.
Pete
-----Original Message-----
From: Hol Wagner holpennywagner@msn.com [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Dec 23, 2015 9:00 pm
Subject: Re: [CBQ] St Francis Branch
Kirby:
That's correct; boxcars with wooden -- and later, cardboard -- grain doors nailed in place were used to haul grain well into the 1960s, when covered hoppers finally supplanted them.
Hol
Hol:
How would grain have been hauled in 1920? Would it have been in boxcars with boarded up doors?