Ricky the unit train concept really didn't exist when the Q was in existence. Except for coal. Also there weren't all that many Covered Hoppers of grain service size in existence until well into the 1970s and later. Further because of ICC rules on rates there were no incentives yet in place to encourage the development of unit trains.
Many of the early Covered Hoppers, other than those for sand and cement, were put into processed grain service,I.e. Soybean meal, feed mill products, and fertilizers. This did away with the labor intensive loading and unloading of box cars of these products. It's really amazing to think back to the decades when everything and anything went into a box car,somehow,someway and then had to be hand unloaded.
40' box cars were the backbone of grain service, especially since the massive regional elevators of today didn't exist and the local elevator in each town was set up to load a small number of cars/day.
We could go into very lengthy discussions of how grain used to be moved, then went to trucks and to unit trains for export.
Leo
I noticed in various publications for the Q, there were few mainline trains with solid consists of grain covered hoppers. Was it normal for the covered hoppers assigned to grain service to be mixed into regular manifest
trains? Would they create "unit" trains for export grain to the Gulf?
What classes would be used for dry bulk fertilizer? HC-1, 2 bays, HC-2 PS-2 2893 Cu Ft cars, especially the 15 with 100T trucks? What about the larger PS and ACF cars?
Thanks
Ricky Keil
Papillion, NE
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