A Q about F4 plasterboard flatcars

[NW Mailing List]

Comrade Andreas Jackovich doth ye inquire about the wrapping paper (and red
bows) used to protect plasterboard hauled on bulkhead flats.

Yes, the product was wrapped, in my experience.  The color of the wrapping
material was white, having the various trade names of the manufacturers
printed upon it.

Many (most?) of the loadings of plywood shipped today are wrapped with an
almost identical wrapping.  From my vantage point as an East Coast Weenie,
I see a lot of wrapped forest products on the trains coming south out of
Canada.  Not long ago, I counted 13 loads of wrapped forest products on the
head end of a southbound train coming down from the People's Republic of
the Maple Leaf.  My guess is those wrapped bundles are unwrapped at such
places as Home Depot and Lowe's...  so you might be able to find the
wrapping material around the dumpsters at such businesses.

At the time I hired (1964,) palletization was a fairly new thing, and many
things were still done the old way.  I remember seeing, one day, at Vinton,
a four-man gang unloading a boxcar of lumber... piece by piece, stick by
stick.  Two men in the car, passing the individual pieces of lumber, one by
one, to two men outside.  How inefficient !

Also, a great deal of grain was still moving in boxcars.  The doors on the
box cars were not closed, but the openings were spanned by a fabricated
wooden "grain door," made from heavy planking and nailed in place from the
inside of the car.  Each grain door was about two feet high, and two were
used on each side, one atop the other.  Only single-door boxcars were used
for this type loading.)  The car was loaded from the silo by using a big
gravity-fed hose, which a man inside the car maneuvered around  until the
grain was about four feet deep in the car.  To unload, the grain doors were
removed and the grain spilled out the side of the car.  Aluminum "grain
shovels" were used to clear the car.  In some places, a large sheet of
aluminum  functioned as a "plough" to plough the grain out of the car.  A
chain or cable was affixed to the middle of the aluminum sheet, the other
end being attached to a motorized windlass.  One man would drag the big
aluminum sheet back into the car and sink it down into the grain, and the
other man would operate the windlass, pulling the plough sheet to the door,
where the grain was expelled onto the ground.  I last saw "grain boxes" and
"grain doors" in use was shortly before 1970.  And yes, a LOT of grain
leaked out of those cars, and in the Spring one would see corn sprouting in
the ballast section, on both sides of the tracks.  Nowadays, the covered
hopper has taken over the business of the old grain boxcar.  (The house I
was raised in had a coal furnace, and the front sheet of our coal bin was
an old grain door from the railroad.)

Boxcars were graded according to their fitness for the next load.  Car
Inspectors carried tags which would be nailed to the car's tackboard,
showing the class of the car.  I do not remember specifics, but there were
Class A, B and C cars, and several of those classes were followed by a
numeral, e.g. C-1.    Food products, as I recall, had to move in Class A
Cars.  A car selected for grain had to be free from holes in the floor
which would cause leakage of the grain, holes in the roof which would admit
water, etc.  As I recall, Johnson-Carper Furniture Co. at North Roanoke
would only take Class B or better cars, for their loading.

When boxcars were dirty (full of dunnage, corn, lime, etc) and thus
unsuitable for further loading, they would be sent to the Clean Out Hole,
where gangs of men would clean them out and broom the floors.  One Clean
Out Hole was at Payne, Va, where cars were cleaned out for loading by the
furniture factories at Bassett and Martinsville.  Another was at West
Roanoke where the old West End Rolling Mill was formerly located, on the
south side of the yard.  To this day, the site of the old Clear Out Hole is
just a field and you can see it in the satellite imagery at coordinates
37.2759, -79.9846.  The ground in that area was raised about 8 feet in my
time at Roanoke, due to the trash cleaned out and bulldozed.  As I recall,
MW (Maintenance of Way) gangs were used to clean the cars... not sure about
this.  At the Payne Clean Out Hole, we used to use our .22 pistols to shoot
the rats which infested the place (they dined sumptously on the grain.)
The Clean Out Hole at Payne was located at approx coordinates 36.7155,
-79.9390, along the river bank.  There were two clean out tracks, each good
for probably 25 cars.

There were also two quarries at Buchanan, Va, which loaded loose lime in
boxcars. The local freights (No's 102 and 103, as I recall,) could never
get by that place without spending a significant amount of time switching.
It was a nasty place to work in the rain... slick and slippery and
dangerous underfoot.  As I recall, those cars were "signboarded," i.e.
stencilled Assigned Service - When Empty Return to Agent Calera VA for
Reloading.  They were so filthy that they were unsuitable for any other
loading.

At Buchanan, everything was covered with white powder and on a sunny day
the bright reflection caused pain to one's eyes.   Back then, any employee
whose duties required him to observe signals was prohibited from wearing
sunglasses, but at such places we did it anyway, out of self defense.  Same
situation at Kimballton, Va, on the Potts Valley Branch, and at Plasterco,
Va, on the Saltville Branch.  Finally, "Neutral Gray" lenses were
developed, which would not distort one's color perception, and those type
lenses were approved for use in Train & engine service.

At some point, perhaps in the early 1970s, the railroads realized they were
spending a lot of unnecessary money cleaning cars.  Some consignees would
even use cars they had emptied for dumpsters, and load their trash inside
them and close the doors before the local freight picked up the cars.  The
railroads worked for years to get such practices stopped.  The final fix
was to return such rolling garbage bins to the offending patron, make him
unload his own garbage, and charge him a per diem charge (daily rental fee)
for every day the car had been unfit for revenue service... which could
have been three weeks !

One more story about plasterboard moving on flat cars...  There were
obviously damage claims arising from rough handling of fragile materials
like plasterboard.  So, to identify where the damage was occuring, impact
recording devices were sometimes attached to the loads.  We called them
"bugs."  These devices were wrapped in a plastic covering and were secured
at one end of the car, adjacent to the loaded product.  As I recall them,
they were cylindrical, perhaps 20 inches long and 15 inches in diameter.
 When we came upon one of these bugs, some of us younger Trainmen, in the
spirit of merriment and funmaking, would take old brake shoes and give the
recording device several stout whacks, just to furnish the poor soul who
read the tapes something to wonder about !  Faithful employees, were we
not... ?  Oh, well, it relieved the tedium of our work routines.

Comrade Andreas also asks about the relative proportions of loads coming
out of Plasterco in box cars vs. bulkhead flats.  Unfortunately, I do not
know.  When I worked the Saltville Branch, I was a newbie and spent most of
my time trying to figure out which direction to turn a brake wheel, and how
to keep from getting screamed at again by the grouchy old Conductor.  We
did move out of Plasterco both bulkhead flats and boxcars loaded with
plasterboard, but that's all I remember.   The Conductor never told dumb
kid Brakemen like me what was in the cars or their destination.  If you
pressed me for an answer, I would say that I don't recall moving more than
a half-dozen flat cars out of Plasterco at a time, BUT THEN Plasterco got
two switches a day:  one by the morning local, and another by the night
local.  Most of my time on the Saltville Branch was spent on the night job.

For Saltville details, you might want to consult with Mr. Gary Price, who
is on this List.  Having grown up in Saltville, he knows a lot about the
area.  He used to throw rocks at me when I passed through on a train, but
now he is a successful entrepreneur and runs his own fermented products
business in Smyth County, Va.

So now we have covered plasterboard, lumber and grain.  You asked me for
the time of day, and I told you how to build a clock.  Lots of OId Geezer
Memories.  Please fax in twenty-five cents, to cover postage and handling.

Cheers from Retirementville.  I just passed Mile Post 80 and am now
shootin' for MP 100, so you better git outta my way, Sonny !

-- abram burnett
Commissioner of the National Strategic Turnip Reserve
.
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