A Q about F4 plasterboard flatcars
NW Mailing List
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Tue Sep 16 22:15:30 EDT 2025
Hello all,Thanks for all the insights shared here. Nothing like an oddball question to get the group going. LOL.The sharing of knowledge/memories is what it’s about!
Andre Jackson
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On Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 9:06 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
I am attaching a copy of a photo from the 1966 Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia Of American Practice with the caption "Blocking a load of wallboard on a flatcar having Nailable Steel Flooring" which may be of interest. I defer to the moderators on whether this can be shared since the publication was Copyright 1966 by Simmmons-Boardman Publishing Company. As far as grain doors, I recall boxcars on the clean-out track with heavy paper or cardboard that had been installed for grain loading and I remember packages of the product around Indiana grain elevators. I may have a copy of the advertisement somewhere from the company that made them and will share it if I turn it up. W. E. Honeycutt
On 09/16/2025 7:00 PM EDT NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote: Hi all There was a thread about this on the B&O group if I can find it I'll post here. John Musgrove
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On Tue, Sep 16, 2025 at 5:16 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote: What were the grain doors made of? Carl Barna Emmaus, PA From: NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org> on behalf of NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2025 12:59 PM
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: A Q about F4 plasterboard flatcars This account reminds me of a minor experience that I had during one of
my four summers working as a laborer for the N&W. In June and July 1954
I was the short boom operator on the N&W's weed spraying train as we
sprayed the entire N&W east of Williamson, WV (eat your heart out
railfans !). The other spray train employees' normal jobs were in the
Maintenance of Way department.
Incidentally, a contractor sprayed west of Williamson.
Late one day we ran out of spray chemical near Roanoke. To avoid
having us just sit around the next day doing nothing while we waited for
another car of chemical, we were put to work stacking grain doors into
box cars, apparently for shipping somewhere. I may not have known why
we were stacking these fairly heavy doors into box cars, but I can
verify that this was the most strenuous job that this 127-lb weakling
had during his four summers on the N&W.
Gordon Hamilton
On 9/16/2025 9:45 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:
> 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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