Question I hadn't thought of before. How did the grain doors get back to the elevators? I am of the opinion they were re-used. I also presume that once the boxcar was empty of grain, it was returned to the pool. So did they transport the doors back somehow. or was it a one time use item?[/quote]

From my experience spotting grain loaded boxcars for unloading, the grain doors were one time use. The export terminal we switched in New Orleans had an intriguing "tilting teeter-totter" arrangement. An Alco S-2 switcher would shove each boxcar onto a table.
A ground man would attach a cable spooled off a hydraulic winch, break the car door seal, and knock out the wedge holding the door latched. He would then pull the door open with the winch. Two hydraulic "bumpers" would pivot up from between the rails at each end of the car, squeezing the car in place while a hydraulic foot would swing down from above and punch throught the paper grain door or wooden planks nailed across the
six foot wide door opening. The master hydraulic cylinder would then lift the table and car in an arc, tilting it toward the open door as grain continued to spill out through the opening. While tilted, secondary hydraulic cylinders would lift one end of the table until all grain had run out of the high end of the car. That tilting cylinder would retract, while a sister cylinder at the opposite end would tilt the car in the other direction. As soon as the car was empty, in only a couple of minutes as I recall, everything reversed, the now empty car was bumped out of position and coasted into the empty yard while the following car was positioned for unloading. Interesting to watch and I was aware then (1973 Russian grain rush) that it was an end of an era.
Years later, I was given a 1953 record book of grain loaded on rail cars at Geddes, SD. The MILW supplied wooden grain doors and there is a notation of the first car loaded using a paper grain door, also supplied by the railroad. As aside, wooden grain doors, planks of cottonwood lumber, 1" x 10" as I recall, were also useful when the elevator had to patch holes in the floors of boxcars.
One final note of how to unload grain from a boxcar, Plan B consisted of a maul to break through the paper or wooden door, followed by a dusty afternoon pushing an oversized
shovel with two small wheels attached where the extra long handle connected to the shovel's blade. The load was wheeled to the open doorway and dumped into a conveyor.
This writer's railroad experiences included sweeping out boxcars used in grain service before the cars were spotted for loading snow covered Christmas trees in Michigan. A
Christmas tree that smelled of sour grain at its destination was not acceptable!

At least one of the boxcars at our museum, still has the markings on the inside showing the line for the various grain loadings. Next time I am at the museum, I'll try to remember to take a photo, although perhaps someone else might have one in their collection that they could post.

Les Beckman (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum/North Judson, Indiana)

Way back in the day, even before 40-foot boxcars became standard, anthracite coal was loaded into empty boxcars for shipment west and north from Pennsylvania. I recently saw a photo of a huge coal storage and loading facility at Lewistown Jct. on the PRR main line with several tracks of western road boxcars waiting for loading. No conveyors or chutes are visible, so it must have all been wheelbarrow and shovel work! I've also seen a photo of a Central New England boxcar with what looks like a grain door at the original St. Nicholas Colliery on the P&R (Reading). At least into the 60's, coal fines, both loose and bagged, were loaded into boxcars at numerous locations on the Reading's Shamokin Division. The Reading Anthracite Co. sold a product called "Philterkol" used in water treatment plants.

Here is a photo of the markings on our CNR single sheathed double door boxcar #574493 (built as 582609) at RMEO:

http://public.fotki.com/elliottd/sfrmeo/sfrmeo_1/grain-load-markings.html

No doubt, the markings varied from road to road and by car volume and weight capacity...

Steve Hunter

Thanks Steve.

Les, what a great idea for a local museum. I wonder if double-door box cars were ever used in grain service. The elevator will need a spout to fill the car.

Note, not all box cars were in pool service. Some were "captured". I learned that the hard way by allowing the loading of a captured car with something else, from and to the wrong places The lecture I received from CB&Q management was only "Well now you known."

This car was brought up in another thread on a possible surviving C&O car of unusual pattern; as it is, this one is still unusual for having end doors.

http://hostthenpost.com/uploads/1da6629 ... 5d59cb.jpg

The other thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34769

I wonder if someone who's a better computer whiz than I am will want to set up a page for boxcars similar to the one for hoppers that's around here.

Boxcar grain loading has a brief, very brief moment of Hollywood glory in the classic film "Picnic," from 1955. It's partially seen in the trailer, at 2:20; William Holden's character is running from the police to avoid a night in jail, and he uses the grain chute to waylay the police officers chasing him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw

Of course, a lot of us will spend time looking at Kim Novak (huffa, huffa, huffa--don't tell my wife I said that!)

The soundtrack and main theme, "Moonglow," is great, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3m0nGGckVQ

Huffa, huffa, huffa, huffa. . . .

Alex Huff mentioned a car rocking machine to unload grain from boxcars. Here's a photo of one:

http://www.largescalecentral.com/forums ... in-boxcars

Other photos:

http://imagescn.technomuses.ca/_images/ ... 000542.jpg

http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresou ... 015395.jpg

http://www.straightinternational.com/Railcar.htm

http://portlandwaterfront.org/old_galle ... es/104.jpg

This last one is from the collection of Kansas State University, and is part of a file on a grain dust explosion at this facility. One of the most interesting bits about the photo is that it supposedly dates from 1976--an era I would have thought quite late for boxcar grain loading:

http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstrea ... sequence=1

http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2 ... ?show=full

A fellow working in HO scale has a model that works. Looks almost more in mock-up stage in this video, but it seems to replicate the movement well enough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CkkpaTeTks

Grain was apparently loaded in other ways as well:

http://www.smokstak.com/gallery/files/3 ... 247067.jpg

Source for the above image:

http://www.smokstak.com/forum/showthrea ... 221&page=2

Another image of interest:

http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/p ... boxcar.jpg

Source for the above (which is not visible on the page as it comes up, but there's lots of other neat things there, even if not on this topic):

http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/whatsnew.html

Check this out--note that the site lets you page forward and back--an interesting article, with a number of illustrations of the grain doors and how they were used:

http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/page ... 90-page-16

Tipping boxcars to unload them was not limited to grain; check out the crude method here for unloading a car of lemons in California:

http://coastdaylight.com/scph003/23-cor ... _cpl-6.jpg

Source:

http://coastdaylight.com/scph003/scph_r ... orona.html

WOW!! A FIND!! A whole film on a grain elevator, complete with boxcar loading, from Canada:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_elevator/

Have fun.

Some boxcars had a small doors at each end, about 12 inches square, up near the roof walk, for grain loading. However, the rest were loaded through the center door over the top of the grain door.

I had thought of those small doors in the ends of the cars being for loading long boards of lumber. One would walk the board in through the car door, stick it out the small end door and then pull it back into the car thus allowing the loading of boards longer than half the length of the car. Myth?

Anyone know if some of these unloading devices exist somewhere? Would be neat to see one displayed if not functional.

I watched cars being unloaded at Hodgins Lumber, Brockville, Ontario using the lumber doors for "wiggle room" in the early 1960s... their siding was beside the play yard at the primary school I attended and I was often late from recess or lunch because of CNR activity.

:-)

Steve Hunter

A couple of survivors that demonstrate how we can use things like this:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 81&nseq=24

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 88&nseq=27

Someone has preserved a Virginian PS-1:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 91&nseq=32

Even though I had a major hand in finding the former Rutland car for the museum, I am amazed to see that indeed, a former Rutland car, is one of the last still listed in UMLER as a 40' boxcar. I doubt she'll ever again head out on the mainline but it is curious to say the least.

Howard, if she's been put back down on her friction bearing trucks, you should get her purged out of the UMLER listing lest somebody one day call upon you for a 40' car! LOL