Shipping cement by rail

[Steve Smith]

Hi Guys,

How would cement have been shipped in the 1940-1950 time period in the eastern US states ?  Covered hoppers evidently started being used around the early 1950's, but how was cement shipped before then ?  Was it shipped in bulk silos in gondolas, or bagged and shipped by gondola or boxcar ?

Enquiring minds would like to know.

Steve

[nkalanaga]

Both bulk, in "silo" or square containers, and in bags.  The bags were usually in boxcars, as they were not waterproof, so had to be kept dry.

It MIGHT have been shipped bulk, in boxcars, similar to grain, but I've never seen any mention of that.

[Point353]

[ai5629]

The PRR shipped cement in their class H30 covered hoppers.  The earliest of which were built in 1935 IIRC.  These cars made their way around the entire country hauling this commodity.  Thanks.

Jeff

[Missaberoad]

Railroads definitely shipped bulk cement in boxcars.

Off the top of my head D&H, SP and WP had cars with roof hatches assigned to this service, I also found reference to a GN series lettered for bulk cement service.

Searching the Steam Era Freight Cars group archive should bring up a number of discussions on the subject...

https://realstmfc.groups.io/g/main

[MK]

What's up with the square punch out holes?

[learmoia]

So the Atlas 40' gons are cement cars???

~Ian

[Missaberoad]

So the Atlas 40' gons are cement cars???

~Ian

For the containers yes, but the cars themselves have no prototypes...
There is a C&EI car that is close but the consensus is that they were fudged back in the day and based off a drop bottom GS car...

[C855B]

What's up with the square punch out holes?

Scuppers, to drain off rain or snowmelt.

[Missaberoad]

What's up with the square punch out holes?

Access for pneumatic unloading afaik...

[rickb773]

Here is a picture, from railroad.net (http://railroad.net/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=67377&p=945735&hilit=prsl), showing cement being delivered on the Pennsylvania – Reading Seashore Lines to Buzby Bros. Cement Co, in Westville NJ. (I lived 2 blocks over from the site.) There appears to be a Pennsy B6 switcher on the front end. The latest I can remember steam on this segment of the PRSL was 1952. That solo engine was making a terrible racket passing our school building (I was in kinder garden at the time) and the teacher remarked it was probably on the way to the scrap yard. So, the picture must have been late 40s to very early 1950s (see the automobile on the right).



I remember the hoppers because they were the most common types along the line. They were short 2 bay covered hoppers with light showing between the two hoppers. Similar to the N scale ones made by Vintage/Deluxe Innovations.

[nkalanaga]

Ryan:  Thank you! 

I don't remember ever seeing a container gon, with round containers, in Pasco.  I didn't pay much attention before the mid 60s, but after that, I don't remember one.  I do remember wondering what the containers in the Atlas gon were used for.  When I finally found out, I wondered why I never saw them.  I did see one or two with square containers, but even those were very rare.  They seem to have been more of an eastern and midwestern thing.

[Missaberoad]

The cement containers for the most part were a northeastern thing and had a pretty limited range.

[Tristan Ashcroft]

The PRR shipped cement in their class H30 covered hoppers.  The earliest of which were built in 1935 IIRC.  These cars made their way around the entire country hauling this commodity.  Thanks.

Jeff

And the GLe, which was an experimental class of 250 cars; they reworked some GLb’s and put roofs on them and tested out the covered hopper concept.  They predated the H30 by a couple of years.  And in canisters in gondolas, the gons being G22’s with modified or Crown trucks (one or the other or both, I don’t remember) to handle the heavy loads.  And in bags in boxcars, like normal railroads.

[Tristan Ashcroft]

The D&H converted some boxcars to covered hoppers in the 1930’s.  I assume they hauled cement, at least at times?  Tichy did a kit for the car in HO.

The Reading did the boxcar to covered hopper conversion around the same time to haul cocoa beans to Hershey, but that’s off topic (F&C has a kit for HO).