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<div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; color: #333333;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">I am attaching a copy of a photo from the <em>1966 Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia Of American Practice </em>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.</span>
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<div class="default-style" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; color: #333333;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span>
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<div class="default-style" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif; color: #333333;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">W. E. Honeycutt</span>
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On 09/16/2025 7:00 PM EDT NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list@nwhs.org> wrote:
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</div> Hi all
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There was a thread about this on the B&O group if I can find it I'll post here.
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John Musgrove
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On Tue, Sep 16, 2025 at 5:16 PM, NW Mailing List
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<nw-mailing-list@nwhs.org> wrote:
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What were the grain doors made of?
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Carl Barna
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Emmaus, PA
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<div id="yiv9023665924divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"> <span style="font-size: 11pt; color: #000000; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong>From:</strong> NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list-bounces@nwhs.org> on behalf of NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list@nwhs.org><br><strong>Sent:</strong> Tuesday, September 16, 2025 12:59 PM<br><strong>To:</strong> NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list@nwhs.org><br><strong>Subject:</strong> Re: A Q about F4 plasterboard flatcars</span>
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This account reminds me of a minor experience that I had during one of
<br>my four summers working as a laborer for the N&W. In June and July 1954
<br>I was the short boom operator on the N&W's weed spraying train as we
<br>sprayed the entire N&W east of Williamson, WV (eat your heart out
<br>railfans !). The other spray train employees' normal jobs were in the
<br>Maintenance of Way department.
<br>
<br> Incidentally, a contractor sprayed west of Williamson.
<br>
<br> Late one day we ran out of spray chemical near Roanoke. To avoid
<br>having us just sit around the next day doing nothing while we waited for
<br>another car of chemical, we were put to work stacking grain doors into
<br>box cars, apparently for shipping somewhere. I may not have known why
<br>we were stacking these fairly heavy doors into box cars, but I can
<br>verify that this was the most strenuous job that this 127-lb weakling
<br>had during his four summers on the N&W.
<br>
<br>Gordon Hamilton
<br>
<br>On 9/16/2025 9:45 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:
<br>> Comrade Andreas Jackovich doth ye inquire about the wrapping paper
<br>> (and red bows) used to protect plasterboard hauled on bulkhead flats.
<br>>
<br>> Yes, the product was wrapped, in my experience. The color of the
<br>> wrapping material was white, having the various trade names of the
<br>> manufacturers printed upon it.
<br>>
<br>> Many (most?) of the loadings of plywood shipped today are wrapped with
<br>> an almost identical wrapping. From my vantage point as an East Coast
<br>> Weenie, I see a lot of wrapped forest products on the trains coming
<br>> south out of Canada. Not long ago, I counted 13 loads of wrapped
<br>> forest products on the head end of a southbound train coming down from
<br>> the People's Republic of the Maple Leaf. My guess is those wrapped
<br>> bundles are unwrapped at such places as Home Depot and Lowe's... so
<br>> you might be able to find the wrapping material around the dumpsters
<br>> at such businesses.
<br>>
<br>> At the time I hired (1964,) palletization was a fairly new thing, and
<br>> many things were still done the old way. I remember seeing, one day,
<br>> at Vinton, a four-man gang unloading a boxcar of lumber... piece by
<br>> piece, stick by stick. Two men in the car, passing the individual
<br>> pieces of lumber, one by one, to two men outside. How inefficient !
<br>>
<br>> Also, a great deal of grain was still moving in boxcars. The doors on
<br>> the box cars were not closed, but the openings were spanned by a
<br>> fabricated wooden "grain door," made from heavy planking and nailed in
<br>> place from the inside of the car. Each grain door was about two feet
<br>> high, and two were used on each side, one atop the other. Only
<br>> single-door boxcars were used for this type loading.) The car was
<br>> loaded from the silo by using a big gravity-fed hose, which a man
<br>> inside the car maneuvered around until the grain was about four feet
<br>> deep in the car. To unload, the grain doors were removed and the
<br>> grain spilled out the side of the car. Aluminum "grain shovels" were
<br>> used to clear the car. In some places, a large sheet of aluminum
<br>> functioned as a "plough" to plough the grain out of the car. A chain
<br>> or cable was affixed to the middle of the aluminum sheet, the other
<br>> end being attached to a motorized windlass. One man would drag the
<br>> big aluminum sheet back into the car and sink it down into the grain,
<br>> and the other man would operate the windlass, pulling the plough sheet
<br>> to the door, where the grain was expelled onto the ground. I last saw
<br>> "grain boxes" and "grain doors" in use was shortly before 1970. And
<br>> yes, a LOT of grain leaked out of those cars, and in the Spring one
<br>> would see corn sprouting in the ballast section, on both sides of the
<br>> tracks. Nowadays, the covered hopper has taken over the business of
<br>> the old grain boxcar. (The house I was raised in had a coal furnace,
<br>> and the front sheet of our coal bin was an old grain door from the
<br>> railroad.)
<br>>
<br>> Boxcars were graded according to their fitness for the next load. Car
<br>> Inspectors carried tags which would be nailed to the car's tackboard,
<br>> showing the class of the car. I do not remember specifics, but there
<br>> were Class A, B and C cars, and several of those classes were followed
<br>> by a numeral, e.g C-1. Food products, as I recall, had to move in
<br>> Class A Cars A car selected for grain had to be free from holes in
<br>> the floor which would cause leakage of the grain, holes in the roof
<br>> which would admit water, etc. As I recall, Johnson-Carper Furniture
<br>> Co. at North Roanoke would only take Class B or better cars, for their
<br>> loading.
<br>>
<br>> When boxcars were dirty (full of dunnage, corn, lime, etc) and thus
<br>> unsuitable for further loading, they would be sent to the Clean Out
<br>> Hole, where gangs of men would clean them out and broom the floors.
<br>> One Clean Out Hole was at Payne, Va, where cars were cleaned out for
<br>> loading by the furniture factories at Bassett and Martinsville.
<br>> Another was at West Roanoke where the old West End Rolling Mill was
<br>> formerly located, on the south side of the yard. To this day, the
<br>> site of the old Clear Out Hole is just a field and you can see it in
<br>> the satellite imagery at coordinates 37.2759, -79.9846. The ground in
<br>> that area was raised about 8 feet in my time at Roanoke, due to the
<br>> trash cleaned out and bulldozed. As I recall, MW (Maintenance of Way)
<br>> gangs were used to clean the cars... not sure about this. At the
<br>> Payne Clean Out Hole, we used to use our .22 pistols to shoot the rats
<br>> which infested the place (they dined sumptously on the grain.) The
<br>> Clean Out Hole at Payne was located at approx coordinates 36.7155,
<br>> -79.9390, along the river bank. There were two clean out tracks, each
<br>> good for probably 25 cars.
<br>>
<br>> There were also two quarries at Buchanan, Va, which loaded loose lime
<br>> in boxcars. The local freights (No's 102 and 103, as I recall,) could
<br>> never get by that place without spending a significant amount of time
<br>> switching. It was a nasty place to work in the rain... slick and
<br>> slippery and dangerous underfoot. As I recall, those cars were
<br>> "signboarded," i.e. stencilled Assigned Service - When Empty Return to
<br>> Agent Calera VA for Reloading. They were so filthy that they were
<br>> unsuitable for any other loading.
<br>>
<br>> At Buchanan, everything was covered with white powder and on a sunny
<br>> day the bright reflection caused pain to one's eyes. Back then, any
<br>> employee whose duties required him to observe signals was prohibited
<br>> from wearing sunglasses, but at such places we did it anyway, out of
<br>> self defense. Same situation at Kimballton, Va, on the Potts Valley
<br>> Branch, and at Plasterco, Va, on the Saltville Branch. Finally,
<br>> "Neutral Gray" lenses were developed, which would not distort one's
<br>> color perception, and those type lenses were approved for use in Train
<br>> & engine service.
<br>>
<br>> At some point, perhaps in the early 1970s, the railroads realized they
<br>> were spending a lot of unnecessary money cleaning cars. Some
<br>> consignees would even use cars they had emptied for dumpsters, and
<br>> load their trash inside them and close the doors before the local
<br>> freight picked up the cars. The railroads worked for years to get such
<br>> practices stopped. The final fix was to return such rolling garbage
<br>> bins to the offending patron, make him unload his own garbage, and
<br>> charge him a per diem charge (daily rental fee) for every day the car
<br>> had been unfit for revenue service... which could have been three weeks !
<br>>
<br>> One more story about plasterboard moving on flat cars... There were
<br>> obviously damage claims arising from rough handling of fragile
<br>> materials like plasterboard. So, to identify where the damage was
<br>> occuring, impact recording devices were sometimes attached to the
<br>> loads. We called them "bugs." These devices were wrapped in a plastic
<br>> covering and were secured at one end of the car, adjacent to the
<br>> loaded product. As I recall them, they were cylindrical, perhaps 20
<br>> inches long and 15 inches in diameter. When we came upon one of
<br>> these bugs, some of us younger Trainmen, in the spirit of merriment
<br>> and funmaking, would take old brake shoes and give the recording
<br>> device several stout whacks, just to furnish the poor soul who read
<br>> the tapes something to wonder about ! Faithful employees, were we
<br>> not... ? Oh, well, it relieved the tedium of our work routines.
<br>>
<br>> Comrade Andreas also asks about the relative proportions of loads
<br>> coming out of Plasterco in box cars vs. bulkhead flats. Unfortunately,
<br>> I do not know. When I worked the Saltville Branch, I was a newbie and
<br>> spent most of my time trying to figure out which direction to turn a
<br>> brake wheel, and how to keep from getting screamed at again by the
<br>> grouchy old Conductor. We did move out of Plasterco both bulkhead
<br>> flats and boxcars loaded with plasterboard, but that's all I
<br>> remember. The Conductor never told dumb kid Brakemen like me what
<br>> was in the cars or their destination. If you pressed me for an
<br>> answer, I would say that I don't recall moving more than a half-dozen
<br>> flat cars out of Plasterco at a time, BUT THEN Plasterco got two
<br>> switches a day: one by the morning local, and another by the night
<br>> local. Most of my time on the Saltville Branch was spent on the night
<br>> job.
<br>>
<br>> For Saltville details, you might want to consult with Mr. Gary Price,
<br>> who is on this List. Having grown up in Saltville, he knows a lot
<br>> about the area. He used to throw rocks at me when I passed through on
<br>> a train, but now he is a successful entrepreneur and runs his own
<br>> fermented products business in Smyth County, Va.
<br>>
<br>> So now we have covered plasterboard, lumber and grain. You asked me
<br>> for the time of day, and I told you how to build a clock. Lots of OId
<br>> Geezer Memories. Please fax in twenty-five cents, to cover postage
<br>> and handling.
<br>>
<br>> Cheers from Retirementville. I just passed Mile Post 80 and am now
<br>> shootin' for MP 100, so you better git outta my way, Sonny !
<br>>
<br>> -- abram burnett
<br>> Commissioner of the National Strategic Turnip Reserve
<br>> .
<br>>
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