Stock Car Trains

Movement by Rail

Federal Law

1. Livestock shipped by rail had to be unloaded and watered daily. Stock could not be confined in a railroad car for more than 28 hours. Federal law required stock be unloaded, watered, fed and rested every 36 hours, if so requested in advance by the shipper. “Rest” meant letting the animals out of the car, unless they had room to lie down in the car and could also receive feed and water in the car. The minimum time for rest was 5 hours. Thus it was of the importance of moving the shipment over a Division as quickly as possible to avoid having to unload the cows while still on the SP or being hit with heavy fine for keeping the confined too long.
   

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3. These regulations meant that stock traffic was handled as expeditiously as possible, usually in the hottest manifest trains. Train orders gave it the right over all trains and we went straight to places like Dunsmuir without  stopping. If the train were  caught exceeding the speed limit by a few MPHs the officers could be expected to  look the other Way. 
   

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5. But when animals were unloaded for rest, it was common to send any empty foreign cars homeward and reload into the home road’s cars. Of course if a home road car was not available, this could not be done. It was permissible to reload animals into the same cars, but fresh cars had to have fresh bedding, as did the cars spotted for initial loading. Cars were normally steam cleaned between runs, and shippers had the right to reject for loading any car which in their judgement was not clean.
   

6. Tony Thompson
   

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8. For those who have Tom Dill's book on the Modoc line there is also reference made to the seasonal movement of both cattle and sheep. in any event the movement of livestock was severely curtailed by the increase of highway transportation, but all that business went away during the 1960s.
   

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10. Given the 28-hour rule and the fact that Western Division was a "terminating" point, there was no need for stock resting within the division. Loads coming from outside the division either rested before reaching WD or didn't have a long enough journey to require rest.
    

11. Tony Thompson
    

Modeling Federal Law

1. Have space on your livestock waybills to indicate whether the 36-hour rule was invoked.
   

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Stock Car Operations

How Stock was Handled

1. Stock had to be handled expeditiously and that's also why loaded stock cars were usually right behind the locomotive. Spotting stock for loading/unloading was particularly precise because the stock shoots were very narrow.  Those stock chutes came up to the car side. The loading/unloading platform, like those at the El Paso stock yards, were also equipped with the adjustable side rails extending out to the stock car door. However, moving those cranky heavy wooden side panels around was not easy, so getting sloppy with spotting would not get you kind thoughts from the cowboys. So spotting was good if you were within a few feet.
   

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3. The cows/pigs/sheep were so confined they could not turn around and had to keep moving ahead. Once that car was loaded/unloaded, you would have to spot the next car. If you had very many cars to load/unload it could really take sometime.
   

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5. Part of the conductor's responsibilities was to verify the count of cows/pigs/sheep that were loaded/unloaded from each car. So while the cowboys did the actual loading/unloading, a member of the train crew must count the animals. This typically was done by taking a position on the shoot and looking down and count the heads [origin of the phrase "head count"]. This was all done to verify damage claims for downed stock.
   

Stock Car Placement in a Train

1. Loaded stock cars always at front of train to minimize jostling the cows around. Another reason was done due to the effect of slack action in the train. A car near the rear of the train is more greatly impacted by slack action. Witness the number of employee injuries in cabeese. A car closer to the head end suffers less from this action, which results in less damage to the livestock, i.e. fewer insurance (lost income) claims for livestock injured and/or killed in transit.
   

1. Regarding tunnels, cows are better off at the front of the train since there would be minimal time for the exhaust fumes to disperse throughout the tunnel cross-section. Of course, the fumes are more dense immediately out of the stack. In open spaces, the cows are better off at front of train as the plume usually passes over many of the cars before dispersing toward the ground. With a cross wind, it is a none issue.
   

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3. On page 139 of Signor's Coast Line book is the description of an incident in Tunnel 26 in Santa Susanna Pass. An AC got stuck in a tunnel. Among the dead besides the head end crew were 12 cars of livestock on the head end.
   

4. Ernie Fisch
   

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6. Conductors reputedly really objected to having those odor sources near the caboose.
   

7. Tony Thompson
   

Stock Pens Locations

1. One has to remember that while a pen may be listed at a given station it may, in fact be quite a ways from the actual depot. A prime example was the McDermott slaughter house and pens in Berkeley, which were actually somewhere's around half a mile east of the Berkeley depot. A pen next to a packing house would be located very close to the plant, without regard to the station. A pen for pick up of animals for delivery to a packing house was usually located where it was easy to switch by a road freight.
   

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3. Only part of the SP that lacked stock facilities were mountain and forest locations. Several towns in the Sierras had stock pens, including Colfax and Truckee among others.Stock cars were spotted of cattle for unloading at a large feed lot at Thermal. Thermal is a station near Indio. Most Central Valley stations had a stock pen. 
   

Slaughterhouse

1. In the 1950's meat packers operated plants close to their customers which were butchers and supermarkets that bought sides of beef or pig carcasses. The animals were slaughtered in the midwest and then shipped by the carload to these outlying plants. These plants could be quite small, something easily depicted on a model layout. Of course some of the meat was packaged products too. That could be sent to any cold storage warehouse for distribution. Beverages are usually handled by specialized distributors too.
   

1. A stock yard (like Omaha or Chicago) was a marketplace, and stock might be reloaded onto another stock car for shipment to the packing house.
   

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Stock Car Traffic

1. Stock traffic on the Coast Line by the 1950s was not extensive, but did include both animals being moved to slaughterhouses, and inbound breeding stock. There was only limited traffic in animals being moved between seasonal pastures.
   

2. Tony Thompson
   

Stock movements to the L.A. area

1. When switching in L.A. around 1980, 15 or so double deck pig cars for example were cut off the head end and a waiting switcher took them straight over to Farmer John in Vernon and spotted each car while it was unloaded. The cut of cars had to be pushed a mile or so down the spur so a switchman had to ride the point. Wet, stinky sand being kicked out by doomed livestock was a hazard.
   

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3. The hogs went to the Farmer John Brand Meats Division of the Clougherty Packing Company, which bought them in the midwest, and shipped them live to its slaughter house and packing plant in Vernon, CA. (Most processors slaughtered their hogs in the midwest and shipped frozen carcasses or processed pork to the west coast).
   

Stock movements to the Bay area

1. There was an area in San Francisco called Butchertown and another location in Emeryville called Stockyards, both of were terminal locations for livestock, in the literal sense.
   

2. Dave Nelson
   

Last Shipments of Livestock

1. They were still unloading/ loading SP and TNO stock cars at El Paso at the end of the '50s. The date of the last livestock shipment over the Shasta Route occurred on May 5, 1955 on a train from Gerber to Dunsmuir. It was a 28 car shipment of cattle moving from somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area to a station on the Northern Pacific in Washington State. 
   

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3. All of the livestock facilities along the line had been retired and apparently SP stock cars had also been put out to pasture, for the cattle on this train had been loaded in privately owned cars. These cars had been made from  converted box cars and were much larger than your standard SP stock car.
   

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5. Stock movements on the S.P. lasted until at least the mid 60's, at least on the L.A. Division. SP did stop hauling livestock. The last shipment was on a westbound at Carlin shortly after Christmas, 1972. 
   

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7. The upside of the loss of livestock movement by rail was the delays caused by the required stops for unloading to water and reloading had been eliminated.
   

8. Joe Strapac
   

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Stock Yard Capacity

1. Facilities in route were located at or near various named stations along the route throughout the entire system. Information contained in the Circular 4, lists all the stock pens and watering facilities along the SP. The stations were identified quite well by John Signor in the three volumes Southern Pacific Lines Stations available from SPH&TS. The info provided for each station includes a picture (where available) and the class of freight station, elevation above sea level, kind of agency, and stock yard information both water and capacity by carload.
   

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3. In 1931, the following stations on the Western Division had stock yards with a capacity of 10 cars or more.
   

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5. Suisun-Fairfield ..................10 cars with water
   

6. Dixon..................................28 cars with water
   

7. Washington.........................21 cars with water  (MP 88 near Sacramento)
   

8. Tracy...................................18 cars with water
   

9. West Oakland.....................30 cars with water
   

10. Livermore............................12 cars with water
    

11. Milpitas...............................10 cars with water
    

12. San Jose...............................18 cars with water
    

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14. (A few branch line stock yards are omitted.)
    

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16. It is doubtful any of these were used for the 28-hour rest, because they are pretty small. Likely most or all were used to ship livestock only.
    

17. Tony Thompson
    

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19. The following stations on the Western Division had stock yards with a capacity of 134 cars or more.
    

20. - Roseville had stock yard capacity of 240 cars with water and could be the location of choice to rest livestock.
    

21. - In San Francisco on the Coast Division: Union Stock Yards had capacity of 134 car with water and at 4th & King there was room for 9 car with water.
    

22. Cliff Prather
    

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24. The Union Stock Yard of course was not a place to rest livestock except in the permanent sense.
    

25. Tony Thompson
    

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27. The following stations on the Sacramento Division had stock yards with a capacity of 48 cars or more.
    

28. - Gerber had a 48 car stock yard with water and there was a note that the corrals were for the purpose of feed and rest in route only; not to be used locally.
    

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30. Back to Butcher Town, from my research, here are some old pictures:
    

31.                                                                 http://www.islaiscreek.org/ButcherTownHistoricalPhoto.html
    

32.                                                                 http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Butchertown%27s_Beginnings
    

33.                                                                 http://www.sunsetbeacon.com/archives/SunsetBeacon/2005editions/Jan05/bowcock.html
    

34.                                                                 http://ark.cdlib.org/?relation=oac.cdlib.org&mode=content&search=butcher%2Btown
    

35. Enzo Fortuna
    

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Stock Cars

1. These background facts mean that on a railroad the size of the SP, foreign stock cars would not be common except for direct connections. Study of SP photographs in southern and central California show show foreign cars on line: ATSF, CB&Q, D&RGW, MKT, NP, T&NO, T&P, and UP. T&NO is only formally a foreign road and its cars would be expected to be freely mixed with SP stock cars.
   

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3. Stock cars in the 1950s were sometimes in surplus, and as observed in the “Equipment Instructions” document, divisions were instructed to store surplus cars.
   

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5. Stock traffic on the Coast Line by the 1950s was not extensive, but did include both animals being moved to slaughterhouses, and inbound breeding stock. There was only limited traffic in animals being moved between seasonal pastures.
   

6. Tony Thompson
   

1. Some G.N. or N.P. stock cars were sometimes in a train. But these cars were empties moving north.
   

1. There are one or two photos of red Swift wood meat reefers in Coast line freights with some photos which showed a small number of foreign cars mixed in with PFE reefers (MDT and URTX). 
   

2. Tony Thompson
   

UP Stock Cars in SP Trains

1. The SP, Santa Fe and UP all moved considerable livestock all over California with stock cars. The critical point is that UP had a few dedicated trains in the days before "unit trains" that were heavily publicized and constantly photographed, so it would appear from surviving photos that UP had a monopoly on this business. The longest lasting example on the west coast were the Farmer John Hog trains from Nebraska to Los Angeles. Most of the photos are of trains in the Western Division, and some around Roseville. There are just a few cars, two, three, six, in a block. Some show cuts of 5 or 10 or 15 stock cars in manifest SP freights.
   

References

1. Circular 4, List of Officers, Agencies, Stations, Etc., had information on stock yards, water and other livestock facilities at stations.
   

1. Chapter 13 in John A. Droege’s book (Freight Terminals and Trains, McGraw-Hill, 1925; NMRA reprint, 1998). The chapter also contains detailed comments about stock handling by railroads.