Page 11 - May June 2009

GRAIN EXTRA – fourth sectionW A Corkill
The previous section (in which the mysterious “blue loo” should have read “blue logo”) led to questions about wooden boxcars rather than grain elevators, so perhaps either there are no questions left to ask, or nobody has read the series! At least two readers of Roundhouse have worked in real grain elevators or preserved ones, so it would be nice to hear from them.
There is always room for just one more elevator if it is represented by a cardboard cut­out, as seen. But it is not the same one as seen earlier repainted for “Farmers’ Pool”. Real elevators burned down all too frequently and the owners lost no time in buying or renting somebody else’s elevator and putting their name on it. The engineering works is, of course, just another cardboard mock­up, but it has a pattern shop or joiners’ shop at one side and a boilerhouse at the far right. A steam delivery pipe (well lagged against the cold of a prairie winter) is anchored somewhere near the middle, and an expansion joint may be seen under the “D” of “LTD” to allow for expansion due to hot steam. The left­ hand end is free to slide, but the small­bore connection to the woodwork shop needs a loop of pipe to allow for expansion. All technically correct, as one would expect from the biggest em­ ployer in town! It has the agency for combine harvesters and it will take orders also for Cockshutt Plow, John Deere Tractors, Algoma Steel and Dominion Bridge. If you have a broken piece of farm equipment or need a new steel­framed barn, this is the place to come. On a really cold day it would be wreathed in escaping steam from drains and leak­offs, but our picture was taken during a holiday shutdown.
The track next to the works is only one half of a piece of Code 70 track, and the cars on it are only half as wide as they should be. The light grey fabrication has been made in the welding shop, ready for shipment to some power plant or steam laundry. The (half) wooden boxcar reminds us that in 1917 German U­boats came close to starving Britain into surrender. Grain ships were sunk faster than extra grain trains could rush replacement cargoes to Atlantic ports, and a serious shortage of boxcars was only met by patching up all the old wrecks and by building more cars as fast as the workshops could turn them out. Never under­ estimate the contribution made by wooden boxcars in both world wars! In 1942 the same thing happened again, and over 8 million tons of shipping was lost with, of course, thousands of tons of badly­needed grain and flour for the already scanty British bread ration. Canadian Loco Co turned out new G3 class Pacifics while railway workshops made tanks and naval guns instead of overhauling steam locomotives. Those in need of repairs had to find some backshop able to fit them in. It was a time of great strain and maximum effort all round, especially by old wooden boxcars, which deserved a medal or a Mention in Dispatches.
Steel boxcars replaced wooden ones in the first half of the 20th century, but loading grain was still a hard and dusty business and something better was needed. So in 1919 the CPR built covered hopper car No 240000 for grain shipments between Georgian Bay and Atlantic ports. Little or nothing was heard of this experiment, but in the 1940s Pullman Standard introduced their PS­2 line of covered hopper cars with 2006, 2893, 4427 and eventually 4750 cu ft capacity. A picture by Nicola Hey in the April 2009 issue of Roundhouse shows a UGG elevator (painted mineral brown) with beside it a silvery PS­2 car in front which looks like the 2893 cu ft variety. It will do nicely to illustrate the PS­2 line. In the 1950s, Canadian railways had a 3000 cu ft type (now on sale in Canada, by True Line Trains) with smooth sides instead of ribbed ones, but these had circular roof hatches or square ones, mainly for cargoes needing to be kept dry. Grain can stand a bit of moisture and usually travels in cars having longer trough­type roof hatches. But not always – in an emergency an open hopper car may be used with a tarpaulin cover.
Next comes a cut of three Saskatchewan Grain Corporation cars on hire from the Canadian Wheat Board since about 1981, when the red “Canada” livery appeared. The chocolate­and­tangerine orange cars with a wheatsheaf logo were popular with train spotters from the very first, but in 2007 some were repainted in a new green style with “Saskatchewan!” in italic script lettering and a bunch of tiger lilies.
Models are reported to be available from Pacific Rail Systems of Vancouver, and Intermountain may have some by the end of 2009. Meanwhile, an anonymous scratchbuilder has “had a go” on our behalf, and his efforts can be seen as a valiant attempt to keep Roundhouse in the front rank.
In the early 1960s the Aluminium Co of Canada joined with the CNR to produce a new design of semi­cylindrical covered hopper cars of 3000 cu ft capacity. They suffered from joint fatigue, so in 1964 the CPR reverted to steel construction and later made fully cylindrical (or teardrop­shaped) cars with a capacity of 3800 cu ft, delivered in black with the company name in script lettering, as may be seen on traffic in Railway Avenue. The “Multimark” came in 1968 and went around 1988, not to be greatly missed.
The classical Canadian Wheat Board cylindrical covered hopper car of 4500 cu ft capacity actually arrived first on the CPR in 1969–1970; car no 384990 in our picture was a post­1976 (Inter­ mountain) CP Rail kit with a lot of fiddly small parts needing a good light to assemble, as well as an absence of clumsy fingers. The late Jim Burghall was a big help here.
Behind the “Multimark” car is a Bachmann model sold in bright colours of Santa Fe (correct) and Canadian Wheat Board (almost certainly incorrect). In the 1980s only the CPR hired 400 of these cars back from American car hire firms for which they had been built (in Canada) with 4650 cu ft capacity. Our car is painted all­ over pale grey and lettered “CPI 389454” for international service in the days before customs restrictions were lifted.
When the CPR finally absorbed its old friend, the Soo Line, a lot of 4427 or 4750 cu ft American PS­2 covered hopper cars found their way to Canada, painted pale grey with similar CPI reporting marks and numbers in the 387600–387949 series. Meanwhile the CNR bought up many American cars, while just to make things more interesting the Soo Line had taken over a large car fleet with what was left of the Milwaukee Road. This is a complicated affair, but useful references are given below.
Finally, ACF produced their 1960s “Centerflow” type covered hopper car design having curved sides. In our picture, we see an almost white­coloured CP Rail car, lettered SOO 115085 using Microscale decals. This car would have been built for SOO LINE service but could turn up anywhere between Vancouver and Thunder Bay on Lake Superior from the 1990s.
On Railway Avenue, the green van is lettered for the Apex Corrugated Box Co and the school bus belongs to County School District #4. The articulated truck reminds us that at one time it was said that the CPR paid enough money in taxes to cover the losses made by its nationalised rival. Then when it found its taxes were being used to build all­weather highways that enabled trucking firms to make railway branchlines unprofitable, it decided to play the truckers at their own game and went into road haulage in big way. Why not? They were already big in ships, telecommunications, hotels, mining and anything else that would help to earn a few dollars.
Now for those who wondered how on earth the United Grain Growers elevators appeared on the April 2009 cover in a rural setting, far from where the site plan indicated, some Swiss­made switch motors are finely made but very susceptible to dust interference. So massive dust covers shaped like grain elevators had to be made removable, and it just so happened that it was easier to photograph them over on the other side of the layout.
june 2009
continued on p. 12
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