[timmuir]

http://www.elvastowe...eenshot&id=1665
File Name: Milwaukee Road Hide Service Car
File Submitter: timmuir
File Submitted: 31 Jul 2013
File Category: Box Cars Std Gauge

MSTS USRA 50-TON,40-FOOT SINGLE-SHEATHED BOXCAR
Repaint as a hide service car.
Milwaukee Road #702584.
3D model and textures ©2006/2013 by Tim Muir


The United States Railway Administration took over the railroads in December 1917 in an
attempt to ease the freight car shortage. As part of the program it designed standard cars,
had them built and assigned them to the various railroads. 25,000 single
sheathed cars were built between 1918 and 1920 and assigned to 26 roads. Too late to aid in the war effort,
the design set a standard for the following decade.

CM&StP received 2,000 cars from Bettendorf and Haskell & Barker in 1919 and purchased another 2,000 Government Equipment Trust cars in 1920. The road changed its name to Milwaukee in 1928 and repainted the cars with the early herald. The boxed herald was applied in the late 1940's. 2024 cars remained on the roster by 1950, but the number was down to 737 by 1953. The cars ran into the mid-1950's.
-Data from a Westerfield HO Car Kits catalog and Dave Nelson.

The last duty these cars saw in many cases were in hide service, transporting raw hides to tanneries in Chicago. They were said to have been so "ripe" smelling you could tell from 2 or 3 car lengths away there was one or more of these cars in the cut. Fortunately that feature has not been modeled-in but left to the imagination of the end user.

Credits to Dave Nelson for data and plans. Again. Thanks!

Tim Muir
Railroad Earth Models
December 28, 2006
July 31, 2013

Click here to download this file

[thegrindre]

I didn't see this one coming. Must have missed the construction thread, I guess. :pardon:

I love those olde timey cars. :D

:sign_rockon:

[Falcus]

Awesome Car Tim, I agree with Grinde.

I'm sure you get tired of hearing this, and replying (maybe) to it, but what route did you take that Screen shot of it on?

Falcus

[timmuir]

Rick, you missed the construction thread on this car because there wasn't any! :jawdrop2: It's something I did for Dave Nelson's Goose Island route a couple weeks ago and thought I'd go ahead and release it here. It's just a repaint of an older model using the technique of cloning weathered materials from cgtextures over the car's basic color. I used 4 different layers of weathering to get the desired effect, a lot of work. But it payed off.

Falcus, the route is the Milwaukee Road RMD East.

Thanks, gentlemen.

[Genma Saotome]

More background: Raw hides leave all sorts of biological material all over whatever they touch. Car interiors are wood. Put the together and you have a uncleanable mess in the car almost immediately. So once you do it the car interior is condemned against all other use. And yet there is money to be made and as a public carrier you just have to deal with it. The Milwaukee Road decided to paint their hide cars grey -- as an extra reminder in case the smell didn't work -- that these cars were unsuitable for any other purpose.

Generally speaking railroads set aside their oldest, most worn out cars for such service and when they fell apart, replaced them w/ other old, worn out cars. This USRA car would have reached it's 40 year limit on allowed-for-interchange around 1960. Cars could (and did) run after 40 years of work but only on home rails. Photos of this car in hide service were dated in the early to mid 60's so by most standards they were ancient.

As Tim said, they were in Chicago (photo evidence)... and probably any other major meat packing city in the midwest where the Milwaukee served large beef packing houses. What's not yet known is how far west they may have been found. I cannot find my Shippers Directory for the MILW so I cannot yet answer the question.

[conductorchris]

Paul Raynes is extending the B&M route to White River Junction and it will include a tannery at Lebanon NH. It was known for getting the oldest boxcars around. This car would be great for this route when the next update is released.
Christopher

[Falcus]

@conductorchris
But would the B&M be moving MILW Hide Cars? Or would they be throwing their own old Boxcars at that tannery in NH?

I would be real curious to know how likely it would be to see other Road's Hide cars being moved around other Railroads? I would imagine these would mostly be (As long as the Pool allowed it) 2 Stop Only cars (These being the Packing house and the Tannery)? Though of course that begs the question, if true, how many tanneries bought leather from Packing Houses and then had to have 2 different carriers move the leather from Point A to Point B to get them there? /shrug.

Thanks,
Falcus

[rdamurphy]

I've hauled hides before, as a truck driver. Picked them up from the slaughterhouse in a 20' container (they are very heavy) and sent them to Japan. They come right off the carcass and straight into the container. And yes, they stink to high heaven, you can smell them through a sealed steel container!

And the container has to be sealed well, the folks at the weigh station get real upset if you leak anything onto their scale...

Robert

[Genma Saotome]

Falcus, on 01 August 2013 - 12:21 PM, said:

I would be real curious to know how likely it would be to see other Road's Hide cars being moved around other Railroads?

Consider the value of the lading: Taking one road as an example, in 1956 the Rock Island earned $325.25 per carload of hides, more than double what they earned for an average carload of all types of ladings. Two thirds of those carloads were interchanged w/ another railroad. Given the substantially higher value per car it's likely it was worth enough to ship it some distance (there is a reason why gravel isn't shipped across the country) and so that suggests two or more railroads would be involved with this shipment.

Taking a look at the national data it's pretty clear the central Atlantic States terminated a lot more carloads of raw hides than other regions... and terminations were more than double originations, so there was a considerable net inflow. That also suggests your average carload of hides would move some distance and so again suggests the likelyhood of multiple railroads involved with the average hide shipment.

[markus_GE]

But as said above, if for hide shipments only the really old cars, at the end of their "carreers" were used, that often weren´t allowed to run on other railroads anymore, how did they do the tranfers? Unloading and reloading at each interchange??

Cheers, Markus