Trying to answer Paul Brezicki & Mike Oravec's questions. Since you want your feed as fresh as possible, and it has a relatively short shelf life, its bagged, regardless of era, as close the dairy farm (Paul Brezicki's example) as possible. In the pre covered hopper (LO) era in the Northeast, the farm would have bought form the closest mill. Without transportation, the farm was limited to what it could grow or get from neighbors. The railroad allowed the "neighbors" to be farther away. Most feed was grown on the farm. When the farmer needed more, and couldn't get it from neighbors, he could buy at the local mill. The mill tried to buy all it could locally and minimize the amount it hauled in. I called my dad to see what ingredients were available in Bedford County, PA in the 1950's. His answers will be appropriate for almost anyone modelling the EL in NY, NJ, PA. Cows don't care for raw corn.. They prefer it ground and mixed with other stuff. If the farmer didn't have a grinder/mixer (very rare on 1950's farms) a portable one could come to the farm, usually weekly or biweekly. More common was to haul his ingredients to the local mill and buy supplement (primarily soybean meal with added vitamins, minerals etc) to add to his corn and oats. If he didn't have enough corn and oats he could buy corn, barley, and maybe wheat, or rye, locally grown or brought in bulk (grain door boxcars). Depending on location and season, cottonseed meal, dried brewers grains or beet pulp (all bagged) could be brought in by rail. The mill would grind and mix his ingredients and he'd take them home. He'd only get 1 week or less (depending on how big his truck was) at a time. During the heyday of the coops in the 1930's, Eastern States and others started centralized mills that would grind and bag the feed and ship it by rail to the local dealer or their store. The dealer would take his truck to the team track and probably "4 out of 10 times" have to hook a chain on the car door and drag it open with the truck. The bagged feed was piled on the floor, no pallets. He doesn't remember where the mills where though. I know Agway had mills in Binghamton, Gettysburg, Syracuse and other places, but don't know the territory each served. Large mills could also be used by Purina, Mastermix, Wayne, etc to sell feed in areas where they didn't have enough volume for a local mill. The car of bag feed (the same stuff the farmer could get ground locally) would come to the team track and the dealer unload and take to the farm. Or the farmer could drive to the car. Even a 40' box would take a couple days to get unloaded. So in short...your bagged feed cars went from the mill to the local store or team track. The bulk cars went to the central or local mill. You could send a bulk car to a team track to be unloaded by a milll not located on a siding directly. Either way gives you a perfect reason to send on line cars to the local mill that were backhauled from the south or west with bulk grain or online or connecting line cars with bagged feed from on line or near by central mills. If the car records you are studying show the origin, it might help us learn who's central mills were where and where the cars they loaded came from. The farm got bagged feed. Bulk feed to farms was another late 60's innovation that really didn't take off until the late 70's or mid 80's. Frank The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org To Unsubscribe: http://lists.elhts.org/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------ End of EL Mail List Digest V3 #2461 ***********************************
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