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January 1943. Riverdale, Illinois. "Freight operations of the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad. Grain elevator and mill at a siding of the Harbor Belt's Blue Island Yard south of Chicago." Medium format acetate negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.
Watch the 1955 film "Picnic" with Kim Novak and William Holden to see how they used to load grain into boxcars. The plot is a handsome stranger comes to town and gets a job in a grain elevator. Boards were placed inside the boxcar doors about halfway up and large rubber hoses directed the grain into the cars where it was spread around.
In the early 1960s, the Southern Railway introduced the now ubiquitous covered hopper car with hatches in the roof and door pockets on the bottom that could carry twice the weight and load and unload far more easily.
made buildings in the background look as if being painted.
PM Pere Marquette
CCC&StL Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & St. Louis "Big 4"
NYC New York Central
SL-SF St Louis-San Francisco "The Frisco"
DT&I Detroit, Toledo & Ironton "We Have the Connections" Henry Ford's RR
It used to be fun to see how many different carriers cars were in a freight train. Now unmarked private cars (reporting marks end in X) go sliding by incognito.
Sleet or freezing rain has been the order of the day here. Everything is covered with a glaze of ice, making the easiest tasks of railroading a threat to life and limb.
All of the railroads represented by the boxcars here are long gone.
Today's photographer might use AI to remove the arm (water stop?) from the image. Or maybe not.
Perhaps the tall stack as well.
I say, leave 'em in -- they're part of the story.
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