cents per bushel for cucumbers less than five inches in length. The facility was built that spring, consisting of an office and storehouse, and twelve tanks. The tanks were covered with a roof, but the sides remained open. The complex cost $110 and was run by two men during the season, from July to November. For the week ending August 20, 61,554 pounds of cucumbers were received at an average price of 80 cents per hundred pounds. An addi- tional 9,542 pounds were oversize; the amount paid was 20 cents per pound. In October of 1923, S. F. Taylor, man-
ager for the Waupaca, Weyauwega and Readfield salting stations, reported that 19,000 bushels had been deliv- ered, over 10,000 of them at Waupaca. Of those, 6,000 bushels were the cor- rect size for dill pickles, between 3″ and 5¹/₂″. They were prepared and packed in barrels for shipment, filling five box- cars. The remainder of the pickles were either too small or too large, up to six inches, with crooks and nubs included. They were salted in brine and shipped in pickle cars. He reported that the pro- portion of dill to salt pickles was about the same at each station, 60 and 40 per- cent. Most farmers brought their crop to the station in automobiles; an early photo shows over twelve waiting in line to be unloaded. In 1926, 21,900 bushels were deliv-
ered to the four Waupaca County sta- tions, 7,500 at Waupaca of which 3,200 were used for dills. By September 30, 33 carloads of pickles in barrels averaging 900 bushels per car had already been shipped from the four stations to Chicago. That was also the first year that dills
were shipped in tank cars. Each car held 800 bushels in four tanks. The tank was gradually filled with a 17 percent brine solution to prevent the pickles from going flat and dill weed was placed on the top to prevent the brine from slopping out in transit. The dills at a 17 percent salt so- lution were prone to freezing and had to be shipped out before 0° weather. The brine in the salted pickle tanks was in- creased to 60 percent for the winter and could withstand -20°(F) weather. They were left in the tanks all winter if need- ed, as the company shipped from the southern states in cold weather. Mr. Taylor said that the dill weed used was shipped from Chicago in carloads at a cost of $100 per car for freight (1926 rates). Eleven carloads of salt were used that year, the freight being the same. It also cost $100 to ship a carload of pickles from Waupaca to Chicago.
Pickle cars and modeling The H. J. Heinz Company was the first to ship pickles in tank cars in
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
1894, designing and using its own cars fashioned from 4″-thick cypress staves. The cars’ peculiar shape quickly led to the nickname “coffin” cars. Although they went through several design im- provements over the years, they re- tained this basic shape. Wooden boxes that held the pickles and brine were placed in the cars. The boxes were lift- ed from the cars and transported to the processing room. The second-generation cars were built
from about 1903 to 1912 by the Middle- town Car Co. of Middletown, Pennsyl- vania. A photo of the car in Claussen liv- ery appeared in the 1909 edition of the Car Builders Dictionary. Heinz eventu- ally switched to vertical tanks, but the coffin cars lasted through the 1930’s and one as long as 1950. Most processors opted for the simpler
design of four wooden tanks held in place by framing on a flat car. They were a very specialized piece of equip- ment, usually owned by the processors.
The 1940 Official Railway Equipment Register listed 92 private pickle cars belonging to twelve packers with an ad- ditional five from the Soo Line railroad leased to the Gedney Company of Min- neapolis. H. J. Heinz had the largest fleet, with 23 cars, followed by Libby and Squire Dingee with 13 each. Three of the Heinz cars were listed in the 1965 ORER, along with fourteen from other processors. By 1970 they were all gone.
There are a number of ways to model
these interesting facilities. The pickle salting stations can be modeled in whole or in part in a rural setting. If you do not have a large area note that some of them were quite simple, just several tanks, either wooden or fiber- glass, with a small office. The smallest I have seen was four tanks with a plat- form. The salt was stored in a nearby warehouse. If you do not want to model the tanks, you could enclose the entire structure, leaving an opening at each
87
COURTESY OF AL WESTERFIELD
HJHCo. 103 (the lettering pre-dates industry standardization) is what the author calls a “Type 3 coffin car.” It is at the Heinz plant in Pittsburgh (above). These cars had hinged roof hatches and the interiors held box-like containers. The last of these cars were retired in 1950. Round tank types like HJHX 75 (below) lasted longer (this one until 1953).
COLLECTION OF BOB’S PHOTO: FHJHX2, WIGGINS, COLORADO
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