Stock car (rail)

Specialized types of stock cars have been built to haul live fish and shellfish and circus animals such as camels and elephants.

The first shipments in the United States were made via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in general purpose, open-topped cars with semi-open sides.

[2] Getting food animals to market required herds to be driven hundreds of miles to railheads in the Midwest, where they were loaded into stock cars and transported eastward to regional processing centers.

Upon arrival at the local processing plant, livestock were either slaughtered by wholesalers and delivered fresh to nearby butcher shops for retail sale, smoked, or packed for shipment in barrels of salt.

The suffering of animals in transit as a result of hunger, thirst, and injury, was considered by many to be inherent to the shipping process, as was the loss in weight during shipment.

[8] When the railroads and cattle industry failed to act quickly enough to correct these perceived deficiencies, the government and even the general public went into action.

[11][13] Minneapolis' Henry C. Hicks patented a convertible boxcar/stock car in 1881, which was improved in 1890 with features that included a removable double deck.

The Burton Stock Car Company's design provided sufficient space so as to allow the animals to lie down in transit on a bed of straw.

Even after the humane advances cited above were put into common practice, many animals weakened by the long drive died in transit, further increasing the per-unit shipping cost.

The ultimate solution to these problems was to devise a method to ship dressed meats from regional packing plants to the East Coast markets in the form of a refrigerated boxcar.

Detroit's William Davis patented a refrigerator car that employed metal racks to suspend the carcasses above a frozen mixture of ice and salt.

He sold the design in 1868 to George Hammond, a Chicago meatpacker, who built a set of cars to transport his products to Boston.

Swift's attempts to sell Chase's design to the major railroads were unanimously rebuffed, as the companies feared that they would jeopardize their considerable investments in stock cars, animal pens, and feedlots if refrigerated meat transport gained wide acceptance.

In response, Swift financed the initial production run on his own, then—when the American railroads refused his business—he contracted with the Grand Trunk Railway (who derived little income from transporting live cattle) to haul the cars into Michigan and then eastward through Canada.

The horse express car allowed the animals (in some instances) to leave home the morning of a race, theoretically reducing stress and fatigue.

As early as 1833 in England, specially padded boxcars equipped with feeding and water apparatus were constructed specifically for transporting draft and sport horses.

Since the primary method of transportation for circuses was by rail, stock cars were employed to carry the animals to the show locations.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, which traveled America by rail until it closed in 2017, used special stock cars to haul its animals.

[19] The cars that Ringling Brothers used to haul elephants were custom-built with extra amenities for the animals, including fresh water and food supply storage, heaters, roof-mounted fans and water misting systems for climate control, treated, non-slip flooring for safety and easy cleaning, floor drains that operate whether the train is moving or not, backup generators for when the cars are uncoupled from the locomotives, and specially designed ramps for easy and safe loading and unloading.

Fisheries Commission (which later became the United States Fish and Wildlife Service) "chaperoned" a shipment of 35,000 shad fry to stock the Sacramento River in California.

The cars featured wire mesh sides (which were covered with cloth in the winter to protect the occupants) and a multi-level series of individual coops, each one fitted with feed and water troughs.

[23] In the 1960s, the Ortner Freight Car Company of Cincinnati, Ohio developed a triple-deck hog carrier for the Northern Pacific Railway based on the design of 86-foot (26.21 m) long "hi-cube" boxcar called the "Big Pig Palace."

They later brought out a double-deck version called the "Steer Palace" that hauled livestock between Chicago and later Kansas City to slaughterhouses in Philadelphia and northern New Jersey until the early to mid-1980s on Penn Central and Conrail intermodal trains.

The Union Pacific Railroad, in an effort to earn more business hauling hogs from Nebraska to Los Angeles for Farmer John Meats, converted a large number of 50-foot (15.24 m) auto parts boxcars into stock cars.