A Soo TOFC Commodity Flow

This commodity flow started in 1959, a bit after my era, but I thought it was a good example of how the different situations of individual rail carriers affected the implementation of TOFC traffic in the late 1950s.  In a previous post (http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com/2013/11/tofc-traffic-some-preliminary-thoughts.html) I had discussed this concept of the variability in TOFC implementation as an interesting time marker that helps establish the time frame behind one's layout.  Bob is using this concept with the Soo on his St. Paul layout based in 1959, and has kindly agreed to collaborate with me on this post.  

You may recall from the previous TOFC post that in 1957 the CNW was moving past the carrier-owned trailers on carrier-owned flat cars on home routes.  It had established joint rates with other carriers (i.e., was shipping and receiving interline TOFC traffic) and was a member of Trailer Train.  The Soo, for a variety of reasons, was several years behind the CNW's implementation.  In 1959, the TOFC steel shipments from Duluth to St. Paul on the Soo were Soo-owned (or possibly leased) trailers on Soo-owned flat cars.  At this time the Soo had not established any interline rates, and so the TOFC traffic was entirely on its own rails.  

Bob offered the suggestion that the steel was produced on the lower Great Lakes (e.g., Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio or Pennsylvania) and shipped via lake boat to the dock in Duluth.  My immediate reaction was that this wasn't very likely because of the demise of break-bulk shipping on the Great Lakes in the 1950s.  However, while Bob was doing some more research on the freight cars involved in the shipment I did some more research on the Great Lakes fleet and learned about the steel self-unloaders.  These were also called crane boats.  They typically were smaller and older than the bulk carriers (and there are some excellent smaller boats that would make good water front models).  With two (or more) cranes mounted above the deck they were ideally suited to transport iron, steel, and scrap.

There were 14 steel self-unloaders on the Great Lakes in 1959 (The Ship Masters Association Directory, 1959 edition):

Name	Year Blt.	Owner or Manager
Buckeye	1900	Columbia Transportation Corp., Cleveland Ohio
Detroit Edison	1954	Boland & Cornelius, Buffalo N.Y.
Harry T. Ewig	1902	Columbia Transportation Corp., Cleveland Ohio
Clifford F. Hood	1902	U.S. Steel Co., Cleveland Ohio
The Inland	1926	Inland Steel Co., Cleveland Ohio
Ironwood	1902	Nicholson Transit Co., River Rouge Mich.
Adrian Iselin	1914	Nicholson Transit Co., River Rouge Mich.
O.S. McFarland	1903	Columbia Transportation Corp., Cleveland Ohio
Manzzutti	1903	Yankcanuck Transportation Co., Sault Ste. Marie Ont.
G.G. Post	1902	Columbia Transportation Corp., Cleveland Ohio
Steel King	1897	Nicholson Transit Co., River Rouge Mich.
Sylvania	1958	The Tomlinson Fleet, Cleveland Ohio
Venus	1901	Boland & Cornelius, Buffalo N.Y.
Joseph S. Young	?	Boland & Cornelius, Buffalo N.Y.

This photo of the G.G. Post shows a typical steel self-unloader:

The G.G. Post was 353 feet in length, 48 feet at the beam, and carried two cranes with a 65-foot reach. The cranes had electromagnets for scrap and pig iron, and ordinary hooks for structural steel in bundles.

There's also good picture of the Manzzutti unloading pig iron at the Port of Milwaukee that shows the cranes in operation at http://content.mpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/MilwWaterwa/id/1010/rec/33.  The Manzzutti was 246 feet long, 41 feet at the beam, and had a diesel-powered crane with a 60-foot reach.

One of my favorite photos includes the Harry T. Ewig at Transit Shed 1 in the Port of Milwaukee prior to her conversion to a steel self-unloader (http://content.mpl.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/MilwWaterwa/id/1023/rec/14).  A good photo of the same boat after conversion is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jowo/5585074906/in/set-1558003.

The Soo magazine had an article in the Winter, 2009 issue on the Duluth 10th Ave. W freight house, which is shared with the WC.  It shows photos of ships docked at the facility.  One of these was the crane-equipped Elba.  The Elba isn't included in the Steel Self-Unloader section in the 1959 Directory, but is included in the general registry with the notation that the boat was equipped with "Steel & Scrap Cranes".  The Elba was 420 feet long, 52 feet at the beam, built in 1907, and was operated by Boland & Cornelius in Buffalo N. Y.  Another ship photographed at the dock was the Sir William Fairbairn.  The Sir William Fairbairn was listed in the 1959 Directory as a bulk carrier with no mention of crane equipment.  The Sir William Fairbairn was 425 feet long, 46 feet at the beam, built in 1896, and operated in 1959 by the Buckeye Steamship Co. out of Cleveland.  

So it is possible that the steel came from Cleveland, Detroit, or Buffalo on one of these boats.  In this scenario the steel would have been unloaded at the Soo Freight House in Duluth using the onboard cranes, or possibly at one of the nearby dock facilities and subsequently trucked to the Soo Freight House.

I think it is also possible that the steel was produced in the U.S. Steel (formerly Minnesota Steel Co.) plant in the Morgan Park area just southwest of the Duluth city limits.  In the late 1950s this plant was starting to specialize in the production of wire and fencing, but it was struggling to survive and was still producing coil steel.  It would have been an ideal candidate for a shipper looking for a good rate and regular service to a customer.  In this scenario the trailers could have been loaded at the U.S. Steel plant and driven to the Soo freight station in Duluth.

In either scenario discussed above, the shipper would have been the Soo agent at Duluth.  This view was taken April 5, 1952 and shows the area around the Soo Freight Station in the Duluth harbor (click to enlarge):

The area shaded in blue is the Soo Freight House proper.  Note the standard rows of box cars all lined up along the water side of this peninsula.  Also note that there are no facilities (shore cranes) for transfer of break-bulk cargo in the vicinity, so a self-unloader would be required.  The area shaded in yellow is the National Carloading Corp., a freight forwarder.  At the time the photo was taken this facility was servicing two long strings of house cars.  In front of the National Carloading Corp. building, shaded in green, is the Soo TOFC ramp.  You can see three shorter (approximately 40') flat cars and one trailer.

A couple of miscellaneous notes about the Soo Freight House were unearthed during our research.  The aforementioned article in The Soo indicates that the building highlighted in yellow (National Carloading Corp.) was originally the Soo inbound freight house and the building highlighted in blue was originally the Soo outbound freight house.  With the decline in LCL traffic, sometime during or before 1954, the Soo either leased or sold the inbound freight house to National Carloading Corp. and consolidated their operations in the former outbound freight house.  This type of consolidation also happened in Milwaukee by the way, as several freight forwarders leased space in downtown Milwaukee in one of the C&NW's former freight houses.

The steel was destined for the Whirlpool Corp. (St. Paul Division) facility in St. Paul, served by the SOO via the CNW (CMO).  Here's an aerial photo of the facility taken May 8, 1947, when this was the Seeger Refrigerator Co. prior to its acquisition by Whirlpool:

I've color coded the various areas of the plant according to their functionality as documented in the Sanborn map for the area published in 1946.  The areas in light blue are the steel receiving and enameling warehouses.  The area shaded in green is where electromechanical parts were received and stored.  The area shaded in red is the production/assembly facility, and the area shaded in yellow is for finished product storage and shipping.  The facility was set up quite nicely for receiving coil steel by rail, in an indoor covered facility convenient to the production area.

The photo below is of the same area but taken November 11, 1965:

I haven't color coded any areas because it is obvious that the plant had been substantially reconfigured by this time.  Note the increase in the number of truck trailers parked in the area and the increased access for vehicular traffic.  Shipping and receiving from this plant clearly changed quite a lot over the years.  In the March, 1952 C&NW Directory of Industries it is still Seeger Refrigerator Co. and it is served by the CMO (C&NW) and NP.  In the 1962 GN Shippers &/or Receivers Guide it is Whirlpool and it is listed as being served by the GN or CMO.  Finally, in the OPSIG Industry database a 1971 source lists it as being served by the Soo or CMO. Apparently, trackage rights or other agreements were shifting quite a lot in this part of town.  So the shipment of coil steel from Duluth to Whirlpool in Saint Paul on flatbed trailers loaded onto railroad flat cars was probably a relatively short-lived phenomenon which makes a really nice time marker for Bob's 1959 model year setting.

It is also possible that the trailers were unloaded from the flat cars at the Soo's Shoreham TOFC ramp in northern Minneapolis and trucked to Whirlpool.  I took a quick look at this area, which I thought was a pretty interesting TOFC setup.  This is a really nice view of Shoreham Yard taken November 28, 1966 (high-resolution scan, low angle lighting):

The Soo Freight House on the north side of Shoreham Yard is highlighted in blue, again with the typical rows of box cars along a freight transfer house.  To the west (left) of the freight house the TOFC ramp and trailer parking area can be seen.  If the rail part of the shipment ended here, then the consignee was probably listed as the Shoreham agent.  

In the earlier post I looked at several time series of data and suggested a methodology for determining whether a particular commodity class was a component of the emerging TOFC traffic.  The methodology was applied to commodity class 583 (Manufactured Iron and Steel) with the result that, on a national basis, manufactured iron and steel was likely a participant in TOFC traffic growth post-1956.    Its quite a different proposition to find a recognizable signal in the state to state data.  I looked at the carloads of manufactured iron and steel originating and terminating in Minnesota during the 1950s, and the average number of carloads per year in the sample is about 10, with a standard deviation of about 4.  There's no particular temporal trend in the time series that suggests that this particular commodity flow was detected in the 1% sample.  If one postulates several TOFC carloads per week, say a couple hundred cars a year, of steel from Duluth to Shoreham, this might show up as 2 carloads in the sample. I include this discussion simply to reinforce the finding that the 1% carload waybill sample is a good place to look for national trends, and to identify typical, frequent commodity flows.  But the 1% sample is not a good place to look to find information about lower frequency events; at the layout scale it is much more important to understand local conditions if one wants to develop a good model of commodity flows.  

Looking at the Soo listings in the January 1958 and April 1959 ORERs, it appears that there were two types of TOFC flat car carriers (FCs) in the late 1950s.  In the January 1958 ORER the Soo rostered 2 FC cars (54315 and 54391) that were 52' 6" IL.  These were 50-ton cars.  By the time of the April 1959 listing these two cars had been converted to type FMS; equipped with bulkheads for wallboard loading and assigned to Ontario Paper Co. in International Falls Minn.  [I think these SOO 53' 6" TOFC FCs were the prototype for Tom Houle's articles "Piggyback Flats - Part 1 and Part 2" in the April and May 2005 Mainline Modeler.  He had modeled the car carrying 2 24' Soo trailers.]  The second type, and the more numerically important group of the Soo's FCs were the 35 cars in item 54101 to 54259 (odd numbers only, enumerated in note D1).  These were 40-ton cars, 40' IL, and 9' 3" IW.  

Bob prepared the following description of the prototype using information from The Soo, issues 22-2 and 22-3 along with unpublished data provided by Ken Soroos.
To inaugurate their “Rail-Van” service on March 1, 1955, the Soo converted four 52’6” Pullman Standard 50-ton capacity flats (built in 1939) of welded construction to piggyback service. This service connected several points in Wisconsin to Minneapolis/St. Paul. In 1956 the service was extended to Chicago and additional flat cars in this same series were similarly converted. Their length allowed for the loading of two 25’ trailers. Soo TOFC service was extended to Duluth-Superior in mid-1959. TOFC service on the Soo and elsewhere grew quickly in this time period; by 1961, there were Soo piggyback ramps in fifteen locations. While the number of locations served by TOFC was growing so too was the length of the truck trailers being used. In 1956 35-foot trailers were leased by the Soo for this service and in 1956, 40-foot trailers were acquired. Increased length meant two trailers no longer would fit onto a single 52’6” flat car, so the Soo migrated to loading single truck trailers onto 40-foot flat cars. In the January, 1959 ORER the two remaining 52’6” piggyback flats were still listed (54315 and 54319), but these had been converted to wallboard loading by April, 1959. At the time of the Duluth-Whirlpool St. Paul service discussed here, the Soo was relying on 35 41’5” flat cars from the 54101-54259 (odds) series, rebuilt to TOFC service in 1956-57. These cars had an interesting history, beginning their life as refrigerator cars (!), and rebuilt to flats in 1939. In the later 1950s they received further modifications with the addition of fishbelly side sills. Flatbed truck trailers of 40’ length were acquired in 1959 for the Duluth-Whirlpool service discussed here. These had two axles and were black with white lettering.

Money, Mobility, or Something Else?

The flatbed trailers used in this service did not provide any protection from the elements for the coil steel.  They were not any easier to load or unload, and there was the added complication of securing the trailers to the flat cars.  The flatbed trailers were also much heavier than any dunnage would have been had the steel been simply shipped by flat car.  So why was this TOFC traffic, and why were the flatbed trailers acquired for this service?

We haven't been able to answer to this question with documentary evidence, but there are some inferences we might be able to draw from the situation.  They revolve around the considerations of money and mobility.  And these considerations are somewhat intertwined.

If the steel came from the U.S. Steel plant southwest of Duluth, and if we consider that this facility was served by the DMIR and NP (and that the U.S. Steel plant was not subject to reciprocal switching, necessitating including one of these carriers as the originating line haul carrier), we can see an opportunity for an enterprising Soo traffic manager to take a little business from the competition.  By publishing a TOFC tariff with favorable rates, the steel could be loaded at the U.S. Steel plant on the flatbeds, driven to the Soo Freight House, and travel entirely on the Soo to Whirlpool.  Favorable rates and the ability to expedite the shipment by controlling it from source to destination may have been useful selling points to the shipper.

It also seems clear that the trailers added no utility at all unless at least one leg of the trip involved transportation by highway.  Getting the steel from U.S. Steel to the Soo in Duluth to facilitate the direct routing is an example of transportation by highway at the origin of the shipment.  At the destination end, if the trailers were unloaded with the steel at the TOFC facility in Shoreham Yard, this might have allowed delivery to more than one Whirlpool (or associated subsidiary) facility in the Twin City area.  It is even possible that a small or portable unloading ramp was constructed at Whirlpool to move trailers from flats.

I created this model waybill for the shipment, assuming that the car was shipped from the Soo Freight House in Duluth to the Whirlpool Corp. directly in St. Paul and that the SOO had direct access via the CNW:

The header and footer are from a SOO freight waybill that dates from the late 1950s.  I like the rather ornate header, which appears to have been used on the SOO during the entire 1950s (I have seen this header  on both old- and new-style SOO waybills).  For this shipment, which probably had its own special tariff, I guessed that Shipper's Load and Count was the most likely way that the revenue was determined.  I added a Western Weight and Inspection Bureau stamp that was taken from a SOO waybill.  

Charles Hostetler and Bob Sterner