Introduction:
The subject of this post is a New York Central waybill directing the shipment of a carload of bituminous coal from a mine in Indiana to Evangeline Milk in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, for use in the facility's boiler house. The mine is Peabody Coal Company #33, and Peabody Coal Co. was a big player in the southern Illinois/Indiana area - I can remember being interested by the equipment they featured in a series of black and white television commercials in the early 1960s when I lived outside of Peoria. Second, the car is a NYC twin hopper, and I didn't know much at all about NYC's hoppers prior to researching this post, so that was interesting as well. Third, the other coal waybills we've looked at in this series have been in a half-bill format. Instead of a thin sheet of 8 1/2" by 11" paper, the coal waybills we have seen were on a thicker (almost card stock) form that measured about 4" by 11" - more like an empty car card than a regular waybill. So this regular waybill for a coal shipment is an interesting variation on that theme.
This image is a scan Andy made of the waybill from the Ahnapee & Western collection. It was part of the August 27, 1962 A&W train (you can click to enlarge):
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Format:
This is a full-size, 8.5" by 11" waybill with center-line symmetry. From the coal waybills we have looked at so far, this is a bit unusual (a half-size coal waybill was used on the C&O and N&W), but we think it was standard NYC practice for coal shipments. The NYC was the originating line haul carrier, and the carrier name, interline code number, and a pretty complex graphic design including logo are right-justified across the top. The carrier name and interline cod number are centered across the bottom in smaller type. The data fields are in the newer format. This form is undated, but it is one revision earlier than the other NYC form (which was dated October 1961) that we have examined in this series. So the form probably dates from the late 1950s or 1960.
Typefaces, Preprinting, Stamps, and Handwriting:
The typeface is light, san serif, and moderately condensed. The numerals are old style with closed top 4's. The typeface is quite similar, but not identical, to the typeface used by the NYC clerk that originated the shipment of veneer from Lawrenceburg Indiana (http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-prototype-waybill-15.html).
I didn't see any preprinting on the waybill.
There are a variety of stamps that make for a rather busy-looking form. The square interchange stamps, round yard received stamps, and the destination agent's received stamps are typical. The manifested stamp in the upper left is not unusual (with respect to the waybills in the collection that we have examined so far), but it doesn't appear to have been a standard NYC practice because it wasn't present on the earlier NYC waybill we looked at. The "2 CARDS MADE AT CN" stamp probably indicates the preparation of home route cards to facilitate the return of the car, and is similar to a stamp we saw on the earlier NYC waybill.
The handwritten correction to the rate and freight charge is typical. A lot of the typewritten freight charges appear to have been revised following delivery of shipments to the A&W.
Waybill Number and Dates:
The waybill number was 42750. It does not appear to be part of a special series.
The waybill was created on August 15, 1962. The car was in Terre Haute Ind. on the NYC August 15, interchanged to the EJE in Hartsdale Ind. on the 20th, and handed off to the MILW at Roundout Ill. on August 21. On August 23 the shipment was at Muskego Yard in Milwaukee, and on August 24th it was interchanged from the MILW to the KGB in Green Bay. The destination agent's stamp was dated August 27th.
The Car:
The car was NYC 863977. There are two items in the Jan 1958 ORER for NYC 862000 to 864999. The two items have slightly different dimensional data which suggests they are related through a rebuild process. The majority of the cars (2638) are in the first item which has a cubic capacity of 2160 cu. ft., and it turns out these are the rebuilds. The remainder (318 cars) are in the second item which has a cubic capacity of 2210 cu. ft., and it turns out these are the original cars. Note SSSS lists the cars in the second item, and our car is not among them. So it must be in the first item, the rebuilds, which contains a total of 2638 HM Steel, Self-Clearing hoppers. The dimensional data are:
IL 31' 5"
IW 10'
OL 32' 7"
EW 10' 8"
EH 11' 1"
Capy 2160 cu. ft., 110,000 lbs.
I was able to find some information about the prototype on this website which I have found to be a valuable source of information on NYC freight cars (which can be otherwise quite hard to come by): http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/NYC-MODELS-FREIGHT2.htm. Our car is from Lot 846-H which is about 2/3 of the way down the page. These twin hoppers were rebuilt from Lots 676-H and 684-H by Greenville in 1953. I have a couple of scans of cars like this in my electronic collection (NYC 862390 and 863483) showing in-service cars with a reweigh date of 1962. They appear to have a sloped side sill, tall and almost flat side sheets, and 9 unevenly-spaced exterior posts that run from the side sill to the top of the car. They are quite interesting in appearance, and would make for an eye-catching model for a late 1950's era scene.
As for the cars from which they were rebuilt (Lot 676-H, the other 318 cars), Ben Hom wrote in STFMC message 113948):
"This is an example of an NYC car that looks easy to model at first glance, but
isn't. At first glance, it looks like an AAR standard offset twin (33 ft IL, 10
ft 8 in top chord above rails), but is actually taller (11 ft top chord above
rails) and not as long (31 ft 6 in IL). No easy kitbashes for this car - at
this point, stand-ins or scratchbuilding are the best suggestions I can make."
and I found Ben's summary comment apt as well:
"These examples illustrate the problem with modeling the NYC hopper fleet. I
suspect that we have the same issue that we discovered from the analysis of the
B&O fleet that I did in 2006, and the analysis the John Teichmoeller did of the
PRR fleet in the 1990s: currently available models of "standard designs" owned
by these roads (i.e., USRA HM, AAR offset HM) are not truly representative of
those railroads' hopper fleets. John's analysis was successful in getting
common PRR hopper models produced in large quantities; we're working on the B&O,
and hopefully analysis done on the NYC fleet will educate both modelers and
manufacturers by showing where the gaps are."
At the present I am afraid we must conclude that there is no easy modeling approach for this car.
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The NYC branch line is indicated in blue, and the Peabody loading complex is highlighted in green. Two of the mines are to the east of the loading facility - these are surface mines where coal is extracted with drag lines and trucked to the loading complex. The surface mines have a quite distinctive appearance on the aerial photograph, and it is clear that at least four of these surface mines fed the loader (two are shown on the aerial). The coal is in flat horizontal seams or beds beneath a layer of overburden, and the overburden has to be removed to allow access to the coal itself. In both of the mines shown in the photo above, mining started at the north (top of the photo) and is working its way south. The active parts of the mine are the dark strips at the furthest south area of the mine. If I managed to get this link correctly (and I will test it) it should take you to an aerial photo of the currently operating Bear Run mine in Sullivan County, Indiana, which has a similar type of operation (https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=39.020434,-87.271893&spn=0.011503,0.022638&t=h&z=16). And this link to the Peabody site has a ground-based image that shows both the windrowing of the overburden and the removal of the coal from the flat seam (http://www.peabodyenergy.com/content/143/US-Mining).
This is a closer view of the loader. The truck dump is at the top center (dark area on the photo), and the tower that actually loads the hoppers is on the the right side at the center of the photo. There are small stub ended yards to handle empties and loads that are off the photo to the top and bottom.
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Andy commented on this aerial: "The area you highlighted {in green, cjh} is the boiler house at Evangeline. If you look closely at the 3 'paths' that run from the SE corner of the warehouse to the tracks...the right-most one leads to a wheeled conveyor that could be moved under the hoppers to unload coal (next to the 3rd reefer car in line). The coal was put on the ground there and run over to the coal intake at the boiler house.
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The subject of this post is a New York Central waybill directing the shipment of a carload of bituminous coal from a mine in Indiana to Evangeline Milk in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, for use in the facility's boiler house. The mine is Peabody Coal Company #33, and Peabody Coal Co. was a big player in the southern Illinois/Indiana area - I can remember being interested by the equipment they featured in a series of black and white television commercials in the early 1960s when I lived outside of Peoria. Second, the car is a NYC twin hopper, and I didn't know much at all about NYC's hoppers prior to researching this post, so that was interesting as well. Third, the other coal waybills we've looked at in this series have been in a half-bill format. Instead of a thin sheet of 8 1/2" by 11" paper, the coal waybills we have seen were on a thicker (almost card stock) form that measured about 4" by 11" - more like an empty car card than a regular waybill. So this regular waybill for a coal shipment is an interesting variation on that theme.
This image is a scan Andy made of the waybill from the Ahnapee & Western collection. It was part of the August 27, 1962 A&W train (you can click to enlarge):
Format:
This is a full-size, 8.5" by 11" waybill with center-line symmetry. From the coal waybills we have looked at so far, this is a bit unusual (a half-size coal waybill was used on the C&O and N&W), but we think it was standard NYC practice for coal shipments. The NYC was the originating line haul carrier, and the carrier name, interline code number, and a pretty complex graphic design including logo are right-justified across the top. The carrier name and interline cod number are centered across the bottom in smaller type. The data fields are in the newer format. This form is undated, but it is one revision earlier than the other NYC form (which was dated October 1961) that we have examined in this series. So the form probably dates from the late 1950s or 1960.
Typefaces, Preprinting, Stamps, and Handwriting:
The typeface is light, san serif, and moderately condensed. The numerals are old style with closed top 4's. The typeface is quite similar, but not identical, to the typeface used by the NYC clerk that originated the shipment of veneer from Lawrenceburg Indiana (http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-prototype-waybill-15.html).
I didn't see any preprinting on the waybill.
There are a variety of stamps that make for a rather busy-looking form. The square interchange stamps, round yard received stamps, and the destination agent's received stamps are typical. The manifested stamp in the upper left is not unusual (with respect to the waybills in the collection that we have examined so far), but it doesn't appear to have been a standard NYC practice because it wasn't present on the earlier NYC waybill we looked at. The "2 CARDS MADE AT CN" stamp probably indicates the preparation of home route cards to facilitate the return of the car, and is similar to a stamp we saw on the earlier NYC waybill.
The handwritten correction to the rate and freight charge is typical. A lot of the typewritten freight charges appear to have been revised following delivery of shipments to the A&W.
Waybill Number and Dates:
The waybill number was 42750. It does not appear to be part of a special series.
The waybill was created on August 15, 1962. The car was in Terre Haute Ind. on the NYC August 15, interchanged to the EJE in Hartsdale Ind. on the 20th, and handed off to the MILW at Roundout Ill. on August 21. On August 23 the shipment was at Muskego Yard in Milwaukee, and on August 24th it was interchanged from the MILW to the KGB in Green Bay. The destination agent's stamp was dated August 27th.
The Car:
The car was NYC 863977. There are two items in the Jan 1958 ORER for NYC 862000 to 864999. The two items have slightly different dimensional data which suggests they are related through a rebuild process. The majority of the cars (2638) are in the first item which has a cubic capacity of 2160 cu. ft., and it turns out these are the rebuilds. The remainder (318 cars) are in the second item which has a cubic capacity of 2210 cu. ft., and it turns out these are the original cars. Note SSSS lists the cars in the second item, and our car is not among them. So it must be in the first item, the rebuilds, which contains a total of 2638 HM Steel, Self-Clearing hoppers. The dimensional data are:
IL 31' 5"
IW 10'
OL 32' 7"
EW 10' 8"
EH 11' 1"
Capy 2160 cu. ft., 110,000 lbs.
I was able to find some information about the prototype on this website which I have found to be a valuable source of information on NYC freight cars (which can be otherwise quite hard to come by): http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/NYC-MODELS-FREIGHT2.htm. Our car is from Lot 846-H which is about 2/3 of the way down the page. These twin hoppers were rebuilt from Lots 676-H and 684-H by Greenville in 1953. I have a couple of scans of cars like this in my electronic collection (NYC 862390 and 863483) showing in-service cars with a reweigh date of 1962. They appear to have a sloped side sill, tall and almost flat side sheets, and 9 unevenly-spaced exterior posts that run from the side sill to the top of the car. They are quite interesting in appearance, and would make for an eye-catching model for a late 1950's era scene.
As for the cars from which they were rebuilt (Lot 676-H, the other 318 cars), Ben Hom wrote in STFMC message 113948):
"This is an example of an NYC car that looks easy to model at first glance, but
isn't. At first glance, it looks like an AAR standard offset twin (33 ft IL, 10
ft 8 in top chord above rails), but is actually taller (11 ft top chord above
rails) and not as long (31 ft 6 in IL). No easy kitbashes for this car - at
this point, stand-ins or scratchbuilding are the best suggestions I can make."
and I found Ben's summary comment apt as well:
"These examples illustrate the problem with modeling the NYC hopper fleet. I
suspect that we have the same issue that we discovered from the analysis of the
B&O fleet that I did in 2006, and the analysis the John Teichmoeller did of the
PRR fleet in the 1990s: currently available models of "standard designs" owned
by these roads (i.e., USRA HM, AAR offset HM) are not truly representative of
those railroads' hopper fleets. John's analysis was successful in getting
common PRR hopper models produced in large quantities; we're working on the B&O,
and hopefully analysis done on the NYC fleet will educate both modelers and
manufacturers by showing where the gaps are."
At the present I am afraid we must conclude that there is no easy modeling approach for this car.
The Shipper:
The shipper was Peabody Coal Company Mine #33, located in Coal City, Owen County Indiana. Coal City was on the Terre Haute - Evansville branch of the NYC in southwestern Indiana. This is an overview of the complex which is located about a mile southeast of Coal City:
This is a closer view of the loader. The truck dump is at the top center (dark area on the photo), and the tower that actually loads the hoppers is on the the right side at the center of the photo. There are small stub ended yards to handle empties and loads that are off the photo to the top and bottom.
This loading concept was advanced for its time but was not as fully developed as the unit train flood loader concept. Strings of empties would be dropped off, passed through the loader, and picked up by trains headed for Terre Haute or Evansville, where they would be weighted and classified for further shipment.
The Consignee:
The consignee was Evangeline Milk Co. in Sturgeon Bay. Evangeline Milk was featured as the consignee in an earlier post (http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-prototype-waybill-17.html). Since that post was written high-resolution scans of the Sturgeon Bay area have become available. This crop was made from one of them and shows the facility quite nicely:
Andy commented on this aerial: "The area you highlighted {in green, cjh} is the boiler house at Evangeline. If you look closely at the 3 'paths' that run from the SE corner of the warehouse to the tracks...the right-most one leads to a wheeled conveyor that could be moved under the hoppers to unload coal (next to the 3rd reefer car in line). The coal was put on the ground there and run over to the coal intake at the boiler house.
You mention all the house cars...this image shows the loading/unloading operation pretty well. It appears to be early-to-mid-morning, and there are already two cars that have been "worked." The track next to the warehouse was for loading of reefers with evaporated milk in cases...empties to the south, moved one at a time to the doors, loaded, then moved north towards the driveway (one car is there). For some reason, there is not an empty reefer on spot for loading...perhaps they were getting ready to do that as the photo was taken (cars were moved with 'pinch bars').
The track between that one and the mainline was for inbound can cars. They were unloaded at the NW corner of the warehouse (a car is on spot there) using rolling conveyors that were strung across the warehouse track and into the building. Cans were unloaded in bulk, and rolled down the conveyor by gravity to the can handling system in the building (either straight to the line, or up into the second floor of the warehouse). In the photo, you can see the piles of wood veneer bulkheads that were used to keep the bulk cans in place (nailed inside the car, on either side of the door). Empty can cars were also moved with pinch bars after being unloaded...one has been moved up near the road next to the loaded reefer mentioned earlier.
Coal cars were spotted within the cut of empty reefers (lined up with the coal conveyor); boxcars of inbound cardboard cases (KD) were unloaded at the northern building, right about where the single reefer is in the photo (there was a dock and door there at the packaging line).
Also note the line of milk trucks waiting to unload milk cans at the dock on the north side of the building. 3 in line, 2 unloading, 1 reloading empty/clean cans. The cans were owned by the farmers, and the trucks had assigned routes...so all cans stayed captive to each farmer."
The Route:
The route was probably specified by the agent:
COAL CITY - NYC {CCC&StL District} - DANVILLE - NYC {New York Central West of Buffalo District} - HARTSDALE - EJE - RONDOUT - MILW - GREEN BAY - KGB - CASCO JUNCTION - AW - STURGEON BAY
I calculated the short line haul using the March 1957 OG:
NYC 200
EJE 99
MILW 166
KGB 23
AW 34
Total: 522 miles
This NYC route map shows the actual route in dark green:
A route (that I made up) that maximizes the NYC portion of the line haul, and that is quite comparable in overall line hall to the actual route is shown in lighter green. The route shown in blue is just for comparison, and is the actual route the NYC used for a carload of veneer from Lawrenceburg Ind. to Algoma Plywood (http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-prototype-waybill-15.html). This route interchanged the car from the NYC to the C&O at Benton Harbor, which also did not maximize the NYC portion of that line haul.
The Commodity:
The commodity was a carload of bituminous coal (ICC Commodity Class 305) loaded to full visual capacity. The shipment weighed in at a bit over 46 tons. The freight charge was a little over $250.
I looked at this commodity first from the shipper's perspective - what did a typical shipment of bituminous coal from Indiana look like (statistics from the 1952 1% Carload Waybill Survey):
| Ind To: | Carloads | <tons/car> | <SLH> | <Rev> |
| Ill. | 358 | 53 | 214 | 150 |
| Ind. | 1277 | 55 | 142 | 106 |
| Iowa | 32 | 52 | 414 | 207 |
| Ky. | 2 | 43 | 87 | 165 |
| Mich. | 18 | 53 | 357 | 196 |
| Minn. | 8 | 52 | 569 | 246 |
| Ohio | 4 | 52 | 210 | 167 |
| Wis. | 160 | 54 | 347 | 219 |
It appears that the vast majority of Indiana coal went from the mines to power plants and coal dealers within the state, with Illinois and Wisconsin as secondary destinations.
From the perspective of Wisconsin consignees, the statistics are:
| Wisc. From: | Carloads | <tons/car> | <SLH> | <Rev> |
| Ill. | 239 | 55 | 393 | 222 |
| Ind. | 160 | 54 | 347 | 219 |
| Ky. | 158 | 54 | 562 | 273 |
| Mich. | 31 | 61 | 97 | 103 |
| Minn. | 15 | 42 | 134 | 100 |
| Okla. | 1 | 34 | 862 | 252 |
| Pa. | 2 | 42 | 739 | 246 |
| Tenn. | 1 | 44 | 908 | 305 |
| Va. | 29 | 57 | 708 | 334 |
| W. Va. | 69 | 55 | 693 | 325 |
| Wisc. | 239 | 52 | 96 | 94 |
It appears that a lot of the coal delivered to Wisconsin consignees by rail was transported by lake vessel to one of the ports (Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Superior were the largest) and loaded on rail cars for the final, relatively short segment of the trip. But mines in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky were individually about as important, and in combination, distribution entirely by rail was about 4 times as prevalent as a combination of boat/rail.
Schenker (The Port of Milwaukee) quotes statistics kept by the Port of Milwaukee for 1963:
- no foreign imports or exports of bituminous coal
- Domestic Interlake Vessel Receipts of 1,628,296 tons (equivalent to about 32,500 rail carloads, although certainly not all of the coal brought into the Port was redistributed by rail)
- Car Ferry receipts of 89,879 tons (about 1800 carloads)
- Car Ferry shipments of 41 tons (probably 1 carload)
As we continue through the A&W Waybill collection it would not surprise me to see bituminous coal shipments to the A&W via car ferry (and Kewaunee) relative to shipments via Chicago in a ratio of about 4 to 1, with maybe 1 in 100 (1%) of loads shipped from the Port of Green Bay that were delivered by lake vessel.
Special Instructions:
There were no special instructions.
Freight Car Distribution:
Hoppers are not free-rolling, and it is most likely that they are returned empty via their service route to the point of origin. So it is not surprising to see that this shipment was a Class 1B shipment, which is a car from the home road shipped to an off-road destination. The NYC operation depended on the funneling of a lot of empties into the receiving yard at Peabody #33 to satisfy the demand based on the high-capacity loader.
At the start of the trip, the car was in its home district. At the conclusion, it was one district away from its home district. So the net change for the trip was -1.
Points to Ponder:
- There were NYC hoppers in Wisconsin? Yes there were, and I think it would be interesting to learn more about the NYC hopper fleet in general.
- The routings continue to show interesting variations. Lawrenceburg and Coal City are only about 100 miles apart, which is less than 20% of the line haul from either location to the A&W. Yet the two NYC shipments we have looked at that started from these locations took quite different routes. I'm reminded of Dennis Storzek's comment to the effect that we can't really know what was in the mind of the routing agent, the best we can do is describe what happened.
- As we've been through almost 30 waybills, and had a brief look at some cumulative statistics, Andy and I really hope the reader can start to appreciate the value of this collection. It's not just about figuring out what shipments came onto the A&W; its also about understanding shipper practices and how that leads to interesting variation. Each waybill is interesting and unique and worthy of preservation and discussion, but in aggregate the collection is sort of a time machine that we can use to help figure out what was commonplace, what was rare, and use that insight to help us model commodity flows.
Andy Laurent and Charles Hostetler