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Shipping cattle by train

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
We shipped cattle from southern Sask to Ontario from forever until 1984.
I'm thinking we were probably about the last people in Canada to ship by train. Anybody have any information about it.

Anybody know when they stopped shipping by train in the USA?

Dad was reading in his diary today that we loaded 11 cars in 55 minutes. :) Guess we had it down to a science. :)
 

gcreekrch

Well-known member
They stopped shipping cattle by rail from Williams Lake in 1976 or 77. Three carloads of fresh weaned calves got shunted to a siding and forgotten about until the fellow recieving them in Ontario called wondering what had happened to them. I think they were on the siding for four days before they were found.
 

OldDog/NewTricks

Well-known member
I worked for a Hereford show string in High School - 1956 we shipped 2 car loads of show cattle from Gilroy to Madison Square Gardens by rail _ we traveled in a Red Caboose :) in the middle of the train _ On leaving there for the Denver Show the Boss bought some bad Shavings that BLEW our Coats.
We went Straight Home
That was a fun trip for a 16 year old. :D
 

burnt

Well-known member
gcreekrch said:
They stopped shipping cattle by rail from Williams Lake in 1976 or 77. Three carloads of fresh weaned calves got shunted to a siding and forgotten about until the fellow recieving them in Ontario called wondering what had happened to them. I think they were on the siding for four days before they were found.

As I recall, they located the cars by smell and it wasn't your typical clean cattle smell . . .
 

gcreekrch

Well-known member
burnt said:
gcreekrch said:
They stopped shipping cattle by rail from Williams Lake in 1976 or 77. Three carloads of fresh weaned calves got shunted to a siding and forgotten about until the fellow recieving them in Ontario called wondering what had happened to them. I think they were on the siding for four days before they were found.

As I recall, they located the cars by smell and it wasn't your typical clean cattle smell . . .

Do you know more about this event from your end?
 

DOC HARRIS

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
OD/NT what do you mean "BLEW OUR COATS? :???: "
Faster horses-

I'm not OD/NT, but I have a possible answer to your question. He said that they were traveling from Gilroy (CA). Gilroy is the dead center in the San Joaquin Valley for Garlic Farms, and you can smell it from MILES away as you drive toward it. It is a constant smell -24-7-365! Perhaps they got some Garlic mixed in with the shavings. That stuff would blow anything! Another possibility is - Redwood Shavings for bedding. That could "bleed" redwood stain onto hair coats. Not good.

DOC HARRIS
 

Hay Feeder

Well-known member
Big Muddy rancher said:
We shipped cattle from southern Sask to Ontario from forever until 1984.
I'm thinking we were probably about the last people in Canada to ship by train. Anybody have any information about it.

Anybody know when they stopped shipping by train in the USA?

Dad was reading in his diary today that we loaded 11 cars in 55 minutes. :) Guess we had it down to a science. :)

I hope you had that documented. That would sure make a nice story in the livestock papers or any news a far as that goes. I remember see Union Pacific pens where they loaded cattle and sheep but the took them down back in the early 70s, The lumber they used was different. Come to think of it I think they were sheep loading docks..just to many years ago.
 

burnt

Well-known member
gcreekrch said:
burnt said:
gcreekrch said:
They stopped shipping cattle by rail from Williams Lake in 1976 or 77. Three carloads of fresh weaned calves got shunted to a siding and forgotten about until the fellow recieving them in Ontario called wondering what had happened to them. I think they were on the siding for four days before they were found.

As I recall, they located the cars by smell and it wasn't your typical clean cattle smell . . .

Do you know more about this event from your end?

Not too much as at that time I was only getting my feet wet in the cattle business, probably owning about 3 steers! I just remember hearing that a few carloads of cattle got shunted off onto a siding and forgotten until they were dead and dying. People were madder than a hatter around here and rightly so. It showed that we had a very uncaring and inefficient railway system.

I'll see what I can dig up about it. I don't even remember where it happened.
 

Doug Thorson

Well-known member
It showed that we had a very uncaring and inefficient railway system.

I am not sure how long Dad shipped by rail, but you got a free ride if you owned the cattle. I guess they wanted someone to help when they had to unload for water. It was a 2 day trip to Sioux City and then after a bath you got a ticket back on the passenger train. In 1948 Dad skipped the ticket back to drive a new car home. First thing when he pulled in the yard Grandpa made him take it back to town and sell it. While Dad was gone Grandpa had arranged for Dad to buy 2 quarters of land but he couldn't be driving that fancy new car if he was going to pay 12.50 an acre for land!
 

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
The man that bought our cattle stayed on top of the CPR pretty close checking where the cattle were. We had a good station agent at the end that got us the bigger cars and kept the crew working the best he could. One time shunting cars they ran a engine off the end of the tracks so they left all the grain cars that they normally would have picked up on the way back to Moose Jaw and took the cattle right on in.
Yearlings traveled pretty good by train but fresh weaned calves could be a problem. Just think of the drugs they had to work with back then compared to now.
 

phantom

Well-known member
Big Muddy, You are exactly right about Yearlings handling the trip fine. I was in St. Boniface from 71 to 77. The Union stockyards was in it's hayday as far as the rail. I can still see load after load of them calves wobbling off the cars with their ears drooping. The yearlings would be blowing smoke and trying to run you over.
 

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
phantom said:
Big Muddy, You are exactly right about Yearlings handling the trip fine. I was in St. Boniface from 71 to 77. The Union stockyards was in it's hayday as far as the rail. I can still see load after load of them calves wobbling off the cars with their ears drooping. The yearlings would be blowing smoke and trying to run you over.


Some of those yearlings could have been ours. :shock:
 

jodywy

Well-known member
76 or 77 was around the last year we shipped yearling steers from Cokeville Wyoming to a Farmer feeder in Illinois. The railroad had took out alot of stockyards and the steers were not well taken care of with a good death loss. Took the feeder a couple years to get all his money from the UP.
 

W.T

Well-known member
If i rember correctly in Oct of 1977 was the last of the train we had 4 cars that night and that was the last of them,that we were able to get from UP.
 
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