I’m wondering where the wood chips were shipped from and to. It certainly wouldn’t have been my neck of the woods.

For the cars that went to polyethylene service, I’m sure that meant those little round pellets (nurdles). There, the traffic pattern is easier. The production of PE was commercialized during and after WWII, so several of our favorite petrochemical facilities in MoPac territory would have been producing it, in relatively small quantities at first. It’s a fairly light material so those very large boxcars would have been well suited, until the development of large volume covered hoppers. I’ll bet they would have had to tape the doors.

RG7