Logging – Pulpwood operations in East Texas

[mopac]

Friends,

I’m getting back into active modeling after being away from it for a while, and I’m especially interested in logging and pulpwood operations in East Texas. I have several books and magazine articles on other railroad’s logging activities, but I’m wondering if there were any resources relating specifically to MP/IGN/T&P. Were there any articles in The Eagle anyone can recommend?

Thanks in advance,
Dusty Garison

[bargetanika]

You didn’t provide a specific time period . Some time back Atlas offered a pair of 40’ StLB&M GSC steel wood racks, typical of early 1950’s. I’ve got them and several other road names as well. I’ve always thought of wood yards, where these racks were loaded, as only being very light rail sidings often through a gravel parking area, where pulpwood was literally dumped off and piled up for rail pickup. Photos I’ve seen of wood yards show them to be very messy places, ie, great for modeling.

Earlier posts here have said that at one point the train crew was responsible for loading the cars when set out if wood was already there. I don’t remember who told that story but maybe they can re tell it.

[mopac]

Hi Pat – Thanks for your reply. I’m planning to model the 1940s & 1950s, so those would work for me. Thanks again!

[bargetanika]

https://www.ebay.com/c/1039286692

These loads look a lot better than the ones that come with the cars.

https://www.ebay.com/p/1500057076?iid=223623746197&chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=223623746197&targetid=884573702808&device=m&mktype=pla&googleloc=9014058&poi=&campaignid=6470049725&mkgroupid=87926505766&rlsatarget=pla-884573702808&abcId=1141176&merchantid=8497994&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkt-u_sXr6AIVjZ-fCh0RRw2KEAQYASABEgJzsfD_BwE

[margaretaparrish64]

When I was in the MP Management Training Program and worked at Houston in the early 1980’s, I visited a number of customers and locations where pulpwood logs were loaded on bulkhead flats. Cars had metal floors that were slanted downward to the center of the car and all steel bulkheads, they were specifically designed for the log loading. Up and down the mainline from Houston to Palestine were loaders of pulpwood, loaded destinations included paper mills in New Waverly, TX and Pasadena, TX. Locals operating out of Spring and Palestine would distribute the cars based on customers orders, most of the loading occurred on team and house tracks that had good truck access. The business declined in the late 1980’s and was pretty much over during the early 1990’s. SP ran unit trains of wood chips and pulpwood on their main line through East Texas to Pasadena through the 1990’s, the unit train operation enabled them to make a go of it longer than MP, later UP.

[princessclyne69]

I didn’t spend much time in that area, but I did make one trip to Conroe, which was then out in the country, in July 75. There were several pulpwood cars on a track which, as I recall, was the interchange track between MP and Santa Fe. This was just west of the joint depot, which I also shot. It’s long gone, as are almost all the forested areas around there. Evidently these cars of pulpwood were loaded on the MP and being interchanged to the Santa Fe bound for some mill located on that line. I’d never seen a pulpwood car before that day.

Note there are two different types of car in these photos. The MP ones are 50-ton cars with a capacity of 24 cords of wood, built 1950-52, while the TP one is a 100-ton car with a capacity of 37 cords, built 1967. The MP cars are based on 40′ car frames while the TP one is based on a 50′ frame.

RG7

[attachment=1:3rwdxv47]243-33 Jul 75 crop.jpg[/attachment:3rwdxv47]

[attachment=0:3rwdxv47]243-35 Jul 75 crop.jpg[/attachment:3rwdxv47]

[bargetanika]

Great photos. The pulpwood looks just like Chooch loads! And the weeds look just like static grass!

[Mike Vana]

It looks like the second GSC car (40’) is still in black.

Oddly enough the Athearn 40’ pulpwood car was copied from a MoPac home built car but I’ve always suspected it is oversized so they could use their 40’ flatcar underframe. I also have another MoPac prototype in resin by Sunshine models from the era of homebuilt cars.

Mike Adams (At the time an assistant trainmaster) loved to tell how he and a crew dropped off an empty pulpwood rack somewhere in Arkansas to a public team track and two different loggers with fully loaded trucks faced off over who had ordered the car. Both were waiting and had ordered a 40’ car.

As the local headed back to Gurdon Mike wondered if they decided the standoff over fisticuffs or if tire irons Had to be used.

Jim Ogden

[Author]

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