The local festival goes well back into the nineteenth century, the Viola (MN)
Gopher Count each June;
the town clerk is a member of my congregation and they still pay for every set
of paws (I believe it
is now several dollars per).
The WAG boxcars (mostly ex-B&M) were often labeled "For Hide Loading Only"; I'm
not sure of the
source for the hides--could well have been from the midwest--but a major
industry in northwestern
Pennsylvania was leather tanning, especially at Elkland PA, which got started
with the abundant hemlock
bark from the lumbering industry.
Jace Kahn
General Manager
Ceres & Canisteo RR Co./Champlain County Traction Co.
> Pieter had posted a series of links a few days ago to several RR's
> boxcars--the Soo line being one (maybe had something to do with the SAL
> car's many discussions). I had seen the photo before and liked the
> effect. I won't scrape off the clean lading (grain service) sign, just
> perhaps weather it a bit more and then apply the hide service decal to
> show the recycling of the car's purpose (once they went into hide
> service, they never left). In small towns normally junk dealers and
> many of the grain elevators would purchase hides to be shipped to a
> tannery.
>
> Your's truly and another renegade friend, made a dollar or two by
> trapping gophers. Collecting the tails and getting 2-3 cents each
> wasn't a way to a college fund but it did buy a bottle of Orange Crush
> assuming you got at least five tails in an afternoon. Obviously the
> bounty for fox, mink, badger and rabbit was considerably more
> productive--but not for a 9 year old kid.
>
> My local town had two 'slaughter houses' which were just old barns a
> short ways out of town. Two competing grocery stores owned them to
> provide locally raised meats to the community. The hides were bundled
> and stacked outside of the building during the winter. I don't think
> the local economy would have provided for boxcar loadings of hides, but
> larger situations surely did.
> I'm not certain how the bones were handled.
>
> Bob Werre
> PhotoTraxx.com
>
> > > Thanks Pieter, but I really wasn't trying to duplicate the car so
> > >much but just the weathering.
> > > I would like to find a decal
> > > indicating the car had been designated for hide loading. Just imagine
> > > the smell of a car load of hides in the summer heat on some siding in
> > > North Dakota waiting for a local to pick it up.
> >
> > Haha, probably should scrape off that clean loading only lettering then?
> > The weathering looks great, do you have a photo of the prototype that
> > you were trying to copy posted somewhere so we can see what it looked like
> > I'll look thru my decals and see if any have hide loading only
> > lettering, can't recall seeing it offhand though....dave
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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