Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

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GreatLakesRailfan
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Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by GreatLakesRailfan »

This post mostly is a follow-up to some posts in the Chat area over the weekend (which have disappeared). Someone was asking about what kind of shipments were made in 2 bay covered hoppers in the '70's. I've been doing some research into commodities shipped and how those commodities were shipped, when shipped via rail, for my local area. My research project isn't complete yet, but I can share some of the information I've come across.

As some of you are aware, there were two big companies who shipped a lot of salt from the St. Clair County area- Morton Salt in Marysville and Diamond Crystal Salt in St. Clair. As far as I can tell, both companies shipped via boxcar and covered hopper. The railroad that had direct access to both companies was known for their iconic blue boxcars that showed up all over the country carrying salt and other products manufactured in St. Clair County. BUT- the leases on the 40' version of those boxcars ended at the beginning of the 1970's (accompanied by at least one lawsuit, according to the great Google), and the 50' version of those boxcars weren't leased until 1977, leaving 6-7 years where salt was loaded into other cars.

One of the things my research has led to is a partial list of cars that were assigned to either Morton Salt or Diamond Crystal. Other cars were generally assigned to the Port Huron area, but were not specifically assigned to one salt company or the other. Most of these cars belonged to the Grand Trunk. The specific point of this post is to share the car numbers for the covered hoppers that were assigned to the salt companies for bulk salt shipments.

I currently lack a comprehensive guide to what car numbers were assigned to which car types for the railroads in the 1970's, although railroadpicturearchives.net, the Railroad Fallen Flags photo site and a couple other sites have helped me figure out which cars were probably covered hoppers. If anyone knows of a source for where I could find this information for all of the carriers in the 1970's, I would appreciate it if you could share that information.


Covered Hoppers assigned to Diamond Crystal (St. Clair)

B&O 604163
C&O 601259
C&O 601311
C&O 601323
C&O 601360
C&O 604777
DTS 2528
DTS 2530
DTS 2533
GTW 315050
GTW 315052
GTW 315056
GTW 315093
GTW 315094
SOU 6226
SOU 6454
SOU 6918


Covered Hoppers assigned to Morton Salt (Marysville)

A whole bunch of USLX cars- I've seen numbers from USLX 586 to USLX 799 show up at different points in time.
NELX 101 - NELX 115
NAHX 48479 (leased to E I Dupont)
NAHX 48522 (leased to E I Dupont)
NAHX 43436 (leased to E I Dupont)
NAHX 48542 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30109 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30120 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30109 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30142 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30153 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30131 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30124 (leased to E I Dupont)
DUPX 30111 (leased to E I Dupont)
BO 604280 (leased to E I Dupont)
CO 605795 (leased to Morton Salt)
CO 600088 (leased to Morton Salt)
NAHX 48125 (leased to Morton Salt)
NAHX 48479 (leased to Morton Salt)

USLX 708 (leased to Morton Salt)
USLX 721 (leased to Morton Salt)
USLX 753 (leased to Morton Salt)
MILW 99770

When time allows, I'll update this with some of the boxcars (road names and series) that carried salt on a regular basis too.
~ Charles W.

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AARR
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

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Looking forward to your additional information
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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SW
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by SW »

Charles (or AARR), is either plant still open? If so, do either ship or receive anything by rail? I knew at one time, but have forgotten.
Owosso Steve

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AARR
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by AARR »

Cargill operates the St. Clair and make about 70 tons of Kosher Salt which probably all is shipped by truck. I’m not aware that they make road salt anymore which was shipped in box cars and occasionally in covered hoppers.

Marysville is long gone
SW wrote:
Wed Apr 27, 2022 12:43 pm
Charles (or AARR), is either plant still open? If so, do either ship or receive anything by rail? I knew at one time, but have forgotten.
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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SW
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

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Good info, thanks AARR!
Owosso Steve

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AARR
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by AARR »

I edited it a little:
Cargill operates the St. Clair plant and make about 70 tons of Kosher Salt a day which probably all is shipped by truck. I’m not aware that they make road salt anymore which was shipped in box cars and occasionally in covered hoppers.
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

GreatLakesRailfan
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by GreatLakesRailfan »

A few years ago they were occasionally shipping by rail (boxcar). I haven't talked to anyone who works there lately to find out if that's still the case yet or not.

The railroad still has access to the plant though, as far as I know.
~ Charles W.

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AARR
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

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I know someone who worked at the St. Clair plant in the 1960's. He says it was common to load up to 20 40' box cars on first shift and another four or five on second shift. There was a small yard on the other side of the street and two tracks into the loading shed. It usually took a couple cuts from the yard to load all 20.
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

GreatLakesRailfan
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by GreatLakesRailfan »

AARR wrote:
Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:28 pm
I know someone who worked at the St. Clair plant in the 1960's. He says it was common to load up to 20 40' box cars on first shift and another four or five on second shift. There was a small yard on the other side of the street and two tracks into the loading shed. It usually took a couple cuts from the yard to load all 20.
Part of the project I've been working on is being announced this weekend, so I'll share it here too. I have monthly lists of carloads shipped by commodity for the years 1960 to 1969. The lists were used for revenue tracking each month, but they're a pretty good reference for how the traffic mix on the PH&D changed in the 1960's and show just how busy the railroad was. I've turned the handwritten lists into spreadsheets to make them easier to understand (and removed the revenue calculations). They can be found here. It doesn't surprise me at all to hear they were shipping 40 carloads of salt on a daily basis, considering the numbers in some of the charts. And Morton in Marysville was shipping similar quantities.

For what it's worth, the entire website is a work in progress. I've been working on the entire project since before Christmas and the primary goal is the digitizing of the documents that the information is being pulled from. The secondary goal is making that information usable for others. I'm adding information to the website on an ongoing basis, and the information present is subject to change or expansion as this project progresses. There is a lot of information present that was never published under the PHD RRHS for various reasons, and a lot of it is stuff I'd never seen until I started digitizing it. For bandwidth reasons most of the digital files won't be uploaded to the website, but information taken from them will be.
~ Charles W.

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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

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Looking forward to your project GLRF
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

GreatLakesRailfan
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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

Unread post by GreatLakesRailfan »

AARR wrote:
Fri Apr 29, 2022 7:44 am
Looking forward to your project GLRF
Sorry, I've been meaning to respond to this.

I was keeping the project I mentioned quiet until I was able to mention it (albeit rather haphazardly) to the people who had kind of inspired it. The tangible, in-your-face element of the project is a website that I'm working on (emphasis on working on- new information is being added to the website as I figure out how to make it more easily digestible.

I've collected a few things here and there that are making their way onto the site, but most of the information that is posted to the website is taken directly from recently digitized records from the PH&D RR. The digitization process isn't complete, so the information on the website is updated as new records are digitized that have better information than what's already posted. The priority is the digitization of material first, then making updates and changes to the website, so not much progress is being made on the site right now.

Website Flyer.jpg

The purpose of the site is to make information available that was only accessible to a small group of people until recently. A comprehensive hard copy modeling guide has been discussed several times, but the dissolution of the PH&D RRHS meant that there's no appropriate group to publish such a guide through. A hard copy could also take another 10-20 years to compile and publish, whereas a website makes the information available (to people who are interested in it) right now.

Some information (like the information I posted earlier in this thread) isn't on the website yet. The website may have been an after thought to the digitization project, and I'm still figuring out where to put information at. There is information on it that, to the best of my knowledge, isn't available anywhere else (at least not yet- someone will probably scrape the site, turn it into a book and list it for sale on Amazon eventually). The long-term goal is to provide the kind of information one would need to build and realistically operate a model railroad based on the PH&D at any point during the railroad's history, including lists of cars (reporting mark and car number) that could have been spotted at the various customers on the line at different points in time.

For what it's worth, there is no current information being posted to the website. Everything I have is from the PH&D RR records prior to the 1984 sale of the railroad to CSX. It's amazing how diverse the traffic was on the line as recently as 40 years ago compared to what we see today.

The website can be found at: phdrailroad.us.
~ Charles W.

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Re: Bulk Salt Shipments by Rail (St. Clair County)- 1970's

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GreatLakesRailfan wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 3:52 pm
The website can be found at: phdrailroad.us.
I will have fun checking it out
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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