Remembering the Farm - the Boxcar

Number crunching was making me dizzy.  Forty vegetables, one country, one province, two counties, fifteen years, area and yields.  Adds up to a great many numbers - then twist and turn them to try to make them tell any secrets.  And do the same for 25 fruits and nuts.  Music is a good break and You Tube is handy. Found Pete Seeger singing one of my favourite sad songs, a song Woody Guthrie made famous, "Hobo's Lullaby".  Got to thinking about the boxcar which was every bit as symbolic an icon on the prairies as the grain elevator.

The boxcar, a box on wheels with a sliding door on each side, was the universal carry-all for over 150 years.  Far more than hobos rode the rods courtesy of boxcars. I remember as a small boy, watching the mixed local pull into Landis or Cavell.  (They were 7 miles apart on the main CN line, Saskatoon to Edmonton).  This was pre-diesel-electric, with a big black steam engine doing the honours.  The train would be one or more passenger cars, mail/baggage car and one or several box cars filled with freight for the local towns along the way.   It served as bus line, mail delivery, grocery and parcel delivery. Whatever was needed in small town Saskatchewan came by train.

The train would be met by a flatbed truck, or horse drawn freight wagon, or in winter a flatbed sleigh.  Goods would be hand-bombed from the boxcar onto the dray and then delivered where ever in town. Groceries came that way and needless to say there were not many perishables and no frozen goods to speak of.  If there were enough perishables and frozen goods to warrant a shipment, a reefer car would be added to the train. 

Boxcars also moved our bulk commodities out of the west to the Lakehead and farther east to Montreal, or eventually west to Vancouver.  Try to imagine loading that boxcar with grain through the side door.  No easy task for the elevator agent. To ensure everyone had a chance to deliver grain, quotas were allotted based on acreage.  There was always excitement when someone spotted some cars on the elevator siding because that meant there would be room in the elevator to deliver some grain and that meant cash money in the pocket. The boxcars loaded with grain were emptied by turning them on their side.

By the late 50's and 60's,  the boxcar was relegated primarilyto moving grain as highways improved; buses moved passengers and packages while trucks moved mail and freight.  I remember sitting in church, looking out the window and counting boxcars on the freight train that went by every Sunday morning.  Empties going eat were usually about 75 to 100 cars long.

Gradually, the boxcar fleet was replaced by big round grain tanks with top loading and bottom unloading hatches.  Sidings were lengthened to handle 50 to 100 cars which cut the delivery and pickup costs dramatically but spelled the end of the old wooden elevators.  Now on abandoned sidings you will see hundreds of abandoned boxcars, waiting, I supposed to be melted down for scrap.  They have gone the way of the hobo.


NOTE: Those who remember better than I, please add details or correct errors.