It’s Railroad History- Transporting Grain by Rail

​At the end of each growing season, railroads had to find a sufficient number of freight cars to ship grain from local elevators to processing facilities or ports for shipment overseas. In the late 19th through the mid-20th century railroads depended on boxcars to transport the grain. Boxcars were fitted with devices to contain the grain during shipment and needed to line the inside of these cars to prevent contamination of the product. Loading and unloading was a tedious and labor intensive task.  In addition, many cars leaked grain during transit.  Many grain elevators were located on lightly used branch lines, and thus limited the amount of grain to be loaded in these cars.
The United States began using covered hopper cars for transporting grain, while Canada continued using boxcars into the 1980’s.  Today, long strings of covered hoppers may be seen carrying grain and other dry materials throughout North America and around the world. Check out these two videos to see the evolution of carrying grain by rail