G&W salt hopper questions

When considering the age of the G&W (100+ years) and their primary purpose (hauling rock salt) there's a gap in knowledge that I've come across. Granted, the gap is in MY knowledge of the subject so I pose a question here: In the years prior to the development of the covered hopper, what cars did the G&W use to move rock salt? Did they use boxcars in the way Buffalo Creek used them to move flour? Were open hoppers used? Are there any photographs of them, or any survivors? One would thing that there would be some evidence of the pre-covered hopper era.

Question #2: Bowser made a run of G&W covered hoppers in HO about 10 years ago that were in an orange paint scheme. Is there any photographic evidence for this? Seems like early G&W salt operations were poorly documented. Please prove me wrong.

Well, the hopper era is not poorly covered. There are magazine drawings out there of custom hoppers the G&W owned and tons of photos on the railcar websites of the orange cars and then later the gray cars.

Before hoppers, salt was carried in bags in boxcars. There may be a photo in the G&W article in Model Railroader magazine.

Since your first asked asked what the G&W used to haul rock salt, I will mention that they G&W was founded in 1977 and covered hoppers existed decades before then.

As to your second question, I have never seen a prototype G&W orange covered hopper. Not in regular service, not in Maintenance of way service. That doesn't mean one didn't exist, but most of their covered hoppers are painted gray and the only orange is from the rust!

If you are asking about what railroads in general used to haul salt before covered hoppers, that is a different question entirely.

Wow....my memory is still good, haven't logged on here in eons but still remember the logon and password.....

I think G&W exited well before 77. I grew up in Tonawanda and clearly recall large cuts of orange G&W Covered hoppers mixed into the "Day Falls" from Bison to Niagara Falls in the early seventies. These were the size of sand and cement hoppers....short. Even then they were beat and rusty so their G@W paint was not new. Given they were hauling salt to the falls to be split to chlorine and sodium, the abrasiveness and corrosivity would take their toll, but those cars hadn't been painted since sometime in the sixties.

Benjamin Maggi wrote:Since your first asked asked what the G&W used to haul rock salt, I will mention that they G&W was founded in 1977 and covered hoppers existed decades before then.

As to your second question, I have never seen a prototype G&W orange covered hopper. Not in regular service, not in Maintenance of way service. That doesn't mean one didn't exist, but most of their covered hoppers are painted gray and the only orange is from the rust!

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I respectfully suggest you do some homework on the creation of G&W. I don't have the book handy but it was somewhere in the 1800's.

As for orange G&W (Actually GNRW) covered hoppers, VERY common at one time. Just one example:

Benjamin, you should just delete your post. It's very wrong.

Benjamin Maggi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 10:47 am Since your first asked asked what the G&W used to haul rock salt, I will mention that they G&W was founded in 1977 and covered hoppers existed decades before then.

As to your second question, I have never seen a prototype G&W orange covered hopper. Not in regular service, not in Maintenance of way service. That doesn't mean one didn't exist, but most of their covered hoppers are painted gray and the only orange is from the rust!

If you are asking about what railroads in general used to haul salt before covered hoppers, that is a different question entirely.

Ben, I found the G&W booklet. Genesee & Wyoming Valley RR was incorporated in 1891, reorganized as Genesee & Wyoming in 1899. The G&W had 192 covered hoppers as of 1968. There is no breakdown by color.

Don,

From the photos I've seen all early hoppers (like 1968) were orange. All cars, cabooses, passenger cars, MOW, and locos were orange. Once you get into the 1980s, the gray cars appear. Even the passenger car was gray. Just the locos stayed orange.

G&W freight cars arrived in 1962.

Here is a nice orange photo:

Thanks Charles!

Who would ever guess, back at that time, what G&W would grow into today?

Given they were hauling salt to the falls to be split to chlorine and sodium

There is a continuous loop salt brine pipeline from Niagara Falls to down around Leicester NY. No "mining" involved, they just drill a big well into a deep salt deposit and inject water. Salt dissolves and moves through the pipeline as brine. As the salt in one well is depleted they just drill another well and connect the pipeline to the new well. This is known as "Solution Mining" and simply dissolves the salt into the water (making a solution) before being pumped to the customer in Niagara Falls.

https://wycoida.org/294/Texas-Brine-New-York-LLC

That pipe line brings dissolved salt (brine) up to the processing plant in Niagara Falls where the electricity from the power dam is used to separate the salt into sodium and chlorine. The water that has had most of the salt removed in Niagara Falls goes back to the "salt mines" through a second pipe that is parallel to the brine pipe and travels in the opposite direction.

I believe that brine pipeline was operational starting way back in the 1920's, or maybe earlier.

As far as I know very little of any salt transported by rail into Niagara Falls was used in the manufacturing of sodium and chlorine (in modern times). There would have had to be dozens of "salt trains" running into Niagara Falls year round and dozens of empty salt hoppers coming back. Would have been a very noticeable level of rail activity.

Perhaps they had large salt trains when the pipeline was shut down for maintenance occasionally ? But I have never heard of "rock salt" being delivered to the company ( used to be known as Hooker Chemical, now known as Olin ) that did the separation of brine to make chlorine and sodium. I don't think they even had any facilities to unload rock salt from train cars.

I think most of the salt moving in covered hoppers around Western NY was for treating roads in the winter.

Cheers, Kevin.

Agreed. There are such wells at Wyoming, NY, along Rochester Southern. Lots of little bungalows dot the hillsides for valves or piping.

In the 1970's the CR salt train picked up from the G&W, via trackage rights over the B&O. The train would arrive at Goodman Street Yard with 80 to 100 cars a day. Probably 95% of that would be for points east, and maybe 5 cars for Niagara Falls.

For some reason, the Suspension Bridge cars were never on the head pin nor the rear, but usually somewhere in the middle, either together or sprinkled throughout. Usual practice was to move the entire train through to Selkirk when Buffalo had an eastbound that could handle them. The stragglers would come back west in a couple days.

From time to time an order would come down from on high, Bridge cars MUST be switched out at Rochester and MUST NOT be sent east. So for the next week or 10 days the westbounds were dug out at Rochester, greatly adding to the workload, especially when the entire train was yarded on 3 Main in anticipation of a quick pickup. Eventually there would be a train with ONE westbound in the middle, an eastbound ready to move the cars, and that one car was allowed to sneak by. From there it was only a matter of time until things returned to normal.

Texas Brine may have been in the salt business some where else in l926 but they did not show up in the Dale Valley until the early Seventies when they started to construct the wells and pipeline. One of their first purchases was my uncle's farm. There were some well process salt works around Warsaw in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which are now long gone and of course the salt company at Silver Springs uses this process but without a pipeline.

My apologies. The 1977 date was when Genesee & Wyoming Industries Inc. was established. That was why I was thinking of.

Benjamin Maggi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 12:59 pm My apologies. The 1977 date was when Genesee & Wyoming Industries Inc. was established. That was why I was thinking of.

No problem here, we're good.

And it seems we can't edit our own posts after a given time? In a post above I incorrectly said the reporting marks of those covered hoppers were GNRW, when it should have said GNWR. I'm not dyslexic but sometimes my fingers ARE - I only use 2 of them on the keyboard and if one gets there a bit before the other......

BR&P wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 7:04 pm And it seems we can't edit our own posts after a given time? In a post above I incorrectly said the reporting marks of those covered hoppers were GNRW, when it should have said GNWR. I'm not dyslexic but sometimes my fingers ARE - I only use 2 of them on the keyboard and if one gets there a bit before the other......

I was thinking, "oh that must be the four letter reporting mark". I googled that instead of typing out Genesee & Wyoming RR, and GNWR was shown in results. I think that falls under the "we'll get there eventually" file.