Kind of a silly but nagging question, and one I thought had been covered but searching didn't turn up any posts on it, so...
OK, up to the 1960s grain was mostly shipped by boxcar.
And since these boxcars were usually standard boxcars (if cleaner and more leak-proof than average), they needed grain doors (wood or reinforced paper) to act as liners and prevent grain from leaking out the regular boxcar doors (since most boxcars had regular sliding doors, not plug doors w/ grain hatches).
Somebody had to fasten those grain doors to the boxcar - from the inside (maybe not in the case of grain doors individual planks which could be build up from the outside, but certainly when using solid sheets of plywood or those reinforced paper doors).
From images I have seen, these grain doors were rather high and the remaining door opening rather narrow - and there were grain doors on both sides of the boxcar - so - how did the worker who fastened the grain-doors get the heck out of the boxcar? Did they have a ladder? Ropes? Trained monkeys?
This part seems always to be omitted when you have articles on grain-loading boxcars (plenty of images of the workers blowing grain into the car via that narrow opening though), so it's either a) really mundane or b) the authors don't know either.
If there is a flaw in my logic, please point it out.
And on the same topic, how does a worker get out of, say, a bathtub Gondola (10' high or more) without a ladder - I'm sure they have to go in from time to time, but haven't seen handholds or internal ladders in any images.
OK, up to the 1960s grain was mostly shipped by boxcar.
And since these boxcars were usually standard boxcars (if cleaner and more leak-proof than average), they needed grain doors (wood or reinforced paper) to act as liners and prevent grain from leaking out the regular boxcar doors (since most boxcars had regular sliding doors, not plug doors w/ grain hatches).
Somebody had to fasten those grain doors to the boxcar - from the inside (maybe not in the case of grain doors individual planks which could be build up from the outside, but certainly when using solid sheets of plywood or those reinforced paper doors).
From images I have seen, these grain doors were rather high and the remaining door opening rather narrow - and there were grain doors on both sides of the boxcar - so - how did the worker who fastened the grain-doors get the heck out of the boxcar? Did they have a ladder? Ropes? Trained monkeys?
This part seems always to be omitted when you have articles on grain-loading boxcars (plenty of images of the workers blowing grain into the car via that narrow opening though), so it's either a) really mundane or b) the authors don't know either.
If there is a flaw in my logic, please point it out.
And on the same topic, how does a worker get out of, say, a bathtub Gondola (10' high or more) without a ladder - I'm sure they have to go in from time to time, but haven't seen handholds or internal ladders in any images.