Grain Loading Boxcars - How did the workers get out?

[Sir Ray]

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.

[JPV]

My dad had a grain elevator in rural Nebraska, and I banged in many grain doors as a teen-ager in the 60s. We called it "coopering," and we used either the planks on narrow door cars or the reinforced paper on wide door cars. Besides the boards (or cardboard doors) you took in your hammer, nail pouch, tarpaper for plugging up chinks, and of course, your ladder for getting out. we had a light aluminum ladder about 6' long with hooked ends, so you could hang it. Once you got done coopering both sides of the car, you made sure you had everything, then you hooked the ladder on the wall you just built, scrambled up it, sat on the top, flipped the ladder up and hung it from the outside, and went down. It was the same for paper doors because you put a board across the top to secure the paper door to, though that could be a little hairier because the board was thinner. I was trying to remember the witdth of those doors. I think on the old narrow door cars it was about 6'. Didn't seem the RR planks were much longer than that. BTW coopering cars was a job for early morning. You didn't want to be walling yourself inside one of those steel ovens after it had been sitting in the sun all day. Cheers!

[Sir Ray]

Aha, the ladder seems to be the key here, as I thought it might. Although looking at some of the images of the grain doors in "Industries Along The Tracks", dang those are rather narrow openings (at least for the wooden boxcar - the larger, more modern steel boxcars have lower height grain doors, maybe due to capacity limits) - still, even as a teenager I'd hated to have had to straddle those grain doors and futz w/ a ladder to get it into position, so more power to your younger self, sir.
I always thought of coopering as applying to barrels, but I can see the definition expanding to include wood storage vessels and barriers of any type.

[scharnhorst]

smiler car's were also built for the Railroads in Brazil and in Eastern Europe where roof hatches were built into the roof of boxcars with Drop Bottoms much like Drop bottom Gondolas. A side Plug door's were also installed. The cars where intended to serve for 2 uses to ship grain and other bulk products when needed. When not needed to ship grain or cement the car could be used as a box car The intent was to have a car that could be more diverse in its use. These cars can still be found all over the former USSR and in parts of South America. I am unaware of another country's using this idea but I would assume there are others.

[Sir Ray]

smiliar cars were also built for the Railroads in Brazil and in Eastern Europe where roof hatches were built into the roof of boxcars with Drop Bottoms much like Drop bottom Gondolas. A side Plug door's were also installed. The cars where intended to serve for 2 uses to ship grain and other bulk products when needed. When not needed to ship grain or cement the car could be used as a box car The intent was to have a car that could be more diverse in its use. These cars can still be found all over the former USSR and in parts of South America. I am unaware of another country's using this idea but I would assume there are others.

And another country was the... United States, specifically the Burlington Northern Bopper (Boxcar/Hopper) - On this page, right column, second image down - third image is the associated power car "In an effort to make the most out of their railcars, Burlington Northern experimented with boppers, or boxhopper cars, that could carry both boxcar freight and hopper car freight."
Built in 1988, only a few (9?) were built, and the concept didn't really work out (hence most were scrapped. the rest sent to that Museum).

That's an near-exact match for the European equipment you mentioned, but a close, but much more common, match was boxcars which had 'grain doors', which where plug doors that had hatches in them where the grain loading chutes would pour the grain into the boxcar with - these were common enought that Athearn even offered a model of one way back when. These cars also didn't require the shipper to fool around w/ the temporary grain doors that are the reason for this thread.

[v8interceptor]

smiliar cars were also built for the Railroads in Brazil and in Eastern Europe where roof hatches were built into the roof of boxcars with Drop Bottoms much like Drop bottom Gondolas. A side Plug door's were also installed. The cars where intended to serve for 2 uses to ship grain and other bulk products when needed. When not needed to ship grain or cement the car could be used as a box car The intent was to have a car that could be more diverse in its use. These cars can still be found all over the former USSR and in parts of South America. I am unaware of another country's using this idea but I would assume there are others.

And another country was the... United States, specifically the Burlington Northern Bopper (Boxcar/Hopper) - On this page, right column, second image down - third image is the associated power car "In an effort to make the most out of their railcars, Burlington Northern experimented with boppers, or boxhopper cars, that could carry both boxcar freight and hopper car freight."
Built in 1988, only a few (9?) were built, and the concept didn't really work out (hence most were scrapped. the rest sent to that Museum).

That's an near-exact match for the European equipment you mentioned, but a close, but much more common, match was boxcars which had 'grain doors', which where plug doors that had hatches in them where the grain loading chutes would pour the grain into the boxcar with - these were common enought that Athearn even offered a model of one way back when. These cars also didn't require the shipper to fool around w/ the temporary grain doors that are the reason for this thread.

The big difference between the Brazilian/Russian cars and the "Boppers" is that the latter had a "Walking floor, a type of hydraulic moving floor system that would push the bulk material out. This is common in some types of semi trailers but proved to be problematic in the BN cars...

[scharnhorst]

smiliar cars were also built for the Railroads in Brazil and in Eastern Europe where roof hatches were built into the roof of boxcars with Drop Bottoms much like Drop bottom Gondolas. A side Plug door's were also installed. The cars where intended to serve for 2 uses to ship grain and other bulk products when needed. When not needed to ship grain or cement the car could be used as a box car The intent was to have a car that could be more diverse in its use. These cars can still be found all over the former USSR and in parts of South America. I am unaware of another country's using this idea but I would assume there are others.

And another country was the... United States, specifically the Burlington Northern Bopper (Boxcar/Hopper) - On this page, right column, second image down - third image is the associated power car "In an effort to make the most out of their railcars, Burlington Northern experimented with boppers, or boxhopper cars, that could carry both boxcar freight and hopper car freight."
Built in 1988, only a few (9?) were built, and the concept didn't really work out (hence most were scrapped. the rest sent to that Museum).

That's an near-exact match for the European equipment you mentioned, but a close, but much more common, match was boxcars which had 'grain doors', which where plug doors that had hatches in them where the grain loading chutes would pour the grain into the boxcar with - these were common enought that Athearn even offered a model of one way back when. These cars also didn't require the shipper to fool around w/ the temporary grain doors that are the reason for this thread.

Vary cool to see that BN was thinking out side of the box on different ideas. To bad the concept never caught on with other railroads. But then and again it must have been cheaper to make temporarily lids to put on coal hoppers when the season was low during the summer months?