Five "Super Big Johns" occupy a section of track measuring longer than a football field as they wait to be loaded at the Queen City Grain Company in Cincinnati Ohio. Each car is more than 61 feet long and stands higher than 15 feet above the rail. |
 |
"Big John" has a big brother.
Southern is receiving deliveries now on an order of 500 new lightweight aluminum covered hopper cars even larger than the famous "Big John" cars that introduced economy into the movement of grain by rail. The "Super Big John" cars have a load-carrying capacity of 5,325 cubic feet, about 8 per cent greater than Southern's original 100-ton-capacity cars that set new standards for grain hauling in large volume at low cost.
Being built by the Magor Railcar Division of the Fruehauf Corporation, the new cars represent an investment of nearly $12,000,000 by Southern in further increasing its usefulness. Delivery began in February and the first multiple-car shipment in five of the new cars was loaded at the Queen City Grain Company in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Five "Super Big Johns" occupy a section of track measuring longer than a football field as they wait to be loaded at the Queen City Grain Company in Cincinnati Ohio. Each car is more than 61 feet long and stands higher than 15 feet above the rail. |
|
Featuring a continuous trough-type loading hatch and eight sliding gate-type discharge outlets, the huge cars are capable of carrying some 230,000 pounds each. Their size makes it impossible to overlook them -and Cincinnati didn't.
"Southern To Move Giant Grain Carriers," headlined the Cincinnati Enquirer as Queen City Grain prepared its shipment, and the Cincinnati Post & Times Star announced "Railway Loads City's Biggest Grain Cargo." Viewers of television station WCPO saw a filmed report on the movement featured in the evening newscast.
Between four and five huge truckloads of grain are needed to fill one "Super Big John" for shipment. At Queen City Grain, the trucks are unloaded by being tilted so that gravity causes the grain to fall into a pit, the first step to blending and drying operations before it is loaded aboard Southern's grain cars. |
 |
But the weatherman wasn't impressed.
Beginning the morning of February 24, Cincinnati -along with most of the Midwest was hit by freezing rain and snow that quickly choked traffic to a standstill throughout the region. Bogged down with everything else on highways in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were trucks carrying grain from farms and country elevators to the loading point at Cincinnati.
Work went ahead in the freezing weather as the trucks straggled in with their loads of grain. The "Super Big Johns" can be speedily loaded, and although the weather did its worst the scheduled departure was delayed by only a day.
On March 1, Queen City Grain - which itself dramatically demonstrates the growth brought about by the usefulness of "Big John" - celebrated its second anniversary in business.
The company, which describes itself proudly as "specializing in the loading of Southern Railway's big hopper cars known as 'Big Johns,' "was begun in 1963 by James Bobb, a veteran of some 20 years in the grain business.
James Bobb looks through the window of the small trailer he used as an office two years ago, when the Queen City Grain Company went into business supplying the South with low-cost "Big John" grain. Today, the trailer is used as a storage room. |
 |
"I could see that if the railroads would modernize," he explains, "grain could be handled more cheaply and efficiently. I knew it could be done if the Interstate Commerce Commission would let them do it."
Using a camping trailer for an office, Bobb "took a gamble" when Southern put "Big John" on the rails, and founded the Queen City Grain Company.
On March 1, 1963, the company shipped its first
A loading tube is positioned over the trough-type hatch of a Southern Railway "Super Big John" aluminum covered hopper car. With an empty weight of some 55,700 pounds, the huge cars can carry approximately 10 tons more payload than a steel car of the same capacity. |
 |
"Big John" - the first of 774 "Big Johns" shipped in the ten months of 1963. The following year saw business nearly double. III 1965, Bobb expects to load some 2,500 "Big Johns."
"If it hadn't been for 'Big John,' " says Bobb, who formerly shipped by truck, "the railroads would have lost the grain business entirely within three years."
At Queen City Grain, the one-time camping trailer office has given way to two large buildings. A huge blending, drying and storage facility has been installed. The company operates the first "truck dump" established in Cincinnati -a heavyweight rig capable of turning a large truck on end to empty its cargo of grain. The company keeps its own fleet of 11 trucks busy hauling grain into Cincinnati in addition to handling grain brought to it by others -to the tune of about 1,200 truckloads a month. All of it moves out in "Big Johns" that are, as Queen City Grain's slogan puts it, "Bringing prosperity to agriculture in the Midwest and South."