The Dust Room

The dust room, the first summer I hired on there was a few days that the mill was shut down for maintenance. So there was all kinds of jobs to do cleaning up the place, one job, I remember in particular. Three of us warehousemen were told to go to the ninth floor of the flour mill there was a Humphrey man lift that we rode up there. A Humphrey man lift is a vertical conveyor belt that runs from the second floor of the mill up to the 10th floor, there were 3 foot holes cut through the hardwood floors, the belt ran through them, and there were steps attached to the belt every 22 feet, these steps were about 1' x 18" and were angled with a hinged pivot that would flop over when the belt went over the pulley on the 10th floor, there were also handholds bolted to the conveyor belt at about chest level on both sides of the step. On the second floor, where the belt pulley was mounted, there was a wooden platform with two steps that you climbed up on and waited for the next handle and step to go by. You would then grab handhold and jump on the step, but came up, this would take you up through the eighth floors of machinery, and when you wanted to get off you just had to step backwards on the floor you wanted to get off at. To go down you went to the other side and catch a step going downwards. There was also a safety rope that ran up and down on both sides, and by pulling it the belt would stop in case of an emergency, there was also a safety switch if you forgot to get off on the top floor. To see one in the action try; http://www.humphrey-manlift.com/ Anyways back to my story about the dust room on the left side of the mill building, there are few windows as as part of the mill was used by the elevator to clean grain going into the mill, above the third and fourth windows you can see two small windows with ventilators above them, this was the dust room, where all the dust from cleaning the grain went. To get out there, you had to climb a steel ladder from the ninth floor and open up a trap door to get in there. It was dark in there, with only 4 feet of clearance the dust accumulated was about 6 inches deep and have the properties of a liquid when you try to shovel it up. Our job was to go up there and fill old paper flour sack's with this dust and carry it down the steel ladder to be disposed of. It wasn't a very pleasant job, and I can remember, years later, someone had the brilliant idea of jackhammering a hole through the cement and run a spout down to the ninth floor, where the bags could be loaded and all you had to do was to sweep the dust towards the spout. Years later, a pellet mill was installed, and this material was used in the mixture for making pellets.

More Warehouse Confessions

We had to load a boxcar with mixed bags of domestic flour one day out on the rear export loading dock. This was on the concrete platform with an elevated conveyor belt that ran the length of the warehouse. There were wooden chutes that ran from the second floor of the warehouse down to the conveyor belt at the back of the building there a metal cutoff placed at an angle that would direct the flour bag in the direction in the conveyor belt was traveling, and another cut off would send the bag down the wooden chute and into the doorway of the boxcar being loaded. Their was three of us in the car, me, a new young kid, who had just hired on, and Jerry a draft dodger who had a great sense of humor. There were three warehouseman upstairs with two wheeled carts that were bringing in the flour over and sending it down the chute. We started out with 20 pound bags which were loaded criss cross on the wheeler about eight high these came at a steady pace until we had 500 loaded in each end of the car and then they stopped. The kid asked Jerry why did they stop, to which Jerry replied oh they have just gone to get the 50-pound bags. Well sure enough the next bags were 50-pound bags of donut and cake mixes we loaded about 400 bags of these product's than they stopped. The kid again asked Jerry why did they stop, to which Jerry required that they had gone for the 100-pound bags of flour. And once again Jerry was right, and 100-pound bags of flour started coming down the chute we were working pretty hard now and after we had loaded about 200 had been loaded in the car they stopped once again. The kid said to Jerry, what is happening now, to which Jerry replied with a straight face, that they have gone to get the 200-pound bags. The kid walked out of the car and was never seen again.

One day we had a boxcar of domestic flour to load everything we needed was on the first floor of the warehouse. The boxcar we were supposed to use was on the back loading dock, so we put in the dock plate (a steel plate that bridged the loading dock and the doorway of the boxcar swept the floor lined the walls and the floor with cardboard and with our two wheeled carts loaded the car with bags of flour, that were on the shipping order. We were finished and covered the load with paper and were ready to close the door, when Pete the Shipper showed up to take a look at the load. He looked at the roof of the older boxcar and noticed two small boards had broken away and were hanging down he said the car was not fit for shipping, and said we would have to take all of flour out and reload it in a boxcar on the front loading dock.

The Export Flour Side

We also loaded a lot of export flour for Ceylon these were 50 kg jute bags that were provided by the Canadian government for food aid, we loaded 900 bags per boxcar 60 to a row 6 rows of each end of the boxcar and 3 across the middle, there were two of us in the boxcar and we loaded just about three boxcars in an eight hour shift the bags came into the boxcars from the packing room on the second floor of the flour mill via a conveyor belts and down a wooden chute the bags fell down on to our shoulders and you learned to balance the bags upright as the rows in each end were about eight feet high so you had to throw the bags over your head to finish each row. In order to keep up with the packing machine both men had to move constantly until the first three rows in the car were finished, after that one man could keep up and the other man could take a break which included sealing loaded cars and getting the next car prepared for loading. To prepare a car for loading the floor would be swept and paper from a 7-foot roll of paper would be glued to the wooden walls of the boxcar, and a smaller role of paper was used to cover the floor. The loading platform held six cars on spot when the cars were all loaded, we would have to pull the flour track down to spot up some more empties, to do this I would have to go into the basement of the elevator unloading track and start an enormous electric motor that powered the winch. Backup on ground level, the packer, is helper, and my helper were in position we would pick up the hook end of the 7/8 inch cable and the four of us would pull the cable out 200 feet and hook it on to the under frame of the boxcar, I would then operate the winch by two steel levers, one that would engage the motor with a drum of the winch, and the other lever was like a clutch that would start the cable pulling, I was protected by a steel shield in case the cable ever snapped, the cars were pulled far enough till we had another four cars on spot. While this job was outdoors I always preferred it to working indoors on the packing machines, that job while physically easier it involved two men the senior man was the head packer and one helper the packing machine operated like this the helper had a table beside him with bales of jute sacks he would take a sack off of the table and pull it over a 16 inch tube and step on a foot pedal that clamped the bag to the tube and started an auger that filled the sack with flour. When it was full. It would travel horizontally on a rubber belt conveyor towards the packer where it would stop and lift up on a built-in scale that would weigh it and a dribble of flour from a spout would top up the bag until it was the right weight, it would then travel down the belt to the next station, where the packer would sew the top of the bag shut. The bag would then travel to the end of the conveyor, where it would drop down a chute that would take it to the boxcar.

The Feed Side

At the front of the mill you can see boxcars for loading feed on the left-hand side of the picture, Pillsbury had four tracks that came off of the CPR's main line. They where on Q lead and were numbered Q9a a feed loading track you see in the foreground, the second track is Q9b which ran along the front loading platform and was used for loading feed and domestic flour, the third track Q9c is behind the mill and ran along the back loading platform It was used for loading export, domestic and bulk flour. Q9d was used for unloading grain cars that was stored in the elevator bins seen to the left of the flourmill. Most of the feed was loaded in bulk and cars had to be coopered, this involved installing the cars with wooden grain doors that were nailed in place over the two doorways from the inside, at that time the CPR started using corrugated cardboard doors with straps of hole punched steel, spaced out every 6 inches, they were nailed in place on both sides of the car door opening, and two 1-inch planks were nailed to the bottom of the doorway, and one plank at the top. I remember there was an aluminum ladder that looped on both ends this was hooked over the grain doors from inside and while straddling the grain door the ladder would be pulled out and hooked on the outside to get out of the car after it was finished. The cars were spotted with a capstan equipped with an electric motor, and a 2-inch nylon rope with a steel hook on one end. This we would attach to the under frame of the boxcar with a few little raps of the rope on the moving spool of the capstan we could position the cars on spot for loading. A curved sheet metal spout would be fastened to the top of the grain door and pointed to one end of the car would be loaded with 40 tons of feed, there was a scale up on the fifth floor of the mill that would show how many hundred weights when the scale showed 20 tons loaded the spout would be turned towards the other end of the car to complete loading. There was also a trailer that would be loaded with 15 tons of shorts, it would be backed up against the boxcar in Q9a and a straight pipe would be run through the boxcars doorways and into the trailer, I remember one evening, one of the loaders put the pipe through the boxcar doorways and started loading feed, they only problem was that the trailer was not there, it had not come back from unloading and in the morning there was a 15 ton pile of shorts laying on the ground. We would also get orders for bags of bran and shorts they were usually packed and 50 pound paper sacks. But sometimes we would get orders for 100 pound jute bags of bran, they were really awkward to load and would get jammed up in the conveyors coming down from the third-floor, where the feed packers were located.