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.