Early every summer the railroads put a lot of boxcars in the bank. That
means they switch the cars off onto sidings all through the
wheat-growing part of the country. Then, when the wheat is harvested and
ready to be shipped to market, the cars can be drawn out of the bank,
filled up with grain, and hauled away.
The wheat gets ripe in the south first. When harvest is finished there,
the cars move along. All through the summer the grain cars work their
way farther north.
Special grain doors have to be fitted in tight, just behind the regular
sliding doors of the boxcars, to keep the wheat from leaking out. The
grain doors go almost all the way to the top, but not quite. In a minute
you’ll see why.
After the farmers thresh their wheat, they take it to an elevator, which
is an enormous storage tower close to the railroad tracks. Then, a chute
from the elevator loads the wheat into the cars through the space at the
top of the grain doors.
When a car is loaded, a man crawls in on top of the grain and hunches
himself along with elbows and toes. He is the grain sampler who works
for the companies that buy the wheat. Every once in a while he pokes a
gadget down into the grain and brings up a sample from various parts of
the car. These samples are enough to tell him whether the whole car is
fair, good, or excellent wheat.
There is only about a two-foot space between the top of the grain and
the roof of the car. So grain samplers have to be skinny men who can
creep about easily.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]