The Beginnings of Stock Car Service

Canda Cattle Car Company stock car 1256 waits at Oakdale along with other CCCC cars.The hatch in the roof is for filling the onboard water tank while the pipes along the roof sides distribute the water to the water trays inside the cars.

The Stockton & Copperopolis had several stock pens along its route, at Oakdale, Burnett's, Peters and Milton, perhaps a couple more. Up until now, I had no cars with which to service this traffic. Taking a break from Milton scenery, I assembled four Silver Crash Car Works resin kits. They are models of the 36-foot Canda Cattle Car Company palace stock cars from the 1890s.
    Palace stock cars were common in this period and contained food and water bins so that cattle could be fed en route without having to stop periodically to let them out of the cars. Several companies developed these cars which were then leased out to the railroads during their stock shipping season. The cars represented here were first displayed at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and were used up until about 1910 or so.
 

Builder's photo of a CCCC stock car. These cars were built by the Ensign Manufacturing Works in Huntington West Virginia. Ensign also built a number of other cars for the Southern Pacific.

The builder's photo that I have of this car shows that it is painted a dark color, most likely red or green. Extensive research did not turn up which color these particular cars were painted so I chose a dark green just so I wouldn't have another four boxcar red cars on the railroad. Assembly was fairly straight-forward. The trucks used are Canda trucks as made by Bitter Creek Models which are a fit for these cars.
     Before 1893, Canda also had an earlier design car which was quite different and was 40 feet long. Also, the Hicks Cattle Car Company and the Streets Western Stable Car Company showed up in this part of the country and models of those will eventually be built as well.