Sugar Beet Gons
The SP hauled a lot of sugar beets. In the early days, the SP used flat cars with special wooden "Blackburn" beet racks that were fitted onto the flat cars to allow them to haul sugar beets during the season. The racks were removed and stored allowing the flat cars to return to general service in the off season. When general service gons with bottom discharge gates began to be delivered, these began to be used along with the flat cars. However, they would fill up with beets before reaching their rated capacity prompting the SP to install home-built wooden extensions added to these cars to increase the amount of beets that could be transported.
The cars given side extensions for sugar beets were primarily the composite class GS gons G-50-20 and G-50-23. These cars were eventually renumbered into the SP 358000-359614 number series without regard for original class.
Photo by: Charles Lange
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