Charles L. Wood, The Kansas Beef Industry (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1980), 2.
The St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba claimed to have cattle cars average twenty miles per hour.
Appendix 49, Information Furnished by Hon. Morton F. Post, Late Delegate in Congress from the Territory of Wyoming, Nimmo, Report, 188.
General Manager to J. T. Odell, Sept. 14, 1887, LBs, Manvell, StPM&M, Hill Papers, r. 48.
Nimmo, Report, 81.
White, American Freight Car, 244-65.
Whitaker, Feedlot Empire, 66-67.
Chart L, Corn and Cattle Production, in appendix.
If all livestock were cattle (which they clearly were not) and there were two steers per ton, the Northern Pacific at a maximum carried 168,588 cattle in 1885-86 and 165,738 the next year. These figures are, however, far too high, since in 1884 the total number of cattle shipped by the Northern Pacific from Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas was supposedly only 76,560 head. Reports to the Dakota Railroad Commission of livestock transported within or through Dakota Territory showed a much more marked decline of 25 percent, from 71,433 tons in 1885-86 to 52,899 in 1886-87.
The Union Pacific system, e.g., carried 198,477 tons of cattle in 1886.
Report of the Directors of the Union Pacific Railway Company to the Stockholders for the Year Ending December 31, 1886, (New York, 1887), 132.
In 1889, following the collapse of the range cattle industry, the system carried 248,522 tons of cattle.