Melrose Park, Illinois, 1942: The Yard Worked 24 Hours a Day
The film of this episode premieres November 24, 2026 on YouTube. The documents, the transcript and the sources are below now.
Eleven days after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt signed an executive order creating an Office of Defense Transportation, printed in the Federal Register on Christmas Day 1941. Its stated purpose was to assure maximum utilization of the domestic transportation facilities of the Nation. Not more railroad — more out of the railroad already there.
Transcript
How full to load them
R001 A welder who works in the round-house at the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad's Proviso yard
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Ten months into the war, every railroad in America got an order about freight cars. Not how fast to run them. How full to load them.
R002 Work goes on 24 hours a day at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The order was aimed at places like this. A sorting yard west of Chicago, photographed from a tower after dark, because the work here did not stop at night.
R003 John L. Walter, conductor at Proviso yard of the C&NWRR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad. Mr. Walter has been employed on the railroad for 45 years, 32 of them as conductor. The red nose and cheeks are due to the below zero weather outside. Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
This man had been on the railroad forty-five years, thirty-two of them as a conductor. Delano's caption explains the red face. It was below zero outside.
Christmas Day, 1941
Eleven days after Pearl Harbor the President signed an executive order. It was printed in the Federal Register on Christmas Day.
It established an Office of Defense Transportation, inside the Executive Office of the President.
Its purpose was one clause long. To assure maximum utilization of the domestic transportation facilities of the Nation for the successful prosecution of the war.
Signed at the White House on the eighteenth of December, 1941. Executive Order eighty-nine eighty-nine.
The hump
R004 A train (or "cut") being pushed out of a receiving yard toward the hump. A brakeman rides each train to signal the engineer in the locomotive at the rear; Proviso yard, C & NW RR., Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Not more railroad. More out of the railroad that was already there. Which came down to a number nobody outside the industry ever thinks about — how long a freight car stands still.
R005 A train being pushed over the hump at the Proviso yard, C & NW RR., Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A train arrives carrying cars for forty different destinations. Before any of them goes anywhere, it has to be taken apart and put back together.
R006 General view of the hump yard at Proviso yard, C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The place where that happened here was an artificial hill. A locomotive pushed the train up one side of it, slowly.
R007 General view of the hump, Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad classification yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
At the top a man uncoupled the cars a few at a time, and gravity took them down the other side into whichever of the tracks below was going where that car was going.
R008 Hump master in a Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad yard operating a signal switch system which extends the length of the hump track. He is thus able to control movements of locomotives pushing the train over the hump from his post at the hump office; Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The hump master worked a signal system that ran the length of the hump track, so he could start and stop the locomotive behind him without leaving his window.
R009 Switch lists coming in by teletype to the hump office at a Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The instructions came in by teletype. A switch list. Every car in the train, in order, and the track it belonged in.
R010 Train going over the hump at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Then the cars went over, one after another, and the switches under them changed between each one.
R011 Train going over the hump at the C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
In December there was snow over all of it and the work went on anyway.
R012 C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, tank cars going over the hump at Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Tank cars over the hump the following spring. Whatever was inside them was going somewhere the war wanted it.
R013 C&NWRR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, towerman R.W. Mayberry of Elmhurst, Ill., at the Proviso yard. He operates a set of retarders and switches at the hump, Melrose Park (near Chicago), Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And a towerman working the retarders. Those are brakes built into the rails, and they decide how hard a car arrives.
Not how fast — how full
That machine is why the order, when it came, was about loading. General Order O.D.T. eighteen. Part five hundred. Conservation of rail equipment.
To conserve and providently utilize motive power and other transportation facilities and service. The attainment of which purposes is essential to the successful prosecution of the war.
Then the rule itself. No rail carrier shall accept for transportation, at point of origin, any carload freight in any freight car, unless it is loaded to one of the following requirements.
One of those requirements is a height. Bulk freight in a closed car had to be piled to within eighteen inches of the roof.
Later directions went commodity by commodity. Canned goods, including milk in cans, not less than sixty-five thousand pounds. Coal, seventy per cent of the car's marked capacity.
R014 A general view of a classification yard at C & NW RR's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The federal government was telling the country how deep to fill a boxcar.
The size of it
R015 General view of a classification yard at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
What that policy looked like on the ground, in one place, on one winter morning.
R016 A general view of a classification yard at C & NW RR's Proviso(?) yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Every one of those cars is somebody's freight, waiting on the sorting.
R017 General view of one of the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad yards, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The smoke is steam locomotives working. There is one in nearly every frame he exposed here.
R018 General view of a classification yard at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso (?) yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
He shot most of these from height — a tower, a bridge, the top of a coal chute — because there was no other way to get the yard into a picture.
R019 General view of one of the classification yards of the C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Track beside track beside track. The whole point of the arrangement is that no two of them go to the same place.
R020 C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, a general view of a classification yard at Proviso Yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
He kept making these wide views. He was trying to photograph something that does not fit inside a photograph.
R021 Freight cars being maneuvered in a Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Cars being moved sideways across the yard by a switch engine.
R022 General view of one of the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad classification yards, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The ground between the tracks is cinders. In December it is cinders and ice.
R023 Looking toward the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad classification yard. The trestle runs from the ice house to the yard. The old cars in the foreground are used as living quarters for some yard workers and itinerant help. Town of Melrose Park is in background
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Read the caption on this one carefully. The trestle runs from the ice house down to the yard, and the town of Melrose Park is the row of buildings on the horizon.
D01 Looking toward the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad classification yard. The trestle runs from the ice house to the yard. The old cars in the foreground are used as living quarters for some yard workers and itinerant help. Town of Melrose Park is in background (detail)
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The two old wooden cars in the foreground are living quarters. For some of the yard workers, the caption says, and for itinerant help. There is a stovepipe through the roof of one of them.
R024 The yardmaster's office at the receiving yard, North Proviso(?), C & NW RR, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The yardmaster's office at the receiving yard. A stove, a clock, a desk, and the paperwork that told the hump what was coming.
The roundhouse
R025 A Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad roundhouse, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The locomotives had to be kept running, and that happened in a building shaped like a slice of a wheel.
R026 C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad; locomotives in the roundhouse at Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Inside, in December, with the doors open to the cold.
R027 Greasing a locomotive in the roundhouse at Proviso (?) yard, C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Greasing an engine over the pit.
R028 A worker in the roundhouse at the C & NW RR., Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And then Delano turned the camera off the machinery and onto the men, one at a time, in whatever light was in the building.
R029 Workers at the roundhouse of the C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad Proviso Yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Two of them together.
R030 Two employees at the roundhouse at Proviso yard, C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Two more. The Library holds this pair with no names attached to it.
R031 Melrose Park (near Chicago), Ill, C&NWRR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad. William London has been a railroad worker 25 years - now working at the roundhouse at the Proviso yards
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
This one has a name. Twenty-five years a railroad worker, now in the roundhouse.
R032 Melrose Park (near Chicago), Ill; C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad; L. Logan, of West Chicago, boilermaker at the roundhouse at the Proviso yard
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A boilermaker, from a town a few miles west.
R033 Melrose Park (near Chicago), Ill.; C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad; Roy Nelin, a box packer in the roundhouse at the Proviso yard
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A box packer. His caption gives his name and his job and nothing else at all.
R034 James Lynch, a roundhouse worker, C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroadProviso yard
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A roundhouse worker in wire glasses, looking straight down the lens.
R035 Frederick Batt, brakeman, on the C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, at Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And a brakeman, which was the coldest job in the yard.
The freight house
R036 Truck trailers line up at a freight house to load and unload goods from the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Not everything arrived by rail. Trucks brought freight in to be sorted and put back onto trains.
R037 Truck trailers loading and unloading at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The trailers waited at the dock in the snow.
R038 Train pulling out of the freight house at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso Yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And a train pulled out of the house with what they had brought.
R039 Tracks leading into the freight house at Proviso yard. This is said to be the largest covered freight house in the world. C&NWRR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The building is the row of arched roofs. Delano's caption says only that it is said to be the largest covered freight house in the world. He did not check that, and neither will we.
Twilight
R040 View in a departure yard at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso (?) yard at twilight, Chicago, Ill. Brakeman is signaling with a red flare and the train is going by during exposure
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
In Illinois in December the light is gone by half past four. The red streak is a brakeman signalling with a flare, and a train moving through the exposure.
R041 View in a departure yard at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso(?) yard, at twilight, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A locomotive against the last of the sun.
R042 View in a departure yard at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso (?) yard at twilight, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And the yard going blue, with one lamp burning in it.
The rip tracks
R043 Painting a car at the repair or "rip" tracks at North Proviso(?), C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Cars arrived here broken, and loading them heavier did not help with that.
R044 Car jacked up for repairs on the repair tracks, North Proviso, C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A car jacked up off its wheels, outdoors, in December.
R045 Repair tracks of the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western R.R.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · Dec. 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
The repair tracks running away under a bridge toward a signal. Railroaders called them the rip tracks.
R046 General view of part of the rip tracks at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
By April the snow had gone and the same work was going on.
R047 Sam Cell, working on the truck of a car at the rip tracks of C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A man working on the truck of a car — the frame underneath that carries the wheels.
R048 Mike Evans, a welder, at the rip tracks at Proviso yard of the C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A welder, with his torch and his tanks, standing against the car he had been underneath.
R049 C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, putting the finishing touches on a rebuilt caboose at the rip tracks at Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Finishing touches on a rebuilt caboose.
R050 Caboose on the caboose track at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And the caboose track, where they waited to be coupled onto the back of something.
April
R051 Switchman throwing a switch a C and NW RR's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
He came back in the spring. A switchman throwing a switch by hand.
R052 Switchman throwing a switch at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
There were hundreds of them out in that yard, and every single one had to be thrown by somebody.
R053 General view of part of classification yard at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
From above, in April, the place is a drawing.
R054 Freight cars in the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western Railroad classification yard(?), Chicago, Ill. General view of Proviso yard
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Loaded cars standing in the classification tracks, waiting on a road engine.
R055 General view of one of the departure yards at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A departure yard, which is where a train that has been taken apart becomes a train again.
R056 Tracks at C & NW RR's i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Rail, tie and ballast at eye level, going out of the picture.
R057 General view of part of the Proviso yard of the Chicago and Northwestern i.e. North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill. In the background is the coal chute and roundhouse
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April or May 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And the whole of it once more from the top, with the roundhouse in the distance, and the chute where the engines took on coal.
After a day's work
R058 A.S. Gerdee, of 3251 Maypole(?) Street, working as a switchman at Proviso yard of C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A switchman in April, arms folded, waiting on a cut of cars.
R059 John Sabados washing up after a day's work at the rip tracks at Proviso yard of C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And a man washing up at the end of a shift on the rip tracks, which is not a thing anybody usually bothers to photograph.
R060 Joseph Klesken washing up after a day's work at the rip tracks at Proviso yards of the C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Another of them, with a can of hand soap on the sink. Delano wrote down both their names, and that is the only reason anyone has them.
The garden
R061 C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, railroad worker cultivating the small Victory garden in the Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
On one of his last mornings here he walked out to the edge of the yard and found a strip of turned ground between the cinders and the tracks.
R062 C & NW RR i.e. Chicago and North Western railroad, railroad workers cultivating a little Victory garden at Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.
Jack Delano · Proviso yard, Melrose Park, Ill. · April 1943 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A railroad worker cultivating a Victory garden, in a freight yard, in April 1943. The order told them how full to load the cars. Nobody had to tell them to do this.
Sources
- 62 frames by Jack Delano, December 1942 and April–May 1943, Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Color Photographs (LC-DIG-fsac-*): https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsac/
- Period Kodachrome, not colorization — no model touched these frames, and no altered-content disclosure applies.
- All 4x5 transparencies; masters pulled at ~3,000–5,000 px from the Wikimedia Commons mirror of the same negatives.
- Executive Order 8989, signed December 18, 1941, printed in the Federal Register of December 25, 1941, vol. 6, no. 250, p. 6725: https://archive.org/details/sim_federal-register-find_1941-12-25_6_250
- The order established the Office of Defense Transportation "to assure maximum utilization of the domestic transportation facilities of the Nation for the successful prosecution of the war."
- General Order ODT 18, Revised — 49 C.F.R. Part 500, Conservation of Rail Equipment — Federal Register, October 15, 1942, vol. 7, no. 203, p. 8337: https://archive.org/details/sim_federal-register-find_1942-10-15_7_203
- Special Direction ODT 18, Revised—5, the commodity minimum weights, Federal Register, January 5, 1943, vol. 8, no. 2, p. 186: https://archive.org/details/sim_federal-register-find_1943-01-05_8_2