WHEAT IN WESTEKN CANADA 59 



fastened in any way when being set in position, so that they 

 might be lifted on the arrival of the car at a terminal ele- 

 vator and thus allow the grain to flow out beneath them. 

 However, it very frequently happens in practice, and ap- 

 pears to be now the rule, that farmers or elevator operators 

 nail up the grain doors from the inside of the car before 

 the ear is fiUed. The object in view in putting in the nails 

 is to prevent absolutely the grain doors slipping during 

 the switching or shunting of the cars, and thereby to make 

 quite sure that no leakage of grain shall occur whilst the 

 car is in transit. When a car with nailed doors arrives at 

 a terminal elevator at Fort William or Port Arthur, it is 

 necessary, in order to liberate the grain, to smash in the 

 doors with an ax, for the doors cannot be pressed back 

 owing to the weight of the grain or lifted owing to the 

 presence of unseen nails. The destruction of grain doors 

 at the terminal elevators takes place on a great scale and 

 thousands of new doors to replace the old need to be con- 

 structed every year. 



In the busy season, when grain is flowing freely from the 

 prairie-land to Winnipeg on its way to the lake front, grain 

 trains are made up at the divisional railway points ; and 

 night and day such trains, often composed of from forty 

 to forty-five heavily-laden box-cars, form an east-bound 

 procession, one train following another unceasingly. Thus 

 the transportation of the wheat crop makes very heavy de- 

 mands upon the railways every year. To give some idea 

 of what these demands may be, it is only necessary to men- 

 tion that following the great crop of 1915, one thousand 

 cars of wheat arrived in Winnipeg each working day 

 throughout a whole year, and that the wheat inspected by 

 the Western Grain Inspection Division amounted to 

 338,425,200 bushels. 



