Saturday afternoon I was traveling up 411 near Vonore, TN and caught up with a train. Never did get to see the engines so I am not sure if it was CSX or Norfolk Southern. Anyway, as I catch up to the train I look over and notice that every car in the string looks to be new (or recently new) aluminum hoppers. They had TLLX markings. When did they start making hoppers in aluminum? What are they hauling in such hoppers? I would think if it was coal or rock that it would knock those things apart in no time.
Was it aluminum hoppers I saw or were my eyes deceiving me? I couldn’t get a pic since I had no camera on me.
I grew up in western PA coal country. Had the Pittsburg & Shawmut and the Pennsy/PC/Conrail low grade from Lawsonham to Driftwood in my backyard (literally). Both of these roads existed because of coal. The last couple years I was in eastern PA and saw the coal being hauled into the Washingtonville Power Plant via the North Shore RR.
This is the first time in my 42 years that I have seen an aluminum coal car!!!
i think the use of aluminum hoppers came on strong with the unit train concept and powder river basin mining of low sulfur western coal. a lot of these cars were constructed new for assigned service just to handle that business.
biggest drawback i can see is what happens in a derailment. i stopped off at crawford hill on the BN years ago and looked at a site where they had thrown craps and it looked like some mean little kid had been stomping on beer cans.
no doubt, the main if not only advantage of this construction is lower tare weight=higher net load. when you consider the low production costs of PRB coal, most of the expense is in the transportation.
about 15 years ago i talked with a power plant manager near my home where they once had a mine mouth operation but closed the mine across the road from the plant and started burning Wyoming coal for air quality reasons. he told me that the cost of converting the plant to keep using local high sulfur coal was not economical but they need 117 tons of the western stuff to get the same amount of electricity that came from 100 tons of the local coal.
it is hard to get your head around the increased volume of coal transportation and hence the need for this type of car. years ago, the UP and Q were both running around 36 100 cars trains a day out of the PRB and a like number of mty trains returning each day. that works out to 7200 cars in and 7200 out each day although some of them might turn around in less than 24 hours. factor in the turnaround time for the trip to the power plants (a week or more?) and that adds up to a big bunch of aluminum coal cars.
Peabody energy says there is more coal in the ground just south of Gillette Wyoming that has ever been mined in the USA up until this day.
as for the lack of aluminum coal cars in the east, those roads probably have a shorter haul and already had sizable fleets of conventional hoppers.
That would have been CSX’s (former L&N) KD Subdivision that runs between Corbin (KY) and Etowah (TN) via Knoxville. Probably a 90% chance the TLLX cars are either leased to Georgia Power or TVA which would have made that a Stilesboro or Bull Run unit train. Like has been stated, the aluminum cars are everywhere you look but sure don’t look that shiny for long.
Some of the first aluminum unit train hoppers were made for Santee Cooper and had some corrosion issues between the aluminum car body and the steel center beam resulting in a pretty dramatic derailment or two on the L&N’s very same line you were following in the 1970’s. The problem was overcome and those very same cars are still running around the system (or were a year or so back) so durability is not an issue whatsoever! These car may hit the FRA 50-year limit and could possibly be retrofitted and certified to run to the new 65-year limit.
A couple of years ago we spent some time taking classes near Spruce Pine NC. There was a CSX line (former Clinchfield) going from SC up into Tenn. They were running unit coal trains at a rate of 3 to 4 an hour 24/7. Some of these had aluminum hoppers with DUPX marks - I assume that means Duke Power. They would run light northbound with 3 locomotives on the front and southbound loaded with 2 locos on the front and the third pushing on back under radio control. Other trains had a mix of older conventional hoppers with various reporting marks. 70 to 100 cars per train.
The Illinois Central built 5 50 ton offset hoppers out of aluminum in 1947. So the use of aluminum in car construction goes back a lot farther then the 1970s. As part of their experimental program they also built 1aluminum reefer. It is preserved at McComb, MS. As far as I know none of the 5 hopper cars survived.
The C&O also built 5 aluminum 50 ton hoppers in 1948, which lasted until 1969. But the high construction cost was not justified by the weight/full savings at the time, so no more were built back then.
FreightCar America is the successor to Bethlehem Steel’s Freight Car Division in Johnstown, PA, and the registered trademark for the aluminum BethGon. In fact, modern aluminum gondolas hold as much as prior steel hoppers, but with a lower center of gravity and lower maintenance cost. My father was the industrial photographer for the Freight Car Division.
True, many railroads experimented with aluminum coal hoppers prior to the 1970’s but they could never justify the additional cost when booking single car loadings. It was when they were tied in with the new “unit train” concept that savings and ROI made them appeal to the corporate bean counters.
From a old “1978” freight car journal:
“While aluminum railroad cars are not new, South Carolina’s Public Service Authority, called Santee Cooper, created a transportation milestone when it ordered 300 lightweight aluminum cars for coal-train service. Sizable cost savings are expected with the two car types: composite aluminum/steel body hopper and all-aluminum gondola”
The authors detail the cars’ specifications, manufacture, and maintenance; describe other recent aluminum-car productions; and analyze the economics of an aluminum-car unit train.
As stated in my previous post, after they ironed out the bugs with the ionic corrosion issue on the composite train set, Santee Cooper ordered more based on accounting analysis:
“…obtaining $0.54-per-ton and $0.36-per-ton rate reductions, respectively. Costing about 30% more than conventional cars, they will have a two-year payback period. The all-aluminum gondola weighs about 22,000 lb less and carries some 11 tons more coal than a conventional steel car. In 1984, the gondolas will serve two new units at the utility’s Cross generating station. Weighing about 15,000 lb less and carrying about 9 tons more than a conventional car, the composite hopper can be bottom-unloaded or rotary-dumped and are thus usable at any of the utility’s stations. 4 photos.”
These were/are all lettered for SCWX.
Pretty sure the second batch of cars were some of the last manufactured by Berwick Forge & Fabricating before they changed their name to Berwick Freight Car Co.