Do ariculated container carrying cars by pass hump yards
I was thinking that if they went over the hump how would
the retarders be afffected by the different weights?
I presume that these cars are ususally in a intermodal fleet
which would bypass any hump yard ???
I am pretty sure that intermodal cars, of any type, normally do not go through the same classification processes, including humping, that loose car freight cars go through.
There are usually special yards for Intermodal traffic that is separate from the hump yard. Unit trains of any type, such as all tank cars, bypass the hump yards because they do not need to be sorted and re-routed.
Back when the Eugene, OR hump yard was still operating I would occasionally see an empty articulated well car sent over the hump. Presumably bad order cars going for repair.
you usually don’t hump loaded articulted cars But like the previous poster i have humped empty tubs going to a home shop for repair
Loaded stack cars are rare, but far from unheard of, at our hump. We don’t allow them to roll into the track. Of course, if any of the boxes have hazmat placards on them, they aren’t cut off–people get fired over gaffes like that. Since we’re not an automated yard, variations in weight along the length of the car are no problem whatsoever.
Empty stack cars are a more regular occurrence–something nearly every shift I work. In fact, our intermodal terminal sometimes sends us an entire track of such cars–stack cars, spine cars, whatever–to be sent to other locations, usually to other railroads or to yards that don’t normally see stack trains from our yard. Other than the fact that these five-packs eat up track capacity fairly quickly, they’re not a problem.
Occasionally, I’ll see empty cars going over the hump. Never loads, though. The impact of cars in the bowl can be enough to knock the containers off the car. You’re not suppose to hump loaded autoracks for the same reason.
Rather awkward trying to explain why the load is now an empty.
Nick
I’m not up on current practises, but carriers probably have general rules prohibiting humping loaded auto racks and TOFC/COFC cars. Stencils and tags may still be used, but the basic computer record on the load may also be flagged as do not hump.
In the day, tags may have been somewhat wishfull thinking on the part of the shipper. A “Do Not Hump” car in the middle of a cut going over the hump is supposed to be left on and spotted by the engine. A time consuming pain.
For a while, the Port of Lewiston Idaho sent a 5 pack or two of containers to the Port of Seattle via BN/BNSF, mostly from one major shipper, comprised of paper products. But since the 5 packs were sent out as part of a regular mixed consist, BN/BNSF just had to send the loaded well cars through the hump at Pasco. After a few years of this and the subsequent extreme product damage, the shipper swore off using rail for containerized shipments. Now all such containers either go by barge to the Port of Portland, or by truck the 400 miles to the Port of Seattle.
Just had to hump the well cars…couldn’t just set them out for flat switching…that’s customer service for you.[V]
Maybe that’s why articulated hoppers never caught on. In the early 90s, BN and ATSF purchased some experimenal articulated hoppers, which didn’t go far beyond those few cars built. Santa Fe’s were the so called “Super Hoppers”, which may still be on the roster, and I believe BN’s were articulated coalporters.
many thanks for answers to my elementary question, and I expected many of the answers given, but I was unaware of TOFC/COFC & loaded auto racks not going over the hump. This proves to me that there are no questions on this forum that one shouldn’t be afraid to ask. This is especially applicable to new rail fans.
At Eugene, which was an automated hump, when it was needed to roll a non-standard size car down the hump, we would put the computer into stand-by and then the retarder operator would manually handle to car - everything from lining the switches to controlling the retarders. That meant stopping the hump, going to manual, rolling the car, then going back to automatic and restarting the hump.
Usually was quicker for the hump crew to flat switch the car into the sluff track when pulling the cut out of the recieving yard. Then, when the East End set a cut over to the 30 or 40 yard to make up one of the locals, they would take these cars back with them and put them into the trim ends of the proper bowl tracks.
In theory, you were supposed to be able to hump these cars in automatic, but all too often a switch would throw under the car and part of it would go one way and part another. This had a tendency to cause the humping operation to come to a complete halt. Bad for productivity.
As for humping “Do Not Hump”'s, we never did. We “retarded” their forward motion. And where intermodal and auto racks were concerned. The trailers and containers would litterally come apart at the seams spilling the contents all over the place and autos would come right out the end of the autorack. Simply not good.
Wow! I can’t believe that automated humps are that rough on the equipment! We (at perhaps the only “manual” hump yard left anywhere) get loads shifting, and yes, I have seen autos come out of racks and trailers unload themselves, but certainly not in recent memory. Most of our operators are capable of excellent car handling, and on these cars that shoul
Yes, Carl, it is supposed to do better than a manual operation but it doesn’t. We had several retarder operators that could finess 10-15 rolling cars at a time and “not break the china” even though they got the chance to do this only a couple of times a year. The three biggest problems were rain, fog and crazy axel counters (kept adding and dropping the count at their whim).