Does Alcan or Alcoa require unit bauxite trains or do they ship it by barge?
I am sure that Alcoa uses trains to get bauxite to their Rockdale, TX smelters as these are not served by water. However, I havn’t personally seen one.
dd
They do.
Lots of them.
I have a photo from a friend in Brazil of a dual guage Bauxite train on narrow guage trucks, if you interested…
Ed
I would like that very much thankyou.
Where does all the bauxite come from for the smelters in the U.S? What kind of hoppers are used for it?
We see bauxite up here in northern New York all the time, headed for the Alcoa plant in Massena.
We had an incident with a “leak” a while back. Bauxite includes some fine powder and it was leaving a trail. Somebody saw it and called it in to 911.
There were several jokes about “baux” cars in that thread.
Junction,
The GN handled it from Everett Washington in cars that apeared to be grain hoppers. I suspect they were in assigned service. Check density to see how many pounds would go in 4750 cubic foot covered hopper. Should be about 200,000#. If more, would have to leave some cube vacant and probably load on scale. This traffic did not move in unit trains but in blocks of 10-15 cars as I recall. Went to Wenatchee WA and Columbia Falls MT. Wenatchee is shut down. Do not know about Columbia Falls. Power has gotten expensive in PNW.
Mac