Here’s the link to a photo - again, none of these are mine - that shows the blue top racks setting on yellow or rusty botttom racks - and note the rack at the near/ right end of the car for the smaller blue pieces -
Here’s a link to a photo that shows an empty car, but it looks like all of the identical ‘bottom’ rack pieces are stacked and tied-down on the left, and all of the ‘top’ rack pieces are stacked on the right -
Thanks guys. I see how it works now. Being probably 800+ miles from any railcars loaded with autoparts, I’m none too familiar with the ins and outs of it.
it was nice to catch the auto parts train sometimes it was a pain to be waiting for it. We use to have the ford train when ford threw thier weight around and said its gonna cost and we wanna know why this train is late, people took notice of the delays and even went as far as having trainmasters and roadforman ride the train to do paperwork if the train was involved in a crossing accident, so their be no delay waiting on a official to show up. when that train was late you could be at coapman yard ( east side , ghetto, east.st.louis) ready to run and going home and if that train was late they would run you 27 miles to the first siding at new baden and sit til that train went by. up to 6 hrs sometimes. nobody held up the ford train.
I’m thinking/ wondering how much these cars and a cut or train of them weighed when loaded ?
Guessing at 12 frames per stack at 4 stacks per car = 48 frames at 2,000 lbs. each (also guessed) =96,000 lbs. or 48 tons, plus the car at 25 tons or so = 73 tons, about 146,000 lbs., whereas other cars are easily 200K/ 100 tons and could go to 263K / 131.5 tons to 286K/ 143 tons.
Anybody with actual experience with them know the likely range of weights ? Thanks in advance !
Paul, each of those stack layers consists of two frames, not one. So there are 96, or possibly 104, frames per car.
The tare weight of the cars (which includes the racks, tiedowns, boxes, and all of the other appurtenances), is somewhere between 32 and 35 tons (that’s the spread–not an estimate). These are nominally 70-ton cars, so they have a gross rail load of 220,000 pounds, meaning a load limit of 75 to 78 tons. I can’t remember what the gross weight of the cars I handled was, but I suspect that it wasn’t up to the gross rail load.
Paul there is 12 to a stack 2 wide and 4 deep total of 96 frames. and the frames are about a 1000 pounds a piece. and then the rest of your math is right, and let me also note that you have a very sharp brain when it comes to math, and figuring out problems
Now with that said could you do a pesky little job like balance the countrys budget and when you get that under controll then you conviced me that your great man and I would be proud to let you have a real problem and balance my budget !!!