While railfanning last Saturday, I spotted this hopper. The notice on the side is a new one for me as I’ve never seen it before. Anyone care to offer an explaination of “UNLOAD THIS SIDE ONLY” on a hopper.
It’s undoubtedly related to the location of the unloading pipe.
Could be because they don’t want hoses putting stress on the piping, or because they don’t want the hoses running under the car.
Maybe they’ve had a problem with cars being moved while still hooked up.
Looks like the discharge piping is on this side only. I would assume that they don’t want someone to attempt to connect a hose to the output by bending the hose into a 180° turn, possibly kinking the hose or applying too much bending pressure on the discharge piping.
Oops, I see Tree got his answer posted before I got my computer straightened out to let me click the button!
At least we agreed!
Not sure what the prodct that is hauled on this style of car,{ which would account for the warning printed on its side} but you see that similar ‘body style’ of hopper out here.
The markings are 'FUREX" on some of them.
Another question might be: If a car assigned to a delivery location arrives there to be delivered; and it would need to be turned so it could be unloaded. Would there be a charge by the delivering railroad, to address the car’s “unloading” warning?
NLSX: National Starch & Chemical (owned by Corn Products International)
If you look, you can see both ends of this cylindrical hopper are stenciled “This end in first or this end lead into Painsville Ohio plant”, and the other end “This end in first Lubrizol plant Deer Park Texas”.
Your car is not all that uncommon…with this particular car, the product is a fine almost talc dry product, and the plant where it is unloaded, Delta Deer Park, is inside the Lubrizol plant, Delta products is a subsidiary of Lubrizol….the produce comes from another Lubrizol subsidiary, and both need the discharge chutes facing a particular direction, the product is so fine and powdery, any sharp bend in the unloading pipes will cause it to pack up.
Under normal circumstances it would make no difference which way the car faces, you can run flex pipe under it to the other side, but this product will not flow through flex pipe.