I was looking at Scaletrains, and I see some carbon black covered hoppers. I have never heard of these. Can I get some information on them.
What exactly is carried in them, what industries do they serve, etc.
Hi Michael,
This will answer some of your questions:
Carbon black -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_black
Carbon black is commonly used to tint paint. Many years ago I was the manager of the Paint Dept. (among others) in Sears Canada’s Chatham store. One morning I came into work to discover that the carbon black tint had leaked out of the paint tinting machine. I quickly got to work mopping up the considerable sized puddle of thick black stuff. Without thinking, I flushed all of the mess down the drain in the utility room. A couple of hours later a couple of city employees showed up demanding to know what we had put down the drain. Apparently there was enough carbon black to discolour the water in the sanitary sewer system! I got a bit of a lecture, but ultimately they decided to let it go (just don’t do it again!!!).
Fortunately carbon black is fairly harmless. Had it been the yellow oxide tint, the fines would have been in the thousands of dollars!
Dave
I worker in Reactive Injection Moulding department of GM Oshawa. We made bumper fascias (for GM cars). To provide ultra violet protection to the parts in case they got scratched part of the formulation was powdered Carbon Black in polyol. Polyol was a major component of the parts.
The stuff we used came in pre mixed in 55 gallon (US measure) drums.
I believe but do not know that Carbon Black is finely ground graphite. This then can be mixed with liquids for various purposes. Or mixed with a binder to produce pencil lead.
This is my thoughts, not perfect knowledge.
So hopper cars would carry the stuff from where it was ground, to where it was treated in the next step.
Tire manufacturers used lots of carbon black in the manufacturing of vulcanized rubber. 70% of carbon black production goes into automobile tire manufacture.
Carbon_ccx by Edmund, on Flickr
I bought a couple of the carbon black hoppers because I thought they were neat.
Cheers, Ed
This kit, from Rail Shop Inc., caught my eye because it had a BLT. date of 1934, making it quite suitable for my late '30s-era layout…
Carbon black is produced by the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products, such as tar.
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
That is the current method of producing carbon black, but according to Wikipedia, there have been other somewhat interesting methods used in the past to produce several different types of carbon black. ‘Ivory black’ was produced by charring ivory or bones! ‘Vine black’ was made by burning desiccated grape vines and stems. ‘Lamp black’ was made by collecting the soot from oil lamps.
Also according to Wikipedia, carbon black is a huge industry. In 2016, at total of 13.9 million metric tons was produced with an estimated value of $14 billion USD.
I remember my grandparents using ‘stove black’ to keep the big wood stove in the farmhouse kitchen looking spiffy. It was basically the same thing with something added to make it a bit waxy.
Interesting stuff!
Dave
Used to live outside San Antonio way back in the 60s and we would drive down to the coast (Padre and Matagordo Islands) for a day at the beach. As you neared the coast, there were long strings of carbon black LOs on sidings. Apparently, the oil industry there provided the raw materials and it was a fairly big industry.
As a industry idea. Swan Hose recieved carbon black in those hoppers.
Swan Hose made rubber and plastic garden hose as well as automotive hoses.
I will also suggest this would be a perfect industry along the backdrop using two Walthers Bud’s Trucking building with added silos from Walthers Plastic pellet Transfer kit.
IMHO those are beautiful cars that deserves a well designed industry.
Thanks for the great info I learned something new today .I knew about tires but not paint.
Carbon black cars are very commonly seen in the yard at Galesburg IL mainly because there is a major user right there in Galesburg, Gates Rubber. I think their main product is rubber hoses. So you get good side views of the cars when they are parked near a public road at Gates, and great overhead views from the bridge over the yard at Galesburg. They are interesting and distinctive and somewhat menacing looking cars.
I believe there is also a customer in nearby Peoria IL. For those reasons carbon black cars would be a very appropriate freight train load for BNSF trains heading toward Galesburg, which is still pretty much a hub of the BNSF as it was the BN and CB&Q.
I have read that due to the cost of petroleum byproducts there is some move to replace traditional carbon black with bio-char. Whether that has the same beneficial properties for rubber as carbon black I do not know.
Dave Nelson
Ink, tires, hoses, belts, pencil lead, paint,plastics, and lubricants such as lock ease use carbon black. There are quite a bit more that I can’t remember right off the top of my head. Very useful product for industry. Very nasty to work with in fine powder form.
Thank you everyone for all the great info on these cars.
I actually have an unamed industry on my new layout. This is lower left near the door entrance duckunder.
I think I can fit the Walthers Magic Pan Bakery kit here, and make it Gates rubber. https://www.walthers.com/magic-pan-commercial-bakery-kit-16-x-8-x-3-1-2-quot-40-6-x-20-3-x-8-8cm?ref=1
We have a Gates Rubber here in Denver too!
Getting pretty hard to tell the model from the real thing anymore.
Both Minitrix and Aurora did the same carbon black hopper in N scale.
The wheels on the real ones aren’t “chromed”. My first step of ownership with any locomotive or rolling stock is weathered code 88 wheels, second is Kadee 153 or if necessary, 156 couplers.
I presume you are refering to my photo above?
One of my favorite reasons for participating in the forum here is all the helpful information and advice offered.
Sometimes I take a few photos of equipment as it comes out of the box. That’s the case in the first photo I posted. Sure, I’m not a big fan of chrome plated wheel centers but sometimes it takes a while to get around to painting or in some cases, as you suggest, replacing wheelsets.
I certainly did [eventually] paint the wheels on my carbon black cars but neglected to get any recent photos of them. I often do my weathering in batches of fifty cars or so at a time. Just haven’t gotten around to these yet.
Carbon_2b by Edmund, on Flickr
I hope this is a reasonable compromise. Thanks for your suggestion!
Regards, Ed
lol damn rivet counters.
Ed, my comment was intended to remind those who strive for realism and buy high end cars to not forget that weathering goes from roof to railhead. There are many otherwise excellent models that look great except for the gleaming wheel faces. If I offended you, I apologize.
I modified this covered hopper from a Funaro & Camerlengo Carbon Black hopper car kit.
I replaced the round roof hatches with square, and built new discharge gates for it. Now it hauls a different unspecified specialized commodity.
-Kevin
I recall when many modellers were converting to metal wheels for their supposedly superior rolling qualities (it’s determined more by the interface between the axles’ ends and the pockets in which they rotate) and many seemed to leave them unpainted, almost like a “look what I’ve got” statement.
While I do have some cars with metal wheels, just because that’s what came in the kit, I’m not overly fond of them, as the shiny treads are a somewhat similar boast from the wheels of “look how unprototypically wide my wheel treads are, and likewise for the truck sideframes in which we’re rolling…”. A friend uses the code 88 wheels, but they do emphasise the overly wide sideframes, meant to accommodate the overly wide wheels, whether metal or plastic.
Were there an easy way to have actual to-scale wheel widths for steam locomotives, I might have converted to Proto 87 standards, but it’s a little late in the game, and I’ve too many locos and cars that would need to be converted.
The majority of my rolling stock was bought used, and most of it still has the original plastic wheelsets - mostly free-rolling, not as noisy as metal, and all of them painted - fronts and backs and axles, too.
The issue of them being the cause of dirty track hasn’t played out for me at all, as the only time I clean track is either after ballasting or after applying scenic materials trackside, usually due to overspray of the wet water and the resultant spread of copious amounts of diluted white glue.
When I got into this hobby, pretty-well all the locomotives and many of the cars had brass wheels, and when Delrin wheels in Delrin sideframes appeared on the scene, most modellers were quick to embrace them for their free-rolling qualities.
Wayne