Hello,
Just a quick question, I’ve seen a couple of coil cars around lately and I know they hold coils, but what on earth are coils?
How do they fit and load into the coil cars, and why are they covered?
Thanks,
Macguy
Sheet steel, rolled into coils.
Sheets are about three to four feet wide, about 30 feet long, light gauge up to 1/4" thick, rolled length ways, or coiled.
You can get four or five per car.
Covered because this steel is going to be re-processed into other things, and keeping it covered lessens the rusting.
Of course, you’ve seen the slab steel shipped on flats, and the coils of wire steel, in gons?
Wire steel is just that, steel made into 1/4" wire, then rolled into big loops.
It too is re-processed into other steel products, as are the steel balls you see shipped in open gons.
From 1" to 4" steel balls, look just like cannon balls, but are shaped that way because it is easier to ship them, you can fill a gon with them using a chute.
Just like the coil steel, its easier to fashion the raw steel into this shape, and easier to ship it, than making it into flat sheets, which require a flat car, and special storage and unloading facilities.
Ed
Wow thanks Ed, if all they are is rolled up steel why don’t they just put them in boxcars?
Are they too big to get in the door, or to heavy for a regular boxcar?
Weight, and the loading and unloading aspect.
With the coil cars, all you need is a fork lift, or front end loader.
Boxcar would require you to manuver the steel through the door…
The ball steel can be unloaded with a electro magnet, just dip it in the gon.
Wire steel is unloaded with a fork lift also.
It boils down to the easiest way to load and unload.
Ed
Thanks agian Ed, now I know what they are all about the next time I see one!
[:)]
I will see if I can get a photo of one with the cover off, it will all make sense when you see how the steel coil sits in the car.
Imagine a roll of steel, sitting in a cradle, with the hole in the center of the coil on axis with the center line of the car.
Ed
Still got photos of what a coil of steel on a semi does to the nose of an SD40-2 when they meet at 25MPH at Pittsburg, CA (Took a big can opener to the nose of the engine as in “ouch”)
the place where we take the coils of steel is loaded and unloaded by cranes. its faster and easier. never seen a steel company load a boxcar of coils before
Actually, coils can be loaded into box cars…B&O had an entire series of cars for tin plate loading, and those were rolls, too. The doors of the cars were well off center, because that was the design proven to be best for forklifts to work with. These coils obviously weren’t as heavy as a steel coil.
If you ever see steel coils being shipped by truck, you’ll notice that there’s only one coil on the bed, with plenty of tires to hold it up. As Ed said, a car built specifically for coils only holds about four or five of them.
Many of the newer coil cars hold the coils transversely, rather than with the axis parallel to the length. UP rebuilt a bunch of flat cars and put full-width hoods on them to make it more efficient to handle the smaller-sized coils. These might be small enough for a forklift to handle, so being abel to get at them from the side of the car might be advantageous (they’d still need a crane to lift the hoods off, though, so I’m not sure about this). Conrail’s newer coil cars, with covers of a much lower profile, also haul the coils transversely.
And in response to Mudchicken’s comment, it was an improperly-tied-down coil that broke loose when the South Shore commuter train hit the truck at high speed, and killed four people, a few years back. I am pretty sure the electric coach had to be completely replaced. I’d vent at the dopey truck driver again, but he was already punished for his crimes (plural intentional in this case), and I’m not interested in another grade-crossing horror-story thread.
Carl,
We get some of UP’s rebuilt flats down here all the time, they are pretty stout.
Never seen one with the hood off, so I assumed the coils were loaded like normal, just real big coils.
But it makes more sense to arrange them so you can get to the center hole from the side of the car, so…
Will try to get a peek next chance.
I like rideing them though, the have big porches on each end.
Ed
Having grown up in the Calumet region, I can remember the earliest versions of coil cars, which were gondolas with hoods. Coils are quite heavy, so specialized equipment with reinforced frames and cushioned underframes was not long in coming.
What’s interesting is the AAR classification for these cars. I’ve seen virtually identical coil cars classified as either FMS or GBSR, and listings in an old copy of the Railway Equipment Register don’t provide any help in explaining the differences between the classes.
I’ve also noticed that when coils are loaded in conventional gondolas, they are placed near the ends over the trucks, probably to avoid bending the underframe.
If you got 2 coils you load them with one at each end above the trucks. If you got 3 coils you add the third to the middle of the car, 4 coils = 2 at each end above the tucks, ths is mostly due to ride quality. I’ve seen shifted loads where most of the coils have workd themselves towards the middle of the car or all near one end. I’ve also seen coils being loaded in convensional box cars, coils don’t take up much space inside a 50 foot box but they sure are heavy.
…Remember not too many years ago in the Chicago Met.area…I believe…There was an accident of a passenger rail car being smashed with a coil loaded on a truck at a crossing but sitting across the tracks and the impact drove the steel coil back through the passenger car and severe injuries and fatilities were the result.
Did you see something like this? There are also covered versions.
Hi all,
I just wanted to add my [2c] as I am a design engineer working in the automotive industry. The coils of steel can range from 0.020” thick to 0.5” thick. Most common is 0.028 to 0.080 thick. The ID of the coil is 20” to 24” and standard OD is 60” to 72”. Max weight of the coil is 40,000#. This is why an overhead crane is the preferred method of loading and unloading the coils. If you use a fork life, it must have a counter weight greater than it is lifting on the back of it.
If you ship these coils by semi-tuck, you can ship only one per truck.
These are like a roll of aluminum foil, only much biger.
tom
No, the one that I saw almost looked like a tanker, but it was shorter and flater.
It was on the very end of a BC Rail freight train heading through squamish.
Carl,
I believe the C&O built a few “coil” cars at the Raceland shops.
I had a friend that worked there,and had a "cover"brought home,
as you will,and with the addition of a ‘door’,used it for storage.
I remeber once while workng in a rr yard many years ago we would once in a while get a missrouted loaded covered coil car come to us (destination number was similar to ours) and the yard engineer didnt know what was in these odd cars (we sent them back without ever opening them of course) but he said " whatever it is they sure are heavy."
Modelcar, the wreck you mentioned was the South Shore one I described earlier; it took place in Burns Harbor, Indiana.
When I was in Saukville, WI a few weeks ago, I drove by the Charter Steel plant thats in their industrial park and they had loaded rolls of steel wire on to what look like box cars with out the sides( all there was, was the front and rear sides with a roof). Pretty neat. Anyone know what kind of cars I am talking about? The cars were loaded half way up with this wire. The wire kinda reminded me of rebar. The load was untarped at the time I saw it. Seeing that Charter has stacks and stacks of steel wire housed outside, they probably dont need to tarp the load.
As for trucks, most steel coils loaded on flatbeds are loaded “suicide” style. Nothin is gonna stop a steel coil once it starts to go.