Are coke trains lighter than coal assuming same number of hopper cars?
ed
To answer the question directly, a coke train would be lighter using the same number of cars. Assuming the same cars are used for incoming coal and outgoing coke (lighter than the coal it was made from) then, more cars will be needed to move the tonnage. The alternative is to partially fill larger cubic capacity coke hoppers/gons with coal. This practice is as old as railroading. When more iron ore was being used by the steel industry than is now the case, most railroads loaded ore into coal hoppers with the result that the cars looked empty, but were filled to the weight limits of the car. Then, after unloading the ore at a steel mill, the cars would go to nearby coal mines, be loaded with coal that went to a great lakes port, to be unloaded and then filled with ore. Coke traffic worked the same way if a backhaul was practical.
Thanks.
Just heard a CSX coal train and then a coke train hit the scanner. The coal train had 126 cars and the coke train had 132. Neither of these facts would mean anything independently, but I sorta figured the coke would be lighter based on the axle counts and the method of manufacturing coke.
ed
It really would be hard to tell without seeing the trains themselves. If the coke train had some of CSX’s “Coke Express” hoppers, there would be a greater volume of commodity hauled per car, and the weight might come pretty close.
But, if the same hoppers are used for coke as for coal, the tonnage on the coal train would be greater.