Hey, I’m an old fashioned guy. I liked it in the good ole days when model manufacturers listed the size of hoppers and tankers in prototype feet (32 ft or 60 ft). Now-a-days, it seems they have all gotten more “realistic” and list the capacity in tons or gallons. I understand several factors in addition to length affect capacity–width, height, shape, cargo density. But are there some rules of thumb to convert tons and gallons to feet?
Good question, they iritate me when they do that too. I want the prototype length, because it’s meaningful to me.[:(]
While I agree that the manufacturers should include length in the product information they provide, there is a joker in converting capacity to length - what product is being carried and how dense is it?
Iron ore fills a 24 foot car with more weight than a 36 foot coal hopper could handle (which is why coal hoppers loaded with iron ore just had little piles in the bottoms of each hopper.) On the other hand, a hi-cube covered hopper of corn or plastic pellets doesn’t carry much more weight than that ore car.
I remember a little, short tank car that was featured in one of the model mags not too long ago. It only carried a rather small volume of bromine, which is easily five times as dense as the usual contents of tank cars.
An 89-foot hi-cube filled with ping pong balls wouldn’t be carrying anything like the load of a standard AAR 40 foot box loaded with canned goods.
Yes, tell us the length, so we can tell if the train will fit between the clearance points of our sidings. Then tell us the capacity, so we can determine if we have enough horsepower and tractive effort on the head end to get it over the road.
this cannot be done unless you know the length and the radius of a vessel …the formula is pi (3.14) x radius x radius x length x 7.48 (gallons in a cubic ft.) = gal. capacity …what you will have to do is play with numbers…enter an imaginary length and a radius into the formula until you come up with a set of dimentions that will hold the capacity you are trying to find…to convert tons to feet uses the same formula except youll have to also multiply it by 8.34 (the weight of a gallon of water) x the specific gravity of what ever the substance is you are hauling divided by 2000 …chuck
Tank car gallons are calculated in gallons of water - not the commodity being carried since the same car can carry different commodities. Hoppers are correctly rated by cubic feet since the tonnage varies by commodity.