In the latest issues of trains mag, it mentions the first covered hoppers to be used for grain service were the ribbed-side 4700+ cubic hoppers and ACF’s 4600+ centerflows. What about the earlier 3 bay covered hoppers like the PS2 2893 and 3000-4000 cu ft? These were introduced in the 1950s and early 60s. Before the 4600+ centerflows, ACF had the 3500+ 3 and 6 bay cylindrical hoppers. Were any of these used for grain too, or just denser materials and plastics? It’s also interesting though Southern’s Big John had 4 bays, most covered hoppers for grain service are 3 bay. Other than Big John, most 4 bay covered hoppers are used for plastic and are 5000-5500 cu ft, though some are used for grain too. I assume most grain transports in the 1960s was still done by boxcars? Southern made a big effort with Big Johns, and by the mid-1960s, Great Northern had the slogan “Grain Loading” stenciled on their 3-4 bay covered hoppers.
There were a lot of 4000 cf covered hoppers in grain service. The 2893 cf cars were not set up with a centerline ‘trough’ and this made loading cumbersome. That and the fact that most grain elevators were not set up for loading covered hoppers made sales slow. As new elevators were built with loading facilities for covered hoppeers, sales took off. Some older ‘country’ elevators were converted to handle the new cars, but many times the trackage on the siding or the branchline had trouble handling these heavy cars.
In the early 70’s there still was a lot of grain loading that used 40’ box cars. By the late 70’s, most of the grain loading here in the Upper Midwest was using covered hoppers. The current trend is to build massive ‘shuttle’ elevators that load out large 100 car trains in 1-3 days.
Jim
Some of this is a little too esoteric for me to follow and understand the details, but here are a couple of broader thoughts:
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Southern Railways’ “Big John” was an early to mid-1960’s innovation, before big and heavy welded rail was common. Accordingly, it - and the others referenced above from back then - may have been designed to stay within a load limit that today we would view as fairly light - hence affecting their overall size and number of hoppers, etc. I’m not that familiar with gross car weight limits from back then - maybe 220,000 lbs. = 110 tons ? - for a normal tare of 30 - 40 tons, and a payload of 70 to 80 tons, as a guess;
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Note the technological and economic aspects here of the “Which comes first - the chicken-or-the-egg ?” progression, and the necessity for what we now call “backwards compatibility” in the meantime to work with the existing shippers that hadn’t upgraded yet. Very briefly, it seems that the cars advanced a little bit first, then the elevators accomodated that, then the cars changed more, and now the elevators are changing radically to accomodate the new cars and shuttle trains. I believe the current issue of Trains on “Grain” has a couple of articles that address this. Jim may be able to add some more insight on this as well.
- Paul North.
The “Big John” covered hoppers were built of aluminum (which explains why they’ve held up so well–thicker sides and still lighter tare weight), and had a nominal capacity of 100 tons. I’m not sure that the gross rail load was 263K back when they were built, but I doubt that these cars could have been limited to 220K. Cubic capacity was very high for their day–varieties ranged from around 4700 cubic feet to over 5300 (not all Big Johns were created equal, apparently).
Back to the original question, I suspect but can not prove that the smaller cars you asked about were “70 ton” cars. BN predecesors each had some car type C4, as compared with 100 ton C6. These were nominal 70 ton cars with about 154,000 pound capacities as of the early 1980’s. Remember there was an increase in gross weight allowed for all journal sizes in the early to mid 1960’s if I recall the date correctly.
In general hopper and tank cars are built as small as possible to minimize tare weight so they can haul as much as possible. The problem is that bulk density varies between products, wheat is heavier than corn. The perfect wheat car is smaller than the perfect corn car but you do not want to load corn in the wheat car because it will be short by weight. Most grain cars are sized for ligher corn or barley, and not loaded cubic full for wheat. The flexibilty of a single fleet is more economically attractive than having two “perfect” fleets.
Sand is so dense that it makes sense to build smaller cube car for it. If a car is to be in private service like plastic, which is lighter than grain, you build a bigger car and lease it to the plastic maker. Again the perfect car for the product. The plastic car is in captive service and the plastic car has different unloading fixtures than a grain car.
The devil is in the details.
Mac
To add to Mac’s comments, wheat tares out and cubes out in a 4750 cube, 286K Trinity car, whereas corn tares out and cubes out in a 5161 cube, 286K Trinity car. There are some 4750 cube 286K Trinity cars out there in the fleets, but they’re a definite minority.
Weren’t there some 90-ton, 255K early P-S covered hoppers for grain?
RWM
Found by Google Books - an excerpt from Cargill: Going Global by Wayne G. Broehl, Published by UPNE, 1998, ISBN 0874518547, 9780874518542, 419 pages, which states (pg. 83, top) that the most common size of the “Big John” hoppers was 4,713 cu. ft. capacity, 57,500 lbs. (28.5 tons) tare, 223,000 lbs. (111.5 tons) payload, approx. 280K lbs. (140 tons) gross weight.
I’m a little surprised at that last number - seems large, considering that it’s just recently that a lot of lines have been upgraded for 286K cars.
- Paul North.
If thay were made of alumanum that means that thay were lighter than most stell hoppers right?
Yes, aluminum cars are lighter than steel cars of the same size. That’s why most unit coal trains today use aluminum cars: they haul more coal per car (the load limit and cubic capacity are both larger than they would be for a steel car), and still keep the total weight within the allowable limits.
I happened to be helping at South Raub elevator when the local on the Monon dropped 4 factory fresh Big Johns for us to loadwith corn, destination,Early&Daniel Elevator Louisville, Ky. They were filled full! Well dont you know the owner-manager recieved a nasty, nasty call from the car dispatcher at Lafayette---dont load them that heavy next time!!! I think we just filled each pair of openings at the ends after that. Often wondered where they were built.
Paul,
I too think the 220,000 net for Big Johns is too high since the axle limit in that era was 263,000# on four axles. I have an old ad that shows CAPY 200000, LD LMT 207,000. I can not read LT WT but it should be 56,000. The tare is consistent with your post and the load limit on this random car SOU 8582, is consistent with 263,000 gross.
For comparison a 4750 cuft steel car runs 62,000 to 63,000 tare and 201,000 to 200,000 net.
The Big John was competing against box cars with 55 ton capacity. Southern could cut the per ton/bushel rate almost in half and still have the same revenue per car. Better would be hold the rate and take a big improvement to your margin. In fact the boxcar rates were not moving the traffic. Southern had to cut the rate per ton/bushell to get the traffic off the road and river. Those whose ox was so gored went to the ICC to put a stop to this unseemly behavior. The Southern fought all the way to the Supreme Court (twice IIRC). Some claim that the farce of a regulatory agency telling the railroad it could not lower prices was the begining of the end of the ICC as we knew it.
In hardware terms the Big John was evolutionary. In economic terms it was revloutionary, but that only because Bill Brosnan of the Southern fought the bastards all the way.
Mac
Well said. That basically is the story of the evolution of the Canadian grain elevator.
AgentKid
Thanks - you’re welcome.
And for everyone - see also the other short thread I started this morning, re: “Southern Rwy.'s “Big John” Grain Hopper Capacity”, at:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/149780/1658838.aspx#1658838
- Paul North.
The grain issue was one of the better ones produced in quite awhile. I’m only half done reading it but this will be worth keeping around and not tossing or giving it away like so many others. Being a resident of KS, I certainly can relate to much what has thus been reported. Every yr since 1998, more grain produced in KS is hauled to market by truck than rail. This is the shipments coming out of the hundreds of small COOP elevators in every section of the state. Many of these locations no longer have rail service. My parents live one block from a flour mill w/ a elevator of 5M bu storage. Up till the early 90’s, most of the wheat came in by rail.Now 90% of wheat arrives by semi truck. Most of this wheat is local grown within 25 miles. With the loss of area shortlines that shutdown several grain branches, this wheat at one time came in via ATSF but no more as the rails are long gone. Over the past couple wks, there has been a rush of inbound wheat to the mill. Instead of BNSF hauling this tonnage in, my parents have to look out their front door and all day long see a constant string of semi’s parked on the street in front of the house waiting to unload at the dumper