OK, I’ve been seeing more and more cars with the words “Do Not Hump!” emblazoned on the side of them, than I ever remember before. Some, such as the “waste water” tanker for work crew trains, or the specially configured cars designed to be linked together to carry new rail (which I guess applies if the cars are loaded, mostly) seem rather straight forward, and obvious, but I’ve been seeing some real puzzles too, such as plain vanilla looking gondolas, and covered hoppers, making me wonder why?
For you seasoned vets, from your experiances, what qualities in either cars, or the loads they carry, constitute definite “no-no” for the hump?
I think you got it when you said the load they carry. Some cars are in “captive service” going back and forth from the same shipper/consignee pairs all the time. If the load they are always carrying is not shock-proof, it would make sense to label that car.
Anybody who loads a car can put a “Do not hump” placard on the car. That doesn’t mean we’ll abide by it.
What can and cannot be humped is generally determined by the individual railroad, or even by the management at the specific yard. There are some cars, such as the glass-lined tank cars for refrigerated ethylene, that cannot be humped, loaded or empty. There are also regulations (Federal, I believe) about not humping (or kicking) cars in certain categories, depending on the color or design of the placard and the type of car or container on which it’s applied.
At my local humping operation, we do not hump flat car loads of large combines, automobiles (wink, wink), or shiftable loads of steel (again, wink). Hazardous loads are given extra time for proper handling. Like Ed said in Mookie’s thread about LP gas, we hump these “bombs” all the time, and there’s very little to worry about. There are other types of cars, far less hazardous, that I’d rather refrain from humping because of what they can do to a yard or a track.
A lot is up to the individuals doing the work. Just because some of the restrictions on paper are often winked at, it doesn’t mean that the cars are handled carelessly. Our track record is pretty good overall, and we do well when compared to other yards (which are supposedly far more sophisticated) on our railroad. And we don’t have one poor railroad’s record…a couple of weeks ago I heard from a source that should be reliable that General Motors (the number one customer for many railroads) will not give any business to one particular railroad because of damages incurred in its yard(s). Things have supposedly changed on this railroad, but GM has a long memory, and probably won’t ship via this line for a long, long time.
I’ve seen “DO NOT HUMP” cars go over the hump including open end flat cars with pipe, steel plates and coils with all the coils ending up at one end of the gon and open cars with wheels wich is against the rules. I’ve also seen cars been delivered with signs saying do not unload this side. I’ve seen boxcars with paper roles shifted so you can’t unload it because it’s so jammed you can’t get the first role out without destraying it AND the steel boxcar is busting at the seems from the 80 ton load shift. I’ve seen this in the past year and the boxcars looked old with no cusion draw gear!!
You know what else I even saw??? A loaded OPEN auto bilevel !! twice !!! I thought they were history.
Many years ago I saw a boxcar filled with windshields… all smash almost to pulp when the door was opened at the dock !!
Humping, kicking and switcing is a skill, that requires good judgement and practice to do it right… or else…
A lot of the intermodal cars have “Do Not Hump” written on the ends of them, I’ve been noticing that a lot of them are the new yellow TTX versions that are not supposed to be humped.
Apparently when you start getting the containers double stacked, humping isn’t too good an idea. I suppose you could kick it softly and have nothing happen, but you never really know.
Not only is it the type of lading, it also has to do with weight & Length. If it’s a small bowl and the retarders are no longer that great, cars have been known to roll out the other end in search of a derail with enough momentum (Speed x Mass) to hit. Short car long car coupling (bypass) and empties going airborne with help from the next load over the hump play into it as well.
I’m pretty sure my ex-wife had a ‘do not hump’ sign on her during the last days. OOPS! Wrong forum- I meant to post this in the ‘ex’s that cut you off at the hump’ forum! Darn keyboard!
Seriously though, it would take quite a large yard to hump a CWR cut wouldn’t it? How many places produce CWR? I’ve seen only one (on video) and can imagine with the hour of service law and all the CWR used that humping would be required. Or is CWR ‘on demand’ and transported as needed?
I remember an incident involving a flatcar with two 20’ containers that was marked DO NOT HUMP when I was working at the nuclear waste processing site. The car was humped and hit hard enough to shift the load in one of the containers enough to break open the doors. I can just imagine the yard crews faces finding a container marked radioactive with the doors broke open.
Fortunately it was a low level shipment and only required a light decon of the flatcar.
Never the less it was an ugly scene with the hazmat crew and the NRC involved. Lots of paperwork.
covered hoppers may have do not hump on them . and depending what is in them would tell me if i would do it or not. corn wheat flour not a problem but if it has trichloralisanuric acid in them ( un 2468 ) i would couple at speed only nessesary to make the coupling.
The ICC in the past, and probably the FRA now regulate what can and cannot be hump switched. In general anything that is explosively loaded such as rocket motors, missiles, or material which could be dangerous if subjected to excessive shock must be flat switched and at the lowest speed that will allow a coupling to be made.
I was involved in evaluating the shock and vibration resistance of military equipment for many years during my professional career, and among other things, our test programs included shock and vibration tests to simulate transportation. Considering all modes of transportation shock, the railroad’s transportation shock environment is the most severe, most likely due to the possibility the shipment might switched by humping. In general our test requirements included shock due to humping unless it was definitely known that the equipment’s shipping requirements precluded hump switching.
Trainguy,
Most likely, the hopper with the red end was a aluminum coal car, or a BethGon, the red end designates the rotary coupler end.
You dont hump them or kick them very hard(at least one wink here) because if loaded, the impact can do a lot of damage to the car when the coal slams into the end…or spills over and makes a mess.
This, of course, is not from personal experience, uhhh, I saw someone else do it.
It would seem, from a layman’s perspective, that with more railcar design trends going towards specialized and unit loads that are less tolerable of hump switching that the hump yard would become a liability vice an asset. Bethgons and other aluminum hoppers, spine and well cars, Automax’s…etc all not very forgiving of rough handling. Plus, it would seem that the point to point service would eliminate the need to sort as much as in the past.
We’ve had no problems humping any of the cars you mentioned, Dan (of course, if the Auto-Max cars are loaded, we don’t hump them [;)]). Proper loading and load securement is the key.
I didn’t know that auto racks were humped. I guess I figured they would be handled…more gently I guess. And I’m looking at this from purely an inquistive standpoint. It would seem that stacks wouldn’t be 1) because they wouldn’t seem to be sorted as often, with the IMs going more point to point, and 2) the second storey being only pinned to the container below it…it would seem like a lot of unneccessary force on the load. And the coal porters and such being aluminum and more of a point to point also. The trend in building it seems is moving towards specialty cars, vice general freight boxcars. I guess I would have thought that hump yards would be on the decline. This is good info. Thanks
I was working a hump job years ago. The first job of the morning, we went down into the yard and coupled to a track to switch. The conductor got off the engine and started back, but something was wrong. There was water standing over the rails several cars away, and a low hanging fog over it. But there hadn’t been any rain, and the air smelled kind of sweet. He went back just enough to see what it was, and we skeedadled. The last move of the night switcher was to drop a car into that other track. They didn’t watch it, and when it hit, it climbed up over the coupler of a dangerous tank. The result was a drawhead buried in the end of a tank of acid. MAN! I’ve never seen the environmental gestapo jump so fast…they came out of nowhere right now! Needless to say, the night crew got a nasty phone call to disturb their sleep…{It could have been much worse, but the limestone ballast actually neutralized a lot of the acid.} BTW, I think this was before shelf couplers, so when, about 1911?
Let me break it to you gently ToyomanTrains…we also gottum Hot Box Detectors and dragging equipment detectors[:-,]…Now PLEASE go wash your mind out with soap and water , then go appologize to the ex… Savvy - rockhopper?