How heavy are these cars, alone? Are they ballasted to purposefully offset potential top heavy situations?
I was watching a long string of what I suspect were empty containers headed back west, and the thought that occured to me is what ideal wind sails those cars would be in a good storm.
The other side to that being, unnecessary weight when loaded, equals lost fuel economy.
53’ wells generally have a light weight of about 45,000 lbs per platform, while 40’ wells have a light weight of about 35,000 lbs. Thus, a 3-pack of 53’s would have a light weight of around 135,000 lbs, while a 5 pack of 40’s would have a light weight of about 175,000 lbs.
http://www.gbrx.com/page.php?view=STACK_CARS
For comparison, spine cars generally have a light weight of 30,000 lbs per platform. The single axle TTOX cars had a light weight of about 25,000 lbs per platform.
http://www.freightcar.com/capital_equipment/intermodal_cars.php
One thing I have recently noticed that, while there is a little lock that locks the top container to the bottom one, there is no lock to lock the container to the well car - just a pin, or a spring-loaded cog that doesn’t lock, so that the container can be pulled up and out. Boggles my mind, but this works thousands of times a day, so I guess the sail area is not much of a problem when you’re dealing with a container that weighs several tons on its own.
…Whatever kinds of locks they are, what I don’t understand how they can stack them 4 and 5 high on the deck of a ship and not have them topple over in a very rough sea condition. Plus the wind blowing agains them at times.
Lots of cables in an X pattern. plus they fall overboard quite often[:)]
Kurt
question regarding strange equipment found on a 5 pack of bnsf well cars. On the top of the truck sideframe on the truck shared by the D and E wells was a contraption. This contraption had a arm that rested on the top of the trucks sideframe and than attached to a box on the end of the car. On the top of the part on the car was a round device with a hole in the end that seemed to have air piped to it like it was some sort of a horn… This was on a car that had just landed at wellington ks for a crew swap so I did not get a real close look at it. If i had to quess at its purpose it would be some sort of a warning device that the car was tipped, but I have never heard one of these go off if they do have a sound, nor have I ever read about such a device.
thank you
Sorry I took so long to answer this question, but I walked my train last night in the yard to see what you were talking about. The car you saw has truck-mounted brakes (in other words, the brakes have an air piston mounted on the truck next to the wheels that directly presses a brake shoe to the wheel, rather than having the piston mounted beneath the car body and pressing on the brake shoe using a linkage). The arm you saw connects to the brake piston, and the other end sticks straight up for about 3 feet, and is connected to a chain. This chain runs to the end of the car, and is attached to the HANDBRAKE wheel. This arm you speak of is the linkage that allows the handbrake to control the car’s brakes.
The little “horn” you speak of… I’m guessing it was about 3 inches across, and very “shallow” (like less than an inch deep). This isn’t a noisemaking device - there’s no way anyone could hear this in the engine, especially if the train is 2 miles long. This is the exhaust from the air brake. There is usually a boxy sort of thing mounted on the truck that’s about10 inches on a side - this is the triple valve, that senses changes in air pressure of the brake line, and regulates the position of the brake cylinder. When the brakes need to be applied, this valve will let air out if the piston, allowing the piston to move and apply the brakes. The air bleeds out through the little “horn”, and when the engineer is doing his brake test, you may hear air hissing out of this thing. For more technical stuff, go to this link for more info:
Well during my recent W/coast railfan trip I saw some BNSF MT well car trains. I would estimate between 7 & 10 in total between Riverside & Daggett. The funny thing is one day while in E. Barstow I saw a EB MT well car train pass a WB MT well car train. Then when I moved to W. Barstow I watched as the BNSF moved a well car train from Central California to LAX at the SAME time a MT well car train has just passed me going EB coming from LAX. It made me wonder if the right hand of the BNSF knows what the left hand is doing when it comes to shuffling these MT well cars around