What kind of car would be appropriate to use to transport taconite in the mid to late 1990s? I think a couple railroads still use ore jennies, but i’d prefer something that can be dual service (hauling coal north/ore south). Could Coalporters be used half filled? I don’t remember what they build those out of and whether or not it would react with taconite.
Most railroads used regular coal hopper cars for ore. Coalporters should work although I don’t know if any were used in that service. They are made of aluminum. I don’t think there would be any chemical reaction problems with the ore.
Doubtful that it would be realistic to use the same kind of car for coal and taconite. Coal is much less dense, and can be carried in a much larger car. Taconite needs to be loaded in small cars for that reason.
I remember reading that some railroads were experimenting using the same cars with coal one way and ore or taconite on the return trip to cut down on transporting empties. Unfortunately I don’t remember what equipment was used. I presume coal cars were used, but I don’t know how well an aluminum car would stand up to the punishment of loading and unloading of the dense taconite.
All of the coal -taconite moves I’ve seen have been in conventional 100 ton steel bottom dump hoppers. The cars aren’t even half loaded, there is a about a 1/4 load by volume in them because they are loaded by weight, not volume. Coal is relatively lite and taconite is heavy.
The cars have to be cleaned between trips. Taconite in a coal plant messes up the crushers.
Dave H.
I am old enough to remember seeing real ore jennies hauling real ore, but by the 1960s that was pretty rare. When taconite pellets became the norm, they built extenders on the jennies because the capacity was a bit greater. When looking at a steel hopper hauling pellets it is surprising sometimes how small the piles look compared to loaded coal. Those old jennies were for some reason extremely noisy cars. And the air brake hoses were elevated which gave them a unique look.
As to coalporters were those the multiple unit, four axle cars that the BN used? I think something like 14 such small cars were semi-permanently linked not coupled. Trains ran a PR photo or two but that was before MWH’s time.
By the way about 10 yrs ago on the Peoria & Pekin Union (just taken over by the G&W – goodbye old “PeePoo”) in Peoria I saw really old and noisy ore jennies used – to haul bales of steel wire! Loaded to the gills and above. So there’s your prototype if you like the cars but cannot think of a routing on your layout that would involve taconite or ore.
Dave Nelson
This was one of my main concerns other than chemical reactions.
The B&LE did make extensive use of jennies up until the late 60s.
I’ll definitely check this article out. My college’s library has subscribed to Trains for decades, so I shouldn’t have any trouble finding a copy.
They’re those things that are either tall gondolas or hoppers without doors that have to be rotary dumped. Johnstown America Bethgon Coalporter is the full name I think. I don’t feel right calling them gondolas or hoppers, so I just say what the manufacturer says.
I was hoping that I could be able to double the usage of a set of cars to save me some money and not have to buy a bunch of high side gondola/doorless hoppers/whatevers and a bunch of 100 ton hoppers. I suppose I could have 1/2 my fleet be 100 ton hoppers and rationalize it that for every load of ore south, there’s two loads of coal north.
THanks for the help.
Does anyone have a photo which they can post showing an ore jenny?
[?]
For modeling the taconite and coal loads, you could have a removable coal load on top with the smaller taconite piles underneath. This also gives you a good place to add some weight.
I can’t think of any good pictures of prototype ore jennies off the top of my head, but you can get a bunch of pictures of the models if you go www.walthers.com and do a search (most listings have a link to pictures of the model; try searching for “ore” under the freight car category).
Isambard,
Here’s a link to a Google search which turned up a few photos of jennies (Guess they weren’t named after Sir Winston’s wife, eh ?):
http://search.earthlink.net/search?q=ore+jenny&area=earthlink-ws
You’ll have to scroll past the gondolas. It also turned up a few article references which leads me to ask if you’ve done a search at the Index of Magazines ?
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
Why didn’t I think of Google, since I use it daily? “If you can’t find it via Google it probably doesn’t exist”. Yes, the Index of Magazines is useful, subject to waiting for reprints?
Winston’s wife was Clementine Hossier, his mother Jenny Jerome , an American from Brooklyn (I verified via Googling [:D])
The steel Jenny’s look like successors to the wood sided ore cars of the early 1900’s. Therefore too late an era for the Kingdom Copper Mine, which is buying a string of the Tichy wood sided cars for hauling ore from Kingdom on a branch line of the Grizzly Northern.
[:)]
Isambard,
The Tichy kits are nice. Have you also considered the Mann’s Creek hoppers from the Model Railroad Warehouse ?
http://www.mrrwarehouse.com/
Sorry about the generation gap in my memory.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
I’ve read that when New York had an iron industry, the D&H used coal hoppers for shipping coal north & ore south. The higher density of the ore made it necessary to only fill a hopper a fraction of its capacity.
Wayne
Bob:
Thanks, I wasn’t aware of the Mann’s Creek hoppers, which look pretty interesting, but a bit pricey compared to Tichy’s, particularly when converted to Canadian dollars.
The Churchill catch was easy as I’m a bit of a history buff.
[:)]
Isambard