Saturday while at the train yard, I saw the rare sight three UPFE reefers that had high brake wheels coupled together. As a bonus, there was another one that was seperated by just one car. By the way, better get photographs of these types of car quick if you plan on phtographing any. Roofwalks were banned from new cars in 1965 or 1966, which is 40 or 39 years ago, so these cars will not be around for long.
I took a photograph of this, however I was afraid that it would be difficult to tell that all three reefers had high brake wheels. I finished the roll today and was pleasantly surprised to find that the brake wheels are clearly visible on all three.
Handled a old tank car today.
Built in 1956, it hauls anti knock compounds for gasoline.
Its been restenciled several times, so who knows what it hauled originaly.
Tiny, compared to a normal tankcar today.
Had the walkway all the way around the car, ends and sides, and you could see where it, at one time, had a staff brake.
It has benn modified several times now, has a Ajax brake wheel, and HiComp brake shoes instead of the old cast iron.
This thing is short enough that I could stand on the side walkway, and reach the manway cover.
It had a company name on it at one time, but it was painted over so often you cant really tell what it was…
ECDX 900 series? I will see one of those occasionally. I also will occasionally see some small tankcars in the GATX 300400 series. They are newer and carry something else, I suspect some type of refining catalyst. They are leased to Lubrizol.
Anti knock compounds for gasoline used to be hauled around in 8 axled tank cars !! More or less normal size (volume wise) but with 4 trucks under the car.
Does anyone ever see these in use anymore ? Or does anyone know wich cars I’m talking about ?
…I have seen tank cars pass through Muncie here on CSX, but probably more so when it was Conrail…with two trucks at each end occasionally. Tank being of normal size of what we’re used to seeing roughly.
And on the small and old tank units…like Ed might have been talking about…wasn’t the capacity of those just about 11,000 gal…I seem to remember that figure…
There have been tank cars as small as 4,000 gallons that I’ve handled. 11,000 would have been too big for Ed’s car; it probably would have been 4,000 or 6,000. I wish we had a number.
Anti-knock compound was definitely a candidate for transporting in those small cars. Go to a normal size and you need eight axles, as was mentioned above (no, I haven’t seen any of those, at least not recently). Ethyl Corporation (and Ethyl of Canada) used to have quite a fleet of small cars for that stuff, and DuPont owned and leased hundreds of tiny tanks (painted green and yellow) that carried their version of the compound. I used to see one or two of them at a time spotted at the Texaco refinery in Lemont, where it presumably was added to gasoline.
Well,
This one had a decal on the side,
“Gasoline anti-knock additives”
It might have been one of the old ECDX cars, I dont remember the repoting marks.
And it is captured service, it goes from Lubrizol to Shell and back all the time…only reason it ended up in North yard is because we were helping dig Pasadena yard out of the weeds and were doing some of their switching…
The only 8 axel tanks we see here are LPG or LNG tanks…big bombs on wheels…the little tank is the only one around here I have seen with the anti knock stuff…not to say other shippers dont use the big ones, just never seen one down here loaded with it.
Tetra ethyl lead. Not sure but I would take “lead” as a clue that it was a pretty high density compound. Any body get the marked weight capacity of those cars?
Regarding the forty year age limit for cars, what is the date that they must be retired? Is it the end of the year that they turned 40? Or have UP, CSXT, and some shortlines agreed to interchange some reefers older than forty. I have seen some UP reefers that had a built date of April 1965, and rebuilt in 1989, sitting on the reefer inspection, repair, and cleaning track.
By the way I saw a couple of ARMN 762500 series R-70-16s today that looked like they were recently upgraded. I also noticed it appears that they had a roofwalk, however the brake wheel has been lowered.