So I’m watching a cut of loaded hoppers go by me on the ladder (mostly CSYX), and I notice they all had a line running alongside and about halfway up the carbody. Some even have a second, less defined line a foot or two below.
At first glance it looks like they sideswiped or cornered something. But closer look reveals that these lines were made by something rubber rubbing against the cars. Only thing I can think of is some sort of car mover made those marks? None of our customers have anything that would leave those marks, so I’m stumped on this one.
The reason I ask is one of our customer have a pair of car vibrators with square pads about 4 feet long, they leave an odd line on the sides of some cars, about two or three feet above the side sill.
Or a rubber wheeled car mover as he suggested, one on each side?
I know the vibrators leave a lot of rubber marks on the sides, the round hand held ones leave little circles all over the things, they don’t wash off in rain, and it gets pretty thick…
You’re absolutely right! I don’t even have a sighting from the old Zug Island Road.
I can’t help on the mark. If it’s a car mover, is there any evidence to suggest that this is a repeated mark (some cars marked more heavily than others)? Both sides of the car?
I’m not familiar enough with car movers, but I don’t think that the best way to move a car would be to slide something along the side. If it’s primarily on CSYX cars, I’d suggest that an enclosed loading or unloading area at one of the elevators they serve has something actuated by a rub-rail. But I know I could be 'way off base.
2nd link is the closest. Pretty much a solid line, but on that car it is broken up by the big dent in the middle. And I do like the carbon black car it is coupled to.
Looking at these pictures, I actually think that there are fragments of at lest two horizontal lines on the cars that show the most prominent lines. Also note that the side sill of the cars appears to be scraped in pretty much the same length as the line.
I suspect now that at some point where these cars regularly visit that there is a dangerously tight clearance on a curve. I’m hoping that signs warn about the clearances at this point, because it’s obviously a real pinch point. I’m saying that it’s on a curve because it seems to only be scraping in the center of the car, starting at about the same distance from the truck center pins as the corner of the car.
The cars themselves are not of an unusual design, but they are of a fairly unusual size (designed for soybean meal, which is lighter than corn). Bigger cars are used for other commodities, such as plastics, but one will find that these are narrower.
