Is the positioning of the load in a boxcar important? does it have to be in the centre of the car? What would happen if a heavy load was stacked only on one side, would the car actually have a lean to that side. I must really take a look at hoe the car sits on the trucks, can anyone explain? thanks
Most box cars are loaded from the ends to the center, equally on the left and right (and middle depending on the size of the pieces of cargo), but this is mainly due to where the door(s) are located and the fact that a shipper wants to get the maximum load in the car more than a concern over balance. Really heavy loads are placed over the trucks for a couple reasons, the fork lift used for loading would place it here more easily, and the load limit of the car may be reached before the car is visibly full.
I’m not really privy to how cars are required to be loaded. But yes, we sometimes see box cars that are leaning in one direction due to improper loading. An end-to-end imbalance would also cause problems, I suspect. Perhaps the highest priority (after not exceeding the car’s load limit) would be to load and secure the lading so that shifting en route is minimized. It should be able to take some of the coupler forces that it will be subjected to.
Not a box car, but have you ever looked at the inside bulkheads of a Center-beam flat car? That should tell you something about the dangers of improper loading!
I would agree that there is a great deal of importance in how freight cars are loaded. Lumber loads on center-beam or bulkhead flat cars can shift and sometimes do. Some years ago there was a gentleman who hitched a ride on board such a car loaded with 4’ x 8’ sheets of plywood on the Burlington Northern and he fell asleep. The lumber load shifted and it crushed him.
CANADIANPACIFIC2816
How did railroads handle cars loaded with hanging meat?
As a fireman years back I remember at least twice responding to a tractor-trailer that flipped over on I-55 ramps thanks to swinging meat.
Hi, Pop!
I decided not to go to Eola after all tonight. My wife offered me a birthday dinner I couldn’t refuse.
I don’t remember hearing about reefers swaying off the track because of the meat swinging inside them (it was hung from the ceiling in the reefers). I would say that your trucks were taking the curve too fast, which is not so much a problem on railroads–gentler curves, to begin with.
In my early days with the railroad we were told of the perils and expenses of “down meat”, which was knocked off the meat rails by impacts or whatever. But, though I remember seeing ice reefers with markings for various packing companies in the year or three before I hired out, I don’t recall ever humping one. I hired out within a year or to of the time the stock yards closed.
When I first got out of the army, I drove trucks until I could get on the Police Dept., so I am experienced with the effect of swinging meat on a semi-trailer. The problem with the truck is that if you take a curve too fast, and the meat begins to swing, it keeps on swinging after you straighten out and the next thing you know your trailer is moving all over the place.
I used to slow down for every curve, no matter how broad, and never had any problems. It seems that a reefer on a railroad, as has been mentioned, would have broader curves and more weight, so would be less likely to turn over.
Gons with scrap all in one end and lumber flats improperly loaded/ in the process of unloading seem to be the big culprits (much more than boxcars). Although I am aware of at least one car of newsprint that hit the ground because it rocked itself off the track going between warehouses of the same company in a switch move.
Somewhere back in the dim, dark, deep recesses of my memory I seem to remember an article in Trains about braking and slack dynamics that said the most likely car do derail was a piggyback car with only the last bay loaded, at the end of the train. I wonder if other cars with potentially “live” loads (like hanging meat) might be more susceptable to problems depending on where they are placed in the train?
BC - have you ever had improperly loaded cars in the yard? If so, can you hump them that way or do they need to be re-done before they can be humped? I can see the possibility of problems going through the retarders… and afterward…
SJ
“Swinging Meat” is pretty much a thing of the past.
The packers used to ship whole carcusses hung from hooks suspended from the roof. This made for wasted space in the trailer and created dangerous loads. The packer also had to pay for shipping waste product, the bones.
A new company, Iowa Beef Packers, inovated by cutting the carcus and removing the bones before shipment. This became paletized floor loaded meat shipments. IBP became Iowa Beef Processors, expanded into pork, then was acquuired by Tyson as Tyson expnaded from its poultry core business.
Today, the indsutry standard is “boxed” meat loaded in plastic bags and boxed instead of the “swinging” loads of the past. The butchers’ union went nuts and tried to stop this because the cutting and bone removal work was shifting from their members to the packing house workers.
The “Next Big Thing” is “Case Ready” meat which allows the grocery chain to handle meat like it handles oatmeal. The meat leaves the processing plant (formerly called a “slaughterhouse”) in a package that the shopper can take out of the “case” at the store and place in her refrigerator. No other handeling or preperation by the retailer is required.
There is a huge opportunity for the railroads here. Meat “processing” has concentrated into a few huge plants. On average, every American (300,000,000 now) eats something like 98 pounds of chicken, 17 punds of turkey, 52 pounds of pork and 64 pounds of be
SJ, we get loads that are suspect all the time. Most of the time we hump them almost like anything else, except that we put them on the bad-order track. From there, they’ll be switched out to the Material Yard, where they’ll be straightened up, tied down, or reloaded–whatever they need.
If we feel that humping the car is going to make the problem worse, we can either hold the car in the retarder or let it drift out and stop short (something one can’t usually do in a more automated yard), and have a hump engine shove it to rest.
On rare occasions the humping operation will cause problems with some precariously-loaded cars (we have a recurring problem with scrap metal that is loaded beyond the accepted profile), or cars whose load shifts due to the impact in the bowl. On box cars, this may open doors in ways that they weren’t intended to be opened. Sometimes we have to send in the American crane (with magnet) or a speed swing to clear the lading. Everything goes down to the Mat Yard for reloading. If they can find evidence of improper loading to begin with, the shipper gets the bill.
Cars with shifted loads usually aren’t a problem for the retarders–they stand up to almost anything except normal wear and tear or mechanical failures. We’ve had a couple of instances where dragging equipment has caused damage.
The RI had a 15 MPH speed restriction for trains with TOFC loads of swinging meat going through higher speed turnouts.
I was told back in the late 60s or early 70s the RI had a derailment out by DeSoto, Iowa. There are a couple of sharp curves fairly close together and some had a habit of going thru these curves a little “over the limit.” One train had some TOFC swinging meat loads and they derailed because of the “higher” speed.
Jeff