airplanes use plug doors. Door is on outside and goes in catty corner and slides into place from inside.
The combination door cars provide a wide opening if needed. The plug door provides a smooth interior wall to load against if a wide opening is not needed.
Mark Vinski
Found this while looking around google … Caution - Opens PDF File
https://www.cn.ca/-/media/Files/Customer-Centre/Shipping-Equipment/boxcar-safety-posters-en.pdf
Nice find. Thanks!
Why is an open plug door more dangerous than an open sliding door? Because it is protruding beyond normal car width and can strike people or things? Because the extra complexity makes it more fragile and likely to fall off.
Are plug doors more likely to fall off than sliding doors, in general?
Dude, in your story, was that a plug door?
Yes on all counts. A plug door is generally heavier than a typical sliding door.
The runners of a sliding door are constructed with the understanding that sliding doors will frequently be moving with the doors open, despite rule that the be closeed. The hardware for plug doors are not made to that level of strength and the mass of the door moving from transportation impacts can relatively easily break the hardware - there is a lot of weight that has to be stopped.
Thanks, Mark. The optional double-wide door if you need it, but the qualities of a standard boxcar otherwise.
But the videos on box car door safety says you should never load anything against the doors. Pressure on the doors, especially from shifting can damage the doors. Both kinds, plug or sliding.
Jeff
I think that is it as well…
The mixed design (plug door and regular door) is it is an option for clients that have to load wider loads then the regular sized door will permit, they have the option of widening the opening with the plug door. However, for most clients the plug door remains closed and sealed. I suspect that is why they have that design.
Also, in some cases speed of loading and unloading comes into play when you have a string of boxcars and they want the ability for 2 or more lift trucks to be working the one boxcar in order to unload it faster and get the unloading done in just one shift of the warehouse vs several. I think this would cut the hold over charges or whatever they are called by the railroad for whatever the free limit is (1-2 days?).
Though I think the first rationale is probably the more common one.
You can pack palletized shipments in a truck really tight so they do not shift unless there is a severly violent movement by the trailer.
A long, long time ago when I was a teenager and working in warehouses they used to have these giant inflatable bags they would inflate inside boxcars to stabilize loads sometimes. They only used those if the palletized load did not fit snugly and there was space beween pallet stacked loads that if the car rocked a lot the load had the potential to shift. Not used a lot though, only sometimes.
The holdover charge is called demurrage.
We’ll see if this brings this thread over to the new forum.
It did. What new details do you want to see discussed?
I was just trying to save the thread because user gewald had enquired about boxcar doors, and I referred him to this thread. Firecrown people had said the old threads would be available till mid-January, and we’re already there.
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