As I was driving around for work today and looking at how high the corn is. It made me wonder this: “How many acres of corn will fill up a standard 286,000 pd hopper car?”
Paul
Hm.
I really dont know. Never thought of that.
Ya’ know what. Good question…
You would probably have to figure out how many bushels fit in said railcar. Then how many Bushels come from an average acre, and then convert back to acres.
It would be a round approximation and not an exact number.
Sorry, I don’t know the numbers, Any Farmers in here???
Later Bill
A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds, depending on moisture content and type of corn, etc. I could not find if that is on the cob or off.
The 2006 records for bushels per acre for corn ranged from 240 to 347, depending on the corn type. http://www.ncga.com/CYC/Winners/national.asp
(But another web site says 100 bushels per acre is the average.)
So 286,000 divided by 56 = 5107 bushels per car
And 5107 divided by 240 (Picked the minimum record yield just for grins) = 21 acres per car. Since it might be only 100 bu/a then I guess it could be anywhere from 15 to 50 or so acres of farm to fill (by weight) a single hopper car.
A bushel is 2150.42 cubic inches, or 1.25 cu ft. How many cubic inches or feet are there in a hopper car?
YOU can figure out if the car can be “filled” to the brim or has to run with empty space due to a weight limit.
All I can think of is the hillbilly down in the Ozarks who, when asked how much he gets per acre of corn, answered, “About 50 gallons.”
The same site has a page showing national yields. 2006=149.1 BPA. Corn Belt states such as Iowa and Illinois come in at over 160 BPA.
Fine, except for a couple of things:
286,000 pounds is the gross weight of the car–you’ll have to subtract the weight of the car from that, giving you about 225,000 pounds of payload.
Semper V. gave a significant figure–1.25 cubic feet per bushel. A modern grain car can hold 5200 cubic feet (the ARI Through-Sill), so that’s 4160 bushels. With that 56-pound-per-bushel figure, you come up with almost 233,000 pounds, which just might fit into a lighter car.
Otherwise, figure about 4000 bushels per car, based on a capacity of 224,000 pounds, to make for easier computations. At 160 BPA, that’s 25 acres per car.
Ishmael, at the quoted gallonage rate, it would take about 600 acres–nearly a square mile–to fill up a 30000-gallon ethanol tank car!
I have a RI waybill for a carload of corn from Victor, IA to Corpus Christi, TX in April 1978.
It was shipped in a RI covered hopper (ROCK 132788).
This is the description:
C/L Bulk shelled yellow waxey corn 201420lbs. 1.10 Rate $2215.62 Collect
L F V C S W L & C
3596.79 bushels
Seals 6199415 - 20
This would be for a car with a gross weight limit in the area of 263000 lbs. Most of the grain loads I see at work are still in this weight catagory. I wouldn’t be surprised if this car is still out there in grain service. There are still quite a few ex-RI covered hoppers out there.
Jeff
I think Ishmael was talking about Moonshine.
Yep, I don’t doubt it–and what do you think ethanol is? Of course, they denature the stuff these days (see the August issue of Trains for the lowdown on legalized moonshine).
Jeff, that car would have a capacity of 4750 cubic feet or thereabouts, and you’re right about the 263K gross rail load. It’s probably lettered CNW these days.
Test weighton grain will vary but you are right, corn 56 lbs. ear corn 70 lbs. soybeans 60 wheat 60 oats 32 lbs. 56 lb. corn will be #2 grade -the standard,57 and up is #1. corn can test from low 50s to 61lbs.