rainfall must increase the weight of a load many times when hauling wood chips… would this have an effect on the horsepower needed to pull a load? it seems a car designed to close the lid would solve this problem, if it is a problem…
I’d be more concerned about whether a load of wet chips would exceed the load limit of the chip gon or hopper, but have never heard of any problems along those lines. I suspect that even a heavy rainfall doesn’t get to all of the chips in such a load.
The only problem is getting the chips out of the car at the receiving end! Especially if it’s a hydraulic rotary dump.
I work on the wet side of Oregon, and am told that several days in the rain adds a few tons to the weight. Doors would be a maintenance headache far more expensive than the few extra gallons of fuel per car per year. By the way, out here they are gons, not hoppers.
Mac
yes water would add weight to wood chip cars…but since dry wood chips are overall by volume a light weight commodity some water sockage wont pu***hem to the overload weight limits…
csx engineer
Why are they shipped uncovered rather than covered?
Certainly rainfall of a substanial nature will increase the weight of the cars some what. I do not though think that will affect the loco performance at all. [;)]
Gotta bring this back to the surface…before Spbed buries it again!
SJ, two reasons:
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The commodity doesn’t need to be protected from the elements (it’ll be made into pulp anyway).
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Ease of loading and (most of the time) unloading.
BC
And it is that simple! Thanx BC!
Except in the unlikely event these chips are all kiln dried or aged in a manner that they might air dry, the cells in the chips are filled with plenty of moisture to begin with and will not be soaking up any appreciable amounts. It’s not a carload of sponges.
Wayne
As was stated above, the chips are a “fluff” load because with the cars now in use, it is impossibable to go over gross with a wood chip load. Also, chips do not gain much weight even when soaked for days because of the natural water content of the wood.
Also, if the chips are loaded “wet” (high water content), they will catch fire all by themselves. The weight of the load causes sufficent pressure on the bottom of the load to squeeze water out of the chips, this causes heat to build up and heats up the load causing the load to “steam” (smoke-like whisps of water vapor escaping out the top of the load). If left long enough in hot dry weather, the load can catch fire. Paper mills run sprinklers on their chip piles 24/7 in dry weather for just this reason.
So, there are at least two very good reasons why woodchips are loaded in open top cars - ease of loading and unloading and eliminating all possible fire hazzard.
By the by, the reason chip cars “out West” are called gons is because the first cars were 40’ bottom drop gondolas with their sides extended and the purpose built cars that followed used the same design. Where hopper cars were used with sides extended, they were and are called hoppers.
NS appears to run a twice weekly run from Columbus, Georgia, down to the Meade WestVaco plant about 30 miles away in Alabama (south of Seale, in Russell County.) They appear to use covered hoppers for the job of carrying wood chips. The only time I see open gondolas around here is for industrial scrap coming out of the Char-Broil plant to the north of Columbus. (Char Broil is moving to China.)
Erik
Interesting theory. Can you provide any quantative data or a reference?
Thanks for the clarification [:o)]
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Originally posted by kenneo
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Originally posted by cabforward
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Anecdotal evidence:
On a smaller scale, when I ran an organic vegetable farm, every day or so I would load my pickup with fresh chips to from piles at the local highway garage to use as mulch. There wasn’t much weight to it and if I left a load in the truck during a few days of heavy rain, there were no noticable effects. The springs didn’t sag, the tires weren’t any flatter on the bottoms. In fact when unloading after a rain, the chips perhaps a foot or so deep were often fairly dry.
Not to worry, these chips shed water well.
Wayne
Open load cars - hoppers, gons, flats etc.
Have sufficient integrety to contain the loads they are required to carry, however, the are far from water tight. Rain goes onto the load and drains through the load and out of the car. The only real effect of rain or snow, on such loads is the the Freight Payer may end up paying additional freight charges for the weight, if the billing is dependent upon the load being weighed on railroad scales. Railroad weighing is becoming an increasing rareity as most regular shippers/consignees have agreements in place to report the billng weights to the carriers and the carriers bill their charges based up on the ‘Shippers Load & Count’, or ‘Shippers Weight Agreement’.
What about coal? Can it get wet? Doesn’t the wet coal cause issues at the plant?
The local co-gen plant stores its coal outside in big piles. Rain, snow, sleet, hail, no matter. There has been discussion about how unloaders handle frozen loads, but that’s another story.
Coal isn’t all that porous.
I’ve seen pictures of a NYO&W coal storage yard near Hancock, NY - all outside.
Thanks!