Questions about loading trains, how things work..and more

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Hello! I am doing research and I need help getting answers to the following questions about non-passenger trains:

  • Do the same train cars stay with the same train most of the time?
  • How far in advance does the train-system know which cars are going to be with what train?
  • When the train gets to it’s destination does it just drop off the goods inside or drop off the entire car?
  • Where are most trains loaded?
  • About how long does a take box car to get loaded? 10-30 minutes?

I know, wierd questions, that is why I have been having such trouble finding the answers. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I don’t know where else to look. Thank you!

2

The first step is to differentiate between unit trains and non-unit trains.
A unit train, as its name implies, runs with the same cars from 1 Point A to 1 Point B without any classification in between. One supplier to one destination. In that situation, the cars stay with the train most of the time. Commodities often carried as unit trains are minerals such as coal.

Non-unit trains are made up with single cars or sets of cars, each with different destinations and/or different suppliers. These are split apart and put back together in classification yards, plying different routes all the time. In non-unit trains, cars do not stay with the same train.

  1. Sorry, don’t have a good answer for you.

3 (and 5). Depends on the commodity. Cars can take a long time to load and unload. In other words, the train does not stay with a car and wait for it to be unloaded before moving on. Trains typically drop the car and move on, picking up the empty car later or having it picked up by a different train. A boxcar will often sit at an industry for over a day.

However, at large industries, like coal power plants, the process may be made efficient to constantly unload the cargo quickly.

  1. I’m not quite sure how you want this question answered. They are loaded at the supplier who produced the product.

Another unique, but very common situation is intermodal transport using containers. This is a whole 'nother Haloween bag. Intermodal trains may run as unit trains or be classified along the way. When a train reaches its destination, the trailers on board the cars are unloaded, often very quickly. A crane can get a container off of a car in a few minutes. Trains are also quickly loaded in areas like these. Since the actual loading takes place on the trailer at the industry, all the intermodal center needs to do is to plop the filled container onto its railcar.

3

Question 1: Depends on the type of train…Unit trains, like a coal or grain train, often have the same set of cars…with a coal train that runs through a rotary dumper or other such facility, the cars stay with the engine as a set.

Not always, but most of the time.

With a general freight train, a mix or all types, the answer is no.

The cars a switched out, or sorted by final destination, they get removed from one train and added to another.

2: If you mean by “train system” the yardmaster, then as soon as the switch crews are through building up the train, he creates a train sheet and wheel report with all the cars reporting makes and numbers, the order they fall in the train from front to rear, and a brief description of contents and the destination of the car.

As soon as he releases the train for movement out of the yard, his computer will send s “copy” of sorts to the dispatcher of that division, who now has control of where that train goes.

The “system” is a information sharing system of computers that allows each railroad to search for cars, trade information on train consist and location, stuff like that.

Every move a car makes is entered into the system, from simple yard switching to placement in a industry.

This allows every one to keep track of what cars are where.

3: General freight, they just leave the car.

Unit train, see answer 1.

4: Again, depends on the contents…most stuff is palletized, and can be loaded/unloaded with a forklift, but often you can find boxcars full of lose bags of say, dried peas, or stacked bags of flour, which have to be unloaded by hand.

I have seen these cars emptied in under an hour.

Have no real clue as to how long to load them.

[quote user=“elfkinbaby”]

Hello! I am doing research and I need help getting answers to the following questions about non-passenger trains:

  • Do the same train cars stay with the same train most of the time?
  • H
4

I have watched a beer company load a box car in about 5-10 minutes with pallets of canned beer, I don’t know if they still use this method or not but about 20 years ago they would unload coal cars at a steel mill by flipping them upside down while still attached to the train and it would take less than a few minutes to unload them it was actually pretty neat to watch it as a whole section of track spun around with a car on top and dumped it

Hope this helps

Rich

5

Local freights drop cars at industries and leave them for a predetermined amount of time. I used to unload a lot of cars at a lumberyard–flatcars, centerbeam lumber racks, and boxcars loaded with plywood (and occasionally studs). THe local freight came two times a week in the dead of night, if it had something for us the cars would be waiting for us next morning. For a good forklift operator, it took about two hours to offload a center beam car, start (loosening the cables) to finish (retying the cables on the empty car). Lumber flats don’t utilize cables to secure the lumber–the individual drafts of lumber are simply banded with metal strapping into one huge bundle after they are loaded onto the car. This massive pack of lumber is then banded with two or three disposable metal straps to the flatcar. Sounds crazy, but I never saw one break by accident, and they came to us on the East Coast all the way from British Columbia.

Plywood boxcars took about two hours to do as well, with one operator working with a 5000lb lift in the car and one outside with a heavy model to take the drafts away (we didn’t have a loading dock). The drafts are packed very tightly within the car, and if the loaders at the mills don’t pack enough airbags in the empty spaces, or if the car is slammed around on the hump, the metal or plastic bands holding the drafts together tend to break, making it very difficult to unload the car, with a lot of damaged material that our company always charged to the railroad (Conrail back then). The same rule held true with studs in the boxcar, and the drafts were even more likely to break in transit, leaving a pile of matchsticks to offload and restack when the door came open. Fortunately, most lumber companies no longer load studs in boxcars, choosing instead to utilize centerbeam cars. The loads show up in far better condition that way.

6

elfkinbaby could do a lot worse than read the two chapters on railroading in John McPhee’s excellent book UNCOMMON CARRIERS. In one chapter, McPhee takes a coal unit train from Wyoming to an electricity-generation station in the Southeast. In the other, he rides an empty unit coal train going back to the mines.

The most modern unit-train coal hoppers I’ve seen recently were some absolutely pristine aluminum-looking jobs heading loaded for Florida from points north thru the Folkston (GA) funnel. They appeared to have two emptying chutes, each about midway from the center of the car until the end – on the bottom of course to take advantage of gravity. At destination, the hopper chutes spring open by magic. Just kidding. [:P] I think it’s magnetism.

I can’t honestly say that my experience is valid for all coal unit trains. Hopefully some of our experts will follow this post . . .

al-in-chgo

7

Thank you everyone! Wow, it is a lot more confusing then I ever realized. You guys are awesome!

8

Each and every commodity that railroads, or for that matter any kind of carrier, has it’s own physical characteristics that will dictate how it is most effectively and economically transported.

Coal and Iron Ore while both can be transported in hoppers - one will visibly fill the car - the other will load the car to the maximum gross weight and still appear empty from trackside.

Wheat and is end product Flour both get transported in Covered Hoppers - but not the same kind of covered hoppers. Wheat gets transported in traditional high cubic capacity covered hoppers and use gravity as the unloading mechanism. Flour uses covered hoppers that visually look the same as the traditional covered hopper, however, due to the relatively ‘sticky’ nature of flour, these covered hoppers use ‘Airslide’ technology where the discharge pockets have air inflating membranes to assist gravity in unloading the commodity.

The list goes on and on. Each commodity has its own ‘specific gravity’ in being liquid, solid or gas which will mandate the cubic capacity of the cars used. Needing or not needing protection from the elements. Being hazardous or not. Additionally car types and sizes are dependent on the shippers ability to load and the consignees ability to unload; with the realization the the carriers favor those who can load and unload an entire train in a matter of hours - not days.