Took the boy by the local yard to see some trains today and we saw something new (to me anyway), a cut of 20-30 Thrall gondolas stenciled “For Transport of Radioactive Waste Only”. They had fairly deep sides with a white domed cover possibly made of some sort of fiberglass or composite of steel and fiberglass. The cover was held in place by large, rugged clamps and had lift points at either end. The cover was labeled with a reminder to secure the clamps due to wind implying they were lightweight in nature. I beleive the reporting marks were OHPX . The highest number I could see was 212 and the cut included 001. Sure would make an interesting model for a modern layout.
Anyone know where they might be from or going? Do they dispatch additional or special security for a movement of this type?
Is it possible they were hauling some form of concrete cask that protects the payload?
I was a bit concerned to note that they had placed them on a runaround (I think) track near the throat as far away as possible from the center of the yard, almost as if they did not them anywhere near the place. Even more concerning was the fact that I believe I could have walked right up and climbed aboard.
Might be radioactive soil from a super fund clean up. In route to Utah for , to be 20,000 year shelf life disposal process. If they where cask…I don’t think they would be riding in gondolas. Most of the pictures I’ve seen are of the heavy duty flatcars , with a single cask.
The concrete cask are fairly indestructable, test done on them by DOD ,concluded that even a freight train strike can not crack them. Mush less some jihad @%$&*#$ , could ever get their hands on one.
The concrete cask weight ,roughly 300 to 400 tons each. I’ll post a link to the heavy duty flatcars.
Patrick
Beaufort,SC
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}
These would probably be used tools, protective clothing, etc - certainly nothing high-level. Not stuff you want to get too close to but equally useless to anyone with nefarious intentions. Fuel is transported in very specialist flasks that have been tested for pretty much every possible eventuality, and the high-level stuff usually gets an escort of one sort or another.
I saw a pic in the local paper of a coal car with plastic liner being used to haul away the base material under the maine yankee clean up site. (Former nuclear power plant). They were loading the cars with a backhoe and had some sort of fiber glass cover to put on top laying on the ground beside the rail cars. Looked like the back hoe lifted into place. The news paper photo was to grainy to see details of the car lettering.
If the radioactive materials were in concrete casks, they are actually lead casks that are surrounded by tons of reinforced concrete. These have been dropped, smasked, burned and crushed and nothing happens to them. You would not need any kind of protective clothing around these during transportation. Low level waste in gondolas are fairly safe (don’t play with it and be close or long periods) and your safe.
That is a SWEET car! I love the heavy flats! I have an old Liliput articulated transformer flat…really sweet car. Models of the radioactive waste cars would be interesting.
There is a segment in a 2003 railway video from Charles Smiley entitled “Soldier Summit Reflections” which features the RIo Grande and Utah Railway, showing a train of low-level radioactive dirt from a cleanup site being shipped to a storage facility in Utah. All of the cars look like ordinary hoppers. The commentary indicates that this train normally runs weekly and there was no special security escort or anything else involved.
Aww man, do I have a sweet spot for anything radioactive or even remotely concerning nuclear power.[:D] I’ll have something like this on my roster sooner or later. Of course, it will be an original piece because I’m freelance like that. Thanks for the information.[;)]
Here is some info on the cars I found searching for info on car card systems. Page 5 shows a pretty good photo of the cars I saw just west of Indianapolis.