Salt which railroad carries the most and what do they carry it in/what type of covered hopper? Centerflows? 2 bay? 3 Bay?
thanks
Most is in bulk in covered hopper cars. Cars are probably about the size of grain cars, but depends on density and I do not have reference books handy.
Mac
The Cargill hoppers I see are smaller than the grain hoppers. Also, I do not know the percent, but a large amount is shipped in bags in boxcars.
The Cargill cars (two-bay, aluminum) are probably the proper size to handle a full-tonnage load of salt. It is transported in larger cars quite often, but I suspect that they aren’t loaded to their maximum cubic capacity.
Bulk loads of salt are notoriously uncontrollable in our yard on damp days–something about the salt attracting the moisture, and if it’s on the wheels at all the retarders don’t touch 'em!
We also get the box cars with bagged salt–but the bulk is probably half again as common.
We get bulk salt shipments to a distributor here, in covered hoppers, but I haven’t really looked at them all that closely in comparison to other hoppers.
I would have to think that CSX does a tremendous amount of salt moves. I know of a Cargil Salt mine or at least facility in Cleveland and so a tremendous amount of those shorty 2 bay aluminum centerflows are used with CLSX reporting marks. Cargil Salt I believe still leases 3 bay centerflows(acfx) and pullman standard hoppers from PTLX and I think TLDX (green ones)
US Salt uses and has many 3 bay cylindrical hoppers and also uses 2 bay white
centerflow hoppers. Both have GWIX reporting marks.
There used to be a salt company called Stirling Salt and had grey cylindrical hoppers as well as centerflows, 3 bays but I don’t know where they are (I think out west) and I don’t know if they still exist or still have the cars (had SHPX reporting marks-SHPX 61078 ie)
There are plenty of others out there but thease are the ones I know of off hand.
Isn’t there a massive salt industry around the Detroit–Windsor area?
Great info! This helps alot
Guess i should watch out for those rainy days
Underneath the city of Detroit is a salt mine large enough to drive trucks around inside. Most of the Detroit area salt goes in lake freighters to other lake ports.