I was watching the news about all the rain some parts of NW WI and MN have been getting. That made me think about open topped cars like ore hoppers, coal hoppers, gondolas, etc. If a train passes through a rain storm or sits in a terminal for a length of time and a deluge happens as mentioned…how much water (if any) will remain in the cars? I can’t imagine the gates at the bottom (if equipped) will be watertight.
Bathtub Gons will hold water UNLESS there is a hole in them. Most regular gons will drain out Normal Hopper cars will drain out also. As Most Normal Steel Gons are so beat up there is a hole some place in the sucker.
Interesting Ed, thanks. I wonder how much effect (if any) that amount of water would have on a unit train. Also, when the commodity gets to its destination what do THEY do with the water?
Sometimes with scrap metal-carrying gondolas, the problem is finding one WITHOUT holes so large that the commodity does not fall out enroute.
Coal trains just get dumped as usual; the water isn’t much of an issue, at least in summer. Although when winter approaches, water becomes more of an issue, as it can cause the product to become a huge block of ice. Some power-plants have a oven-type building that they use to thaw out the hoppers if the problem becomes too severe (I’ve always wondered how much net energy a coal plant would realize after deducting the energy cost of thawing 100 tons of coal sufficiently such that it comes out of the hopper).
I suppose if you had a long train of bathtub gons that collected 10" of rain in each car, the weight would be slightly noticeable–but only slightly.
The only issue tht I see with water in the bathtub gons is that it weighs over 8 pounds per gallon. That would add extra weight to the car.
Not knowing the actual inside dimensions of a bathtub gon (geometry was never my strong suit anyway), if we figure for a standard gondola of perhaps 50’ long and 8’ wide, and fill it to a depth of 12" (using rounded numbers for ease of calculation), that gives us 400 cu’, which converts to 2992 gallons, multiply that by 8# per gallon, would give us a weight of 24000#. Wow!
zardoz’s example above would be the equivalent of 1/8 to 1/10 of a tank car . . . so yes, it can be significant. Not in most places where a typical rainstorm is 1" to 3" and the car can drain or is emptied fairly often - but in those locations where torrential/ tropical storms are the norm (Ed B. there in Houston comes to mind !) or when an unusually heavy storm comes through with 6" to 10" of rain in a day, it could be significant.
Are there any cargoes that normally travel in open-top cars, and which are prone to absorbing a lot of moisture that could greatly increase their weight ? PRB coal ? Some minerals ? Any grains ? Wood chips ? Etc.
- Paul North.
Construction debris…
Not a really big issue for us with the coal trains here, the trains don’t sit still all that long so the extra weight is not really noticed, with bottom discharge hoppers it drains out anyway.
At the Arco and Shell pet coke plants, the cars and load are hosed down to cool the product, if they didn’t the stuff is hot enough to flame on all by itself!
We used to work Pasadena paper, and deliver wood chip cars, those buggers would get heavy after rain, and we really didn’t like them in the yard for any length of time, spontaneous combustion was an issue, when they got soaked good, it would increase the decay, which could create a lot of heat, and they would steam by themselves.
I never saw one catch fire, but was told by a lot of guys it happens pretty regular. I did place my hand against one which was steaming pretty good, enough heat to make it very uncomfortable to touch even wearing gloves.
The only open gon I have seen that didn’t have holes all through it was a brand new one, it had about 6 or 7 inches of water in it, kinda neat watching the water while I was riding it, every time we started or stopped, the water looked like one of those wave machines in a pool, it would run to one end, hit the bulkhead, and head back the other way in a series of waves.
The ones to watch out for are the grain cars, if there is any spilled product on the roof, and it has just finished raining, if you’re unlucky enough to be standing beside the car when they start moving, you can get a real smelly shower.
The worse one are tank cars full of animal tallow, those things are pretty gross even when its dry, but wet they are almost impossible to ride safely, imagine trying to hold on to a pole with Vaseline all over it, standing on a platform covered with the same stuff, all smelling like rancid bacon and all wet to boot!
I will pick up a car from some other track and use it as a rider if the move is long, if not, I just walk it, not worth the hassle and ruining a pair of glo
We do get plenty of wood chip cars through here…I’ve seen cut pine heading for the pulper that can soak things up too. A few miles west of here UP ships sand in open gondolas. I’d think that would soak things up well too.
When Chessie converted its first gondolas from hoppers in the late 1980s or early '90s, they had openings in the tubs for drainage. That might work well in eastern markets, where coal came in lumps, but PRB coal is too powdery for such drainage to do much good.
It didn’t take much rain (or snowmelt) in an ordinary gondola to leave water over the floor (they may have holes in them, but the water has to find them!). I could usually retard the empty cars in such a way as to send the water out over the end of the car.
The worst (Ed’s description of tallow cars notwithstanding) would have to be the occasional gondola load of “fleshings” we used to get. The sheets called them fleshings, we called 'em “guts”. They were old, beat-up gons not good for anything else, but somehow the load would manage to seal all of the cracks in it, so if it rained you’d have a real soupy, smelly mess. I remember one such load that was sloshing when it went by me, and the poor guy in Tower C did the last, and most severe, retardation on it, as he normally would…the entire lower half of the retarder and the switch below it got a bath of this stuff. Things still worked all right, so it took a lot of weather (it dried in the meantime) to wash that foul stuff away.
Carl, thanks for the disgusting memories–I had forgotten about those cars.
There used to be a company (in South Milwaukee, IIRC) that the CNW switched back when I was a brakeman before I went to engineer school. Those cars were (and still are) the worst smell I even encountered. And what Ed said about the grab-irons is totally true; if you forget what was in the car and grabbed the ladder, you immediately had a pair of junk gloves. And of course, lets not fail to mention the flying pests these cars would attract; couple in to the car and sometimes you hear the entire car start buzzing…
Even more amazing would be the workers in the factories where these cars were destined; there I’d be trying my best not to puke, and the factory workers would be eating their lunch outside, totally oblivious (impervious) to the odor.
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Yup…That’s no doubt the destination for the ones we handled. By the time I hired out, the stockyards had closed already, but I can imagine that loads like these were more common in days
There’s a place in or around Appleton/Kimberly/Kaukauna that gets something similar. I’ll have to dig through my notes to see if I can “flesh out” (sorry - couldn’t resist) the details.
What about heavy, wet snow?
Well I know Donner Cement SNow would add Weight to my Truck going over the Pass. I was at 79900 one winter at the Cat scale with Full tanks. Hit Donner in a Blizzard on Donner Truckee was open and was at 80400 in less than 20 Miles in the state all of it was SNOW and the State knew it. They let me pass. Best one however would have to be that time I had to pick up that reefer trailer that had a Hole in the roof we did not KNOW about and was getting a load of Frozen Food on it. I ran out my day that night it rained Cats and DOGS I mean it POURED and here I am with a hole in my roof I ended up with 1000 LBS of ICE in my trailer. I was over gross with Ice I got from that rain that night. We found the hole in the roof and got it patched. Company was NOT happy with the Last Driver that dropped that trailer for NOT REPORTING THE HOLE.