[:P]I’ve suddenly come up with a bunch of questions regarding steel handling:-
From the mill re-bar would ride in mill gondolas - yes?
Would it all be standard (60’) lengths or as ordered?
Would it be loose or bundled?
How many in a bundle?
Is there a way of figuring the weight?
Or how many bars / bundles to a full load by weight?
Would I be right in thinking that there would be timbers across the floor of the car to assist getting lifting straps in/out… and maybe at mid-level(s)?
How would it be lifted out - overhead crane? Mobile crane? Would they use just slings or a lifting frame with slings?
Steel coils - the kind carried in Walther’s cars.
Would I be right in assuming that any sheet steel thin enough to be coiled would be carried and that it could go to any job that stamped things out of sheet steel from truck cabs to filing cabinets?
Okay, it will vary by reel size but what would the normal weight range be (per reel) please?
Would they always be craned in/out?
Would some of the handling be by forklift or other carrier?
How are the car hoods lifted off? What sort of weight are they?
How/where are the hoods stored when not on cars? Are they stacked? Are they mated to their cars or do they just go on the first car that needs them?
Daft question… I’ve never seen a pic of a dented/damaged hoo
And many of them have to be answered by it depends
Yes.
Would it all be standard (60’) lengths or as ordered?
Duh. If they ordered something else then it wouldn’t come as a standard length, would it?
Would it be loose or bundled?
Probably era dependent, most likely bundled.
The following questions all go together.
How many in a bundle?
Is there a way of figuring the weight?
Or how many bars / bundles to a full load by weight?
All of those depend on the size of the rebar. Obviously there will be more rebar per ton if you are shipping rebar for a house foundation vs. rebar for a 30 story building foundation.
Easiest way is to make the car about 1/3 full.
Would I be right in thinking that there would be timbers across the floor of the car to assist getting lifting straps in/out… and maybe at mid-level(s)?
At least the bottom, don’t ever recall seeing any timbers mid-pile.
How would it be lifted out - overhead crane? Mobile crane? Would they use just slings or a lifting frame with slings?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Depends on the individual contractor/distributor and what equipment they have.
Steel coils - the kind carried in Walther’s cars.
Would I be right in assuming that any sheet steel thin enough to be coiled would be carried and that it could go to any job that stamped things out of sheet steel from truck cabs to filing cabinets?
And many of them have to be answered by “it depends”
This I realise but many of the good folks here come up with a vast range of helpful specific answers…
Yes.
Would it all be standard (60’) lengths or as ordered?
Duh. If they ordered something else then it wouldn’t come as a standard length, would it?
Okay, maybe I need to be era specific (1985)… I was thinking that the steel makers might say “It comes in these lengths… take it or leave it”. Also there might be standard lengths - maybe as short as 20’ and by steps up to ?.. There might also be custom orders - at a price. Given those possibilities… would a 65’ gon be loaded (for example) with three piles of 20’ lengths? Has anyone seen this - or pics?
Would it be loose or bundled?
Probably era dependent, most likely bundled.
The following questions all go together.
How many in a bundle?
Is there a way of figuring the weight?
Or how many bars / bundles to a full load by weight?
All of those depend on the size of the rebar. Obviously there will be more rebar per ton if you are shipping rebar for a house foundation vs. rebar for a 30 story building foundation.
I don’t know but I’m thinking that bar might get bundled in standard numbers… maybe 1/2" bar in 20s and 1’ bar in 10s… that might figure at the same weight per bundle… or not…
Rebar comes in standard lengths of 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 feet. I would expect all of one bundle to be a single length, but bundles of different lengths could be intermixed in a single load depending on what the customer ordered.
I have seen rebar loads where each layer of bundles was separated from the next by timbers on 24-30 inch centers. Four layers were a full load for a flatcar. (Sorry, I don’t recall the size of the rebar.)
Rebar would most likely be unloaded by a crane using some kind of strongback, a few bundles at a time. If it was only supported at one or two places, it would probably sag like cooked spaghetti - not the easiest situation to deal with. A forklift with unusually widely-spaced tines might be able to lift twenty foot bundles, but not the longer sizes.
Places where coiled steel is handled regularly have a gadget that looks like a toilet paper holder, with a fairly large cylindrical piece that goes into the center of the coil and a yoke that puts the lift ring over the coil’s center of gravity. The coil might be placed on a movable carrier with the same support geometry as that inside the coil car.
The car covers usually show rust from abraded paint, normal ‘industrial area’ weathering and, in the present era, graffitti.
Taking into consideration that most modern gons are 100 ton capacity, most gons loaded with “steel bars”, the load weighs between 150,000 and 195,000 lbs. The number of bundles ranges between 16 and 37 per car, which means each bundle weighs between about 5000 and 11000 lbs (3 to 6 tons per bundle).
One load of 176,000 lb had 2700 pieces in it which would mean each piece weighs 65 lbs, another had 181,000 lb with 3000 pieces, for 60 lbs a piece.
So If you find the weight of a piece of rebar per foot for the size you want, you can figure how many feet you need for about 85-95 tons. Figuring that a typical gon carries about 20-24 bundles, you can size your bundles accordingly. A .010 diameter fiber represents about a #7, 2 lb/ft rebar. So 90 tons of #7 rebar = about 90,000 ft or just over 1000 ft of .010 fiber. 500-600 lb test monofilament fishing line would be about .010 diameter. Have fun cutting.
Several years ago at Kaiser’s former pipe plant along the Napa River, just south of Napa (formerly served by the Southern Pacific, but now by the California Northern), I noted a gondola with a load of rebar. My only lasting memory was the condition of the gondola. It was the most beat-up car in operating condition I’ve seen, there being large dents in/on the car sides and lots of heavy rust.
The Walthers car represents an Evans prototype that has lengthwise troughs. Most/all similar car have lengthwise troughs. This is the most common arrangement.
There are however some examples of cars designed with crosswise troughs. Pennsylvania RR had some (and by extension PC & CR who inherited those cars), and here’s a modern example of a CP car:
I used some multi-strand wire, stripped off the insulation, cut it to 24’ lengths (to fit into my unprototypical N scale 50’ gondola) and painted it with acrylic washes to get a rusty grey color.
To fill the car without adding too much weight, I used round toothpicks underneath painted the same color.
Any more varieties of steel load? Does the reinforcing mesh made of thin rebar ever go by rail or would that almost always travel by truck?
Couple of other things that occured to me:- !. sheet steel piling and 2 armco crash barriers… Both of which raise the question of how to make them…? (In 3.5mm).
Regarding bundles of rebar. I never see the bundles stacked more the four high, and the nearly always have blocking between the layers. It comes through in gondolas, bulkhead flats, and regular flats. Sometimes the bundles are bundled together and sometimes not.
If you are interested in other steel load varieties, go to the photographic archive links given above and browse through the TTX flat car pictures. You’ll find many loads from steel round bars, plate steel, steel shapes, etc. The photos are also a good reference for the colors you’ll want to match to replicate the finish on the loads themselves.
Thanks Nick. [:)] Has anyone got experience of this product… is it reasonably thin? It wouldn’t matter so long as it’s not enormously thick at the side of a road but for a load I would like it to be pretty thin.
Thanks
… and thanks for the following post as well… I’ll go look…
for what it’s worth steel weighs about 500 lbs per cu’. if you can do the math, you can figure out the weight of any load as long as you know the scale dimensions of the items.
Hey Dave - I work for a flat-roll steel processor so I can shed a little light on the coiled steel questions but don’t know too much about rebar.
Steel coils - the kind carried in Walther’s cars.
Would I be right in assuming that any sheet steel thin enough to be coiled would be carried and that it could go to any job that stamped things out of sheet steel from truck cabs to filing cabinets?
Yup, right on except maybe it shoul read “steel thick enough”. Almost all steel is rolled into coils with the only limitation being how thick it is, the thicker it is the harder it is to unroll, rolling not a problem b/c it is done when it is red hot a mallable
Okay, it will vary by reel size but what would the normal weight range be (per reel) please?
Mills want to ship max size coils b/c they are slightly less expensive to make/handle than smaller ones. Think having a single 100,000 lb coil vs. having 10 x 10,000 lb coils, it takes a lot more handeling to have ten coils vs one. The max a mill will usually ship is 80K lb coils, they can be any size depending on the customers order though. Carbon is usually shipped in bigger coils (80K lbs) than stainless or aluminum, usually 30K-40K lbs and sometimes much smaller.
Would they always be craned in/out?
In our plants, yes. We have three facilities with indoor tracks for unloading, all are under crane.
Would some of the handling be by forklift or other carrier?
I have seen forklifts do the job but, is usually for carbon steel, definately not stainless or aluminum. Carbon steel is worth arounf 50 cents a lb where stainless and AL are at least double, and depending on grade, up to 4x the price and forklifts damage the inside wrap of steel in the coil when they move them. When you are paying $2/lb for the metal the forklift
I got to follow a truck load of I beams on my way home from work the other night. Three stacks of six across the full width of the flatbed - stack (interlocked) 6 high. I guess that that’s a pretty good load guide.
It would be about (within) 40 tons, 40 feet long and about 30" by 12"(ish). Only timbers were on the floor of the semitrailer, so I imagine that getting the top ones off would be a matter hooking the ends - at least initially.
