I was in downtown Ft Worth yesterday on a layover and saw a very long unit train pass through that was made up entirely of gondolas loaded with loose stone. I thought it a bit odd, as I never recall seeing gons loaded with rock like that. Scrap, ties, steel, yes…but rock? Loading is obviously easy, but how could they be unloaded without leaving alot of commodity in each car and taking a long time too? Could they be rotary dumped? I’m not too familiar with how that works, but that requires special couplers, doesn’t it? These cars all appeared to have standard couplers. I guess the question is, why not ship pea stone in open hoppers? Any thoughts? BTW, it was freakin’ hot waiting on trains there yesterday…I was baking to a nice golden color…
Rip Rap - ballast - they turn them over to dump them.
Now I will let the experts take over.
Mook
Some cars that look like gons are side dump cars. There are also cars that look like gons that can be unloaded almost like hopper cars. I’d be interested to hear a little more description of what you saw.
Stone is also carried in regular hopper cars as well. Some of these cars run in dedicated service. IIRC, the Western Maryland was one road that had hoppers in stone service. IIRC, it was called the “gray train.”
BTW, it was hot here yesterday, until the whole world lit up about 8:00 p.m. Lots of lightning and thunder. The K9 corps was still under the table when I left for work this a.m.
work safe
Cars with standard couplers can be unloaded in a rotary dumper; they would just have to be uncoupled first. (However many would fit in the dumper in a group.)
Was he looking at limestone gons with wine-door drop bottoms en route to a steel mill or a big chemical treatment plant???
(These are not coal hoppers, same height as a conventional gon with ribbed sides, the flat gon floor actually pivots on its center axis along the centerframe)
Some Rip Rap stone is too large to dump through hopper doors.
A trainload of stone was, more than likely, all going to the same destination. Everything said about the possibility that these cars could have been dump cars is true–the drop-bottom gondolas, however, are pretty much things of the past.
Assuming, though, that these were ordinary gons, if they were destined for a track project, railroads often employ backhoes mounted on special crawlers that utilize the gondola sides and crawl along the cars to unload them (we on the CNW called these “Jimbo” cranes). This is most often seen for unloading crossties at track projects, but something similar might work for stone or riprap.
I’ve also seen pictures of an ordinary backhoe lifting itself off the ground and into a gon–something like that could clean one out pretty well.
A few things to add…these were regular garden variety gondolas. No side dump doors. A good many were carrying HGOX (or maybe HOGX) reporting marks and said HERZOG on their sides. This was not railroad ballast in them either. The stones were too small, more like the size of pea stone. It was a huge move…had to be 80 cars or more.
I know that UP runs several long rock trains in Texas…perhaps you saw one of these?
They often have GP60s (sometimes unpatched SP or SSW) or Tunnel Motors for power.
I’m not too familiar with that downtown Ft Worth area, so I can’t say who’s rails the train was on, but I believe it was UP from the trains I’ve seen before. There was BNSF power on the point though.
They unload them with backhoes that can crawl up on the sides of the car and crawl along the top of the car. I have seen both tracked type crawler backhoes and the wheeled tractor type backhoe mount the cars all by themselves and unload a train. One tractor type backhoe I saw had fittings on its bucket that fit over the sides of the gon. The backhoe drove up the end of the car, lifted the bucket and put it on the end of the car. It then used the back hoe to lif the entire tractor up in the air so the tractor was resting on the front end loader bucket and the bucket of the backhoe. The operator then uses the backhoe to slide the tractor down the top of the gon. There is another set of “guides’” on the bottom of the outriggers, the operator lowers the outriggers until they engage the sides of the car. The backhoe is now supported by the frontend loader bucket and the outriggers resting on the sides, leaving the backhoe free to dig out the aggregates. A similar method is used to bridge across from one car into the next.
The railroads have been handling aggregates in mill gons (solid bottom, solid ends) for decades. The quarries on the UP load hundreds of cars of rock in gons daily in S Texas for construction. They have dedicated solid trains of gons that do nothing but haul rock.
Dave H.
Herzog’s reporting marks are HZGX.
HZGX…knew it was something along those lines. Thanks for the info Dave. Question answered.
Check out this photo from our man on the ground in Houston, Ed Blysard:
(Sorry, the link’s so long you’ll have to copy and paste it into your browser window.)
As the old commercials for the board game Operation said, “it takes a very steady hand.”
Bergie
Many of the stoned gons come from the quarries around Austin. The Austin RR runs a unit train east every day except on sat and sun and yesterday sun 06/19/05 a unit train of rocks/stone went east. I can see this and hear this from my house . Yesterday the train had 5 locos.