Some years ago I had purchased some tank cars from Scaletrains.com that had half ladders. According to their website, in 2011 TrinityRail produced 358 tank cars with half ladders numbered GATX 286000 thru 286537 for General American Transportation Company. You can find many pictures of them on rrpicturearchives but I haven’t found anything about the ladders.
I had asked scaletrains if they knew the reason for the half ladders and they could only speculate that there must have been a clearance issue someplace that these cars solved. Does anyone know the reason for the half ladders?
I guess it depends on your definition of a ladder. Is it possible for someone to reach the top of the car in the picture you provided? The answer is most definitely yes. The two reasons I can think of are safety and damage to the ladder. If the half ladder is side swiped or damaged it isn’t going to effect the tank. Whereas a full ladder may twist and cause a puncture. Highly unlikely but possible. Also much easier and cheaper to replace if damaged.
I’m voting for clearance. This design projects “sideways” less than the standard design. Note also that that rungs closest to the car’s centerline are equally spaced from that centerline. If a rung had been place ON the centerline, there would have been less clearance.
I’m guessing they picked up several “free” inches with this method.
This design sure doesn’t give lots of room for a person’s boot toes, though.
There is no question that a little less material is used which would equate to a cost saving, but it would be insignificant compared to the overall cost of the car. Added to the need to balance on your toes there are also fewer places for handholds. The fact that 358 had this configuration out of thousands made indicates it wasn’t very popular.
When did you move to Canterlot from Equestria? Did big city life appeal to you in the captial, or have you always been there and are you just being more specific?
Heres a thought in the safty departmenty. When a person goes up or down a ladder there is a chance that person could grab the side rails of that ladder with their hand and now their boot slips of a rung. Woops down their hand slides on that side rail only to get slamed in to a lower rung and maybe fall from the ladder altogether. Now if you only have rungs to grab a hold of while going up or down and your boot slip off a rung, you still have a hand holding on to a rung. Yep like I say, only a thought.
Some time ago, I did a project with regard to cutting the “mouse ears” in the tunnels on the old WP line in California. This was done for double stack clearance. My recollection was that the ears were cut so as to clear the containers by 3", vertically and horizontally. Interesting to compare that with the quoted paper.
There were a number of early notching experiments that used that 3" clearance from Plate H or K…
Remember the old adage about how rules are written in blood? You can figure out what went ‘wrong with that picture’ in the real world when you read the red-bordered box about various speeds vs. clearances.
Curves. The body of the railcar overhangs more on the inside of a curved track, so the exact middle of a railcar is the clearance issue. Also depends on the length and truck centers, since the longer the car the more overhang inside a curve.
Also, that’s an insulated tank, so it’s actually the insulated and “jacket” that’s notched in, not the actual structural tank body.
You also see some of the big LPG tanks with flat sections on the sides or ladders offset from the middle of the car to deal with curve clearance issues.
