An eastbound CN train thru Valpo this evening had GATX 25179, which was a very small tank car. Length and height were small. Didnt have my camera…but wish I did.
I believe the commodity was bromide.
Carl or anyone else out there … can you help with this car?
Ed
Not to steal Carl’s thunder but here’s a link to the car GATX25179 !
Their truck trailers are very small diameter and short as well.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=689024
just for curiosity: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1102842
“One of the primary producers is/ or was GTank Cars, Steel Pressure Insulated Car DOT 105S300W, Capacity: Less than 7,000 gal. Car Type T911”
Great Lakes Chemical Co which has morphed into another corporate identity set. Bromine is a very heavy specific gravity liquid pumped from wells. I was familar with their operations in the ElDorado, Ark area from some years back, as I had an acquaintance who worked there.
Link here to probably more than you want to know about GLCCO:
You’re a lucky man, Ed - a good guess on the contents, and a Scott Chatfield snagged a photo of that exact car and posted it on RailCarPhotos.com about 3 years ago. Here’s the link - which might not work, but you or someone else will know how to fix that: http://railcarphotos.com/Search.php?SearchCarNumber=25179&Search=Search - Paul North.
Well I guess we were both on the same wave length![tup][tup]
anyway, Heated the link up!
Ok, the world gets a litter weirder every day…
I switched that car or its kissing cousin into Lubrizol a few years back.
Had to drag a entire hold track out and spot it way back in the plant at a rack, with a hopper of some reddish powder right behind it.
They came in together and our work orders were specific, both cars had to go into the plant together, tank first then hopper, so we had to turn or wye the cars first before spotting them.
This plant makes specialty lubricants and custom lubes and grease…so…
For the chemical whiz folks here, what use would Lubrizol have for bromide?
The hopper came from Painsville Ohio, it and a few others are regular LZ spots, they are even stenciled, on the B end, "spot this end in first at Painsville Ohio plant, and the A end “spot this end in first at Lubrizol DeerPark Texas”
Any clue what’s in the hopper?
Its red, a fine powder, as sticky and looks like a reddish oxide orange version of carbon black, that fine a powder…
Here are my guesses:
The bromine is used to make Quatrex.
The hopper is carrying some type of clay.
Bromine is often a part of compounds used as fire and flame retardants. In the past, ethylene bromide was a gasoline additive used to reduce knocking.
Thanks for the replies. Great photos on the links…that was the car. It took me completely by surprize.
I do not have a current Railway Equipment Register, so can anyone tell how many of these cars are in service. In my years of watching trains, this was the first spotting of this car.
The commodity decal indicated Bromine…after selling thousands of commodity decals for tank car use, it is a reflex to look at the commodity.
Ed
[:-^] Ed; ~~~ some years back there was flat cars with cylinders in a rack. They were painted black , the ends were silver paint . I don’t recall the contents. The cars and cylinders have vanished , do you know why?
Respectfully, Cannonball
Eric:
I thought this link to Lubrizol Corp might be appropriate:
http://www.lubrizol.com/PersonalCare/Products/Surfactants/QuatrexS.html
and just for guessing!
Quatrex™ S is a unique liquid cationic surfactant exhibiting excellent substantivity and conditioning properties.
Its anionic compatibility is ideal in formulating true conditioning shampoos. Its solubility properties create new possibilities for sprays, mousses, setting gels and conditioners.
Availability is limited to North America.
I’ll give you the clay guess![:-,]
Sounds like chlorine tanks to me. I remember seeing them occasionally on the IHB.
Thanks, Sam - I knew I could count on someone like you to do that for me. [tup]
Yeah, I was surprised to see your post come up just before mine. What’s really interesting is that we both got photos of the same car, but from 2 entirely different websites, and with a little different info on each one. I would not have given good odds on that happening. It must be pretty popular or eye-catching to have provoked so much notice and posted photos.
Wow! A freight-car thread twelve posts and a whole day old before I took a crack at it! (I have a good excuse, I promise!)
The overall length of this car is a mere 37’9", and capacity is just over 4300 gallons. The car is nominally a 70-ton car (it actually can transport 75 tons of commodity). If it had “100-ton” trucks on it, the tank could carry close to 6000 gallons. That’s still less than half the size of the smallest recent production I’m aware of, but it would give you an idea of just how heavy this stuff is!
Using the car numbers for which we have photographs, I can find five such cars: GATX 11527-11529 and 25179-25180. There may be others owned by the shippers themselves, but these cars are near the end of their service lives, and I haven’t heard of any larger replacements.
Going back about thirty years, I can’t find any evidence that these cars were ever part of larger series. So these five could be it. I’m pretty sure that the big series used for DuPont and Ethyl Corporation anti-knock compounds have gone by the wayside, and I know that the fleets of Dow Chemical (which got its start in bromine!) and Michigan Chemical that were used for bromine transport are long gone.
Valpo Ed, it’s interesting that you saw this car on the old GTW, and both of the photographs referenced were taken elsewhere on the same route (I think we can assume that the shot at Wellsboro was taken on a CN train). This suggests to me that there is probably only the one shipper-consignee pair left for bromine cars. It would be interesting to have a trace that included the origin and destination of these cars. I don’t see them any more, so they must get out of Chicago via some other route. Houston Ed’s probably got the destination down by him, and I’d bet that they originate not in Canada, but somewhere around Dow’s main plant in Midland, Michigan.
Now to those “flat cars”: in spite of what they looked like, these cars were classified as tank cars (back in the day of many tank car desig
[swg] Carl and Paul; the railroad industry is full of one of a kind specialty cars. All of these cars have had their ( 15mins. of fame) . I look forward to the next design of said cars. I’m sure not too long in the future will see them.[:-^]
Cannonball
Never mind the weight of the bromide itself (impressive at about 25 lbs per gallon) - the markings on the car in question include the legend “lead lined…”
Lead lined? Is bromide the common name for kryptonite? [;)]
Re Bromine. It is a very heavy liquid that is very very corrosive. If I remember what I saw written about this stuff, it is a very concentrated salt solution.
25lbs per gallon sounds about right. Someone look it up. UN1744. I do not have my ERG or Haz Mat books handy.
Rgds IGN
To be more specific, it is probably Quatrex CT-100, which has Cetrimonium Bromide in it.
My guess is that it was on train CN396 or 398. The 398 is a run thru from UP, so if Carl doesnt have it in the system, then it probably came up on the 396. There were quite a few Dupont (DUPX) tank cars in the train and other tank cars. It would be interesting to know the origin/destinations for the movement.
Of all the years watching CN and GTW trains thru town, this was the only time I have seen this one.
Carl, thanks for the info.
Ed
I was about 10 years old when I saw the chlorine tanks (we’ll not discuss how long ago that was) on an IHB local that served Republic Steel and an Allied Chemical plant on the PRR Calumet River Secondary track.