I dont know about you, but this has to be the rustiest car I have ever seen in my lifetime in modern service. Can anybody challenge this with a more rusty car in modern service?
CSX 247098:
…I wonder if during much of it’s lifetime of service it has hauled some very corrosive product…Hence all the rust.
I’m not sure I could top yours, but I am pretty sure I could match it, several times a day.
One can’t always blame owner neglect (at least not initially), because the rust has to get through the paint somehow, and it’s usually a commodity that causes this. In the case of this (and many, many other) CSX covered hopper cars, it’s the transportation of fertilizer components that don’t give their paint a chance. We (UP) lose a lot of shiny paint to the salt carried by a number of covered hoppers.
I’m sure that some cars (boxcar types come to mind) also have lousy paint to begin with. We had a thread about something earlier in which I mentioned that certain carbuilders, or certain paint manufacturers, or a combination thereof, produced entire series of cars that would eventually be rusty over most of their surfaces. One good example is the ROCK 300500-300799 series, produced by Evans Products. You’re doing mighty well if you can read anything on the sides of these (now operating under their fourth or fifth reporting mark, in most cases).
Once a car has rust on its sides, repainting it won’t do a bit of good if the steel hasn’t been properly cleaned and prepared. As I mentioned in that previous thread, C&O used to be a serious transgressor along these lines–I saw cars still in the Raceland shops, freshly painted, that I knew would give the railroad a glorious public image in a few months.
Gondolas get it, primarily because they live in an environment where they’re banged up, heated up, and loaded up with some of the most rotten stuff imaginable. Tank cars don’t often appear completely rusty, but their commodities often leave a mark, particularly underneath the top openings.
Funny how the graffitti taggers have no interest in a car like this. It could use some Krylon.
Yeah, that’s a good one.
Looks like that one spent a winter in New England, New England should be renamed the rust capitol of the world, everything left untreated for a short period of time up here quickly Rusts away.
The up side is the auto salvage yards are full of low milage motors because the bodies rotted away way before the motor stopped running.
Our license plates should read “Live Free or Rust away”.
So, if the commodity (fertilizer, salt, etc.) can cause a car to rust, how does it affect the structure of the car? What, if anything, are the railroads doing to try to prevent the commodity from causing rust and possible structural defects on a railroad car?
Thanks,
CC
It’ll buff out [:P]
Anybody care to wager that the car in the photo was used to carry salt to Chicago during one of our famous winter driving seasons?
…Maybe a little rubbing compound and polish could do the job. Just run it thru a “detail” shop.
With some types of steel, an outer coating of surface rust can block O2 from the inner steel. Cheaper than paint.
Adrianspeeder
If that car rusts anymore, it better be always the last car on a train or it’ll be pulled in half.[:-^]
in order to save costs that come from coatings…csx is now ordering cars out of thicker steel and letting rust act as a coating… studies have shown that over the life span of the car millions can be saved and more revenue miles can be earned by not haveing the car taken out of service for the paintshop… this policy is thanks to the ICF board members and is supost to be an attempt to increase dividend returns on the stock for the sharholders…so expect to see in the next physicl year to have the fleet of cars and engins to being to take on the new csx color of rust…and a new markenting blitz with the new company slogan “RUST IN SLOW MOTION”
csx engineer
…Wow, surely they won’t let their engines look like that…!
I have seen some pretty rusty CSX covered hippers at the Dal-Tile plant east of town. They receive the clay that that they use for producing their prducts. Also a lot of Procor cylindrical and PS-2 hoppers. The Procor hoppers are grey and NOT rusty at all.
I don’t think you need to worry about that. This car probably has about five or ten years of service life left (I think it began life as an L&N car). Most cars’ sides are relatively thick, and the rust like this could be sanded off with little discernible loss. The only cars I’ve seen that looked like they were actually rusting apart have been some PFE reefers, and that, as it would turn out, was just the outer sheathing, which I suspect is much thinner than structural sides.
quote by: csxengineer98
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense… Thicker steel means heavier cars. Heavier cars require more pulling power. More pulling power requires more fuel. More fuel with today’s prices can mean a lot of lost revenue.
CC
thicker steel means it will last longer as it slowly rusts away… besides… this was suppost to be a sarcastic comment…
csx engineer
The flip side of that thought, is that the weight of the paint has been removed from the car. As it rusts, some of the steel forming the outside of the car is leaving as well.
Thinner steel means lighter cars. Lighter cars require less pulling power. Less pulling power requires less fuel. Less fuel with today’s prices can mean a lot more revenue. [:-,]
“CSX:Becoming more fuel efficient every day-naturally!” [:o)]
Some communities use calcium chloride to melt the snow. That is death to the appearance of the aluminum cases on motorcyles. Do the aluminum coal cars get blemished by that stuff?