I recently discovered that wood hoppers were built during the war year because steel was used by the military, I assume for ships and weapons.
There’s a 1916(?) article in Railway Age Gazette describing the Philadelphia & Reading use of steel hoppers. So I had always been confused why wood hoppers were used later (1943).
but I also wonder if wood hoppers were built because the existing number of hopper was too small for war time needs, or if possibly existing steel hoppers were scrapped and melted down to supply steel for military needs?
Huge quantities of steel was needed for the war effort. There was also a need for more of most car types during the war. Using less steel in railroad cars ment more steel available for other uses. Composit wood/steel cars were built to supplement the existing cars, not replace them. These cars were not as durable as the all steel cars, but could do the job.
Once hostilities were over, a lot of those composite hoppers got steel plates where they had been built new with wood.
A parallel situation - the JNR D51 class 2-8-2 had a low-pressure exhaust and needed elephant ear smoke deflectors to keep the cab livable. The third group, built at the height of the Pacific War, was put into service with wooden smoke deflectors.
Keep in mind that the wood replaced steel only for purposes like sheathing. The basic frame of the car and structural elements remained steel. As was noted, the frequently was replaced by steel sheeting once the war ended, although this was a drawn out process.
not suggesting that there were fewer cars, but that it may have been easier to cannibalize steel hoppers as a quick source of steel and replace and expand the number of hoppers with wooden ones.
While on the subject, just how late did composite hoppers last in revenue service? We still got an occasional wood side hopper in interchange from the “Q” at E St Louis in the late 60’s. I just wondered what other roads were still using them that late.
You’re suggesting that working hopper cars were melted down so that they could be made into working hopper cars with wood sides.
The Office of Defense Transportation estimated that the amount of steel it took to make 9 all-steel hoppers would make 10 composite ones. Of lesser capacity.
I’m having a lot of trouble envisioning the war-time efficiency of melting down 9 working hopper cars so that 10 could be built with the steel. Especially since the furnace that would be melting the former hopper cars could otherwise have been used making fresh steel. And the 9 cars could be hauling coke to that furnace.
Yeah, they didn’t melt working hopper cars, tghey just kept using them. What they did was not use an excess steel in NEW cars built during this period.
It pays to remember a couple of tghings.
Cars, even steel ones, didn’t last so long back then, so more frequent replacement was needed.
The country was coning out of the Great Depression and there weren’t a lot of excess cars for ordinary needs as RRs made no more investments in the 1930s than absolutely needed.
The war VASTLY expanded demand for all sort of materials and products and coal was an essentiall ingredient of all that. To make war, you needed to make more coal flow. So they needed to build new cars to meet the war demand. The War Production Board closely tracked questions just like this one, looking at the net gains. They stuck to using what they could, minimizing construction and new demands on vital resources, but also built when they needed to in the most economical way possible that limited the need for strategic materials.
As I understand it a number of wood and steel composite hoppers saw service in World War 1. At the same time the N&W built unsuccessful wood frame hopper cars.
Fast forward to World War 2 , approximately 3/4s of the wood and steel composite hoppers were “emergency” variations of the “standard” AAR 50 and 70 ton designs, so I would presume that their load capacity would be only be the difference in weight between the steel panelling and its wooden replacement.
As mentioned, if a car was so severely damaged it couldn’t be repaired, it would be scrapped. Otherwise, no.
For one thing, railroads normally buy cars on credit through a trust, essentially like a 25 or 30 year mortgage. If you had several hundred 1920’s steel hopper cars you were using every day to haul coal needed to make steel and electricity for the war effort, and you were still making payments on them, you wouldn’t melt them down for scrap and take a loss, and then wait to eventually be allocated some woodsided hoppers to replace them.
Remember it was new cars being built because railroads needed more and more cars to serve the war industries. You wouldn’t scrap a perfectly good car in that situation.
Briefly, steel cars were scrapped only if they were not economically repairable. Replacements had to be approved by the War Production Board. They may have steel sides if the material was available and the WPB approved; otherwise wood. Trucks, couplers, brake components, and other parts of scrapped cars were often retained for reuse on the replacement cars, or for repairs to other in-service equipment.
The last WPB hopper cars were likely built in September of 1944. Emergency hopper cars built previous to that that had steel sides were built for B&O, L&N, I-GN, MP, and PRR.
It was the former. Railroads that had cars sitting idle in 1940-41 when unemployment was still around 9% found out once the US joined the war that now they didn’t have enough cars to do the job. Using wood sides on boxcars, hoppers, etc. allowed you to build more cars with the same amount of steel…that is, you build a 40’ x 10’ boxcar with steel roof, ends, and underframe, but substitute wood for steel for the sides. Maybe for every 5 cars you do that for, you get enough steel to make the parts for another boxcar.
That freed up more steel for the military. You could make a boxcar with wood sides, and it would work fine. A tank made with wood sides wouldn’t work so well.[;)]