Modelcar knows what the loads are.
New use for an old car.
Ed
Top picture: blades of a modern elctricity generating windmill and the part they connect to that houses the electricity generator.
Bottom picture: open hopper converted to ballast hopper (with strenghtening along the top)?
greetings,
Marc Immeker
Isn’t that cute! They come with a “lift lid”…[;)] Kind of a hobo crock pot?
[(-D]
They are very impressive once erected - especially a hundred or so… All of the current crop in this area is up - I think they came in by boat via the St Lawrence Seaway.
We sent out two trains back to back, about a shift apart.
Not sure where they are headed, but someone has a lot, and I mean a lot of windmills headed their way.
There’s a new wind farm under construction along US-30 in western Iowa- perhaps they’re headed there? I saw alot of pillars out there without anything mounted on top yet, along with a couple that were alot closer to done.
The “farm” near me has around 125 towers…
They flats in the photo have 20 or so hubs, and both trains had pretty close to ten flats of them each…and each blade needs at least 1 and 1/2 89 foot flat.
To give you an idea about the length of the train, the head end is at UPs Basin yard office, and the EOT is down on the docks at wharf 18, with the PTRA North Yard in the middle!
They line, lock and spike all the switches ahead of these guys, so it pretty much shuts us down till TD3 Spring dispatch can get them out of town.
Ed
I may be missing something here. Lining and locking the route in advance is understandable but spiking the switches ahead of this move seems a bit extreme.
[:O] They let you build 100 next to each other? That is called polluting the horizon here in the Netherlands… Yeah, as if we do not have enough sky to look at in this low country![:(!]
And to think we give up all that free wind energy, boy that hurts in my Dutch wallet.[}:)]
greetings,
Marc Immeker
We take our part in sending these things out really seriously.
Once they get on the UP, well, thats UPs problem.
But as long as they are on the PTRA, nothing is going to screw up if we can help it.
The first one we ever sent was proceeded by a joint UP/BNSF inspection train, the entire route.
The alternators, or nacells show below cost, at a guess, between $100,000. to $200,000. a pop…I am not going to get one on the ground if I can help it!
We saw a number of these going east on trucks on I-90. Saw them near Rapid City, SD and Butte, MT. Also saw some Eastbound on I-84 along the Columbia River Gourge in Aug. Some trucks had two blades mounted. preceeded by flag cars with “Height Measuring Sticks” mounted up front. WOndered then where they were headed. I wondered why they werent going by rail…thought that the destination for those units might be too far from a railhead…
(1) Ed: We have a major wind farm going in at Arrowsmith/Bloomington IL as we speak. We had to beef-up all the county roads to accomodate the heavy lowboy delivery trucks…including a couple of crossings on NS’ Peoria Gateway old NKP main track.
(2) What’s the deal with the 177000 Class car with the addition on top? (176-177000 Class cars were converted from sand and Potash service in the 1970’s w/ MK or Miner doors…the 76000 class cars are converted coal cars with impossible rotary chain doors that you can’t close after opening until all the ballast is out…180000 Class were big covered hoppers converted to Miner doors and the roof removed and 186000 were the air dumps…Dumped way too much ballast out of all of these)
Or they could be headed near Washington DC, MORE than enough hot air there. [:D]
Seems the UP couldn’t wrangle up enough flats this time around, so a lot of the blades went by truck.
Had quite a show watching them try and get them out the entrance at Gate 8 from the port of Houston, seems getting the empty trailer in was easy, a straight shot so to speak, but getting the load out and headed the direction they wanted required them to “see saw” a lot, pretty much closed Clinton drive down for a few hours.
If you note, the frames or supports for the blades use the container pedestals…the first few we sent out, they took a crew of welders down to the docks and custom made frames and supports for each blade…someone got smart and fabricated the current frames to use the container locks instead, then when you are done with the car, no one has to cut off the frames, and you can reuse the same frames over and over.
.Marc here is a website you, and some others who are interested in these large “windmills” might enjoy:
http://www.kansasenergy.org/wind_projects.htm
The Elk River Project is south of the area of Beaumont, Kansas,[site of a preserved wooden Frisco water tank], East of Wichita, Kansas on the old now abandoned Frisco Line that ran from Carthage, Missouri into the east side of Wichita. The machines were railed into Wichita, and trucked to the installation location which hasd about 100 of the 1.5 MW windmills,
Could also be headed around here somewhere. I know they were planning on putting more near both Evanston and Arlington Wyoming. And if the permits pass, they are putting a bunch just outside Rock Springs.
You noticed that ballast car, too, Ed–it’s in my notes somewhere!
On the UP, they added canvas covers to all of the nee-RI ballast cars in the CNW 791000 series, and assigned them to wreck train service at various yards. The covers keep the ballast dry (and easier to unload in the winter). I would think that a metal lid like that wouldn’t be as efficient, but there must be a reason for it.
MC, I saw some enteresting ATSF ballast cars near Galena, Illinois, on our way home from Lincoln. They were rebuilt from larger covered hoppers (4427 cuft or bigger), and had large openings near the tops of the sides. Pat and I both surmised that this was to keep them from being loaded beyond their load limit.
As for windmill farms, go south from Rochelle along I-39, and you’ll see a huge one as you get close to Mendota. I’d bet that there are over 100 towers there.