i had never seen these before what are they ??? click on the photo to enlarge
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SD20 2052 is working the MABLT, eastward, crossing the Meuneska River at Waterloo, WI in January 2006. The “BLT” was another regular assignment for the SD20’s. Robert Eineke photo. |
They appear to be side discharge gondolas, possibly DIFCOs, used usually in maintenance of way service or aggregate service. The could be as old as 30 or 40 years, but as new as 10 or 15.
I ageree with the previous answr completely. If you ever get to see one close up it should have a built date in the data. Maintenance equipment rarely gets rebuilt so it should be fairly accurate.
Those are the smaller (and older, pre-1990) DIFCO (now Trinity) 23 CY air dumps. The newer ones are 30-33 CY cars and are still built by Trinity.
Magor, the other builder, quit building cars in 1973 after Fruehauf (?) bought them. Those cars were 20-25 CY and appeared more massive than the Difco’s…
Santa Fe had come 1950’s Difcos still in service right up to the end. As long as you could keep the seals intact on the big cylinders underneath, they would go on working forever - inspite of all the abuse they got. The smaller cars could handle some incredibly huge rip-rap w/o derailing.
The WSOR 500 series air dumps are ex-DMIR. Built in the 1950s.
The 400 series came from ATSF, I believe. Look a bit smaller, but I have heard they are in better condition. Both series had new draft gears installed in the past 3-4 years.
One of the dumber things BNSF, BN and ATSF did was downsize the ballast hopper and air dump fleet around mergertime…They have paid for that blunder multiple times. (great for the shortlines, bassackwards flexibility move for the big boys)
