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I worked for a major plastics/rubber producer that in their last big expansion acquired a in plant switcher (GE 25 Ton job) and added a 5-track single ended staging yard up by the CSX's main and a passing siding.  It added substantial storage to the facility where cars used to have to be brought from atrack downtown in Brownsville, TN.  They mainly handled 23,000 gal to 30,000 gal tankers of Ethano, Hexanol, and Phalic Acid while had to be heated to around 300 degrees F to flow.  They had to use clean tankers to load out plasticizer oils used extensively in plastics production.  They had their own fleet of jumbo covered hoppers that were mainly loaded with flourescent green plastic pellets for water hose production or resin, one of the raw materials in manufactring plastics.  These cars used the parent companies name & herald "Teknor Apex" a red diamond with a white TAinside of it..   They also had a rubeer plant that received carbon black in 50' cars very similar to an air slide. (talk about a nasty job.   A pnuematic unloading system blew the resin up into 8 different silos.  Carbon black was transfered to 2 very large silos on the roof of the rubberplant by a series of bucket elevators and screw augers. Plasticizer oil was stored in one of 6 500,000 gallon storage tanks.  An interesting situation occurred on night as a tankerman was attempting to load out a railcar.  A nosey engineer went on top of one of the stoirage tanks to see how work was progressing on changing out a plain ole atmospheric vent (22 elbows welde in a simicircle and bolted to the top of the tank) with a type of vent with desicant in it toi prevent moisture from enterring the tank.  Well ,he thought it might rain and the crew had not bolted up the desicant dryer, so he had the brilliant idea to cover the opening with a blank flang.  Not bolted down just laid over the existing opening.  That night with his vision limited by darkness, the tankerman connected his lines to the tanker and started the "positive displacent" Viking brand of pump.  He said soon all heck broke loose with metal popping, bending and breaking.  He shut down the pump as soon as he could because he thought a piece ofmetal had crashed the pump or the coupling had gone out.  <br>the next morning to all of our surprise the 20 degree peaked roof was about a 40 degreed valley handrails and all.  It seems the weight of the blind flange was enough to seal the vent forming a vacuum enough to cave the tank in.  This is a little off topic, but I thought some of you might get a kick out of an engineer (mechanical no locomotive) going aboive & beyond the call of duty, unfortunately!   <br>                                                                                                 Tweet<br>
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