Hello. Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere but I couldn't find anything relevent. I am looking for information on when railroad companies started shipping bentonite & barite for drilling mud in covered hoppers.
One of the industries on MR's Washita & Santa Fe project railroad was a ready mix plant that received bulk materials for drilling mud in covered hoppers. The layout was set in 1960 but my interest is in the early 50's and I am not sure it is prototypical for 10 years earlier. Also the physical plant looks too modern but the pictures in the article may have been taken in the 1980's.
Also were there oil industry specific boxcars in 1950 like the later Dresser Magcobar ones?
Any help would be appreciated
thank you
Steve
I said to myself: What the (expletive), give it a shot." And entered "drilling mud" in Wikipedia and got this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_fluid
Who woulda thought?
Anyway, I suggest going through this article. A brief scan says to me that drilling fluid would be used whenever going more than "a few feet" down. But what kind and when? Sadly, there's no history in the article. But it sure looks rewarding.
Ed
PS: I just went a bit further and entered the search term "history drilling fluid" as a search engine search. There's a lot of info popping up. Here's one:
http://www.enggpedia.com/chemical-engineering-encyclopedia/dictionary/94-articles/1875-drilling-fluid-history?tmpl=component
Steve,
The early 50s was still the early years of covered hopper use for most commodities. They were around, but tended to be for specialized lading. Drilling mud fits that description, but I suspect most if not all was still moving in bags via boxcars at that time.
Haliburton is one of the big oilfield services outfits and there's some history of their starting to use rail to transport mud in 1961 here:
http://alaskarails.org/fp/halliburton.html
Those would make interesting models as they sure don't look like an LO if that was their AAR classification. My 1970 ORER indicates they were and that by then 144 standard appearance LOs were also in use by Halliburton.
I suspect there were few if any private boxcars in service for hauling bagged mud. They probably just used whatever low grade 40' boxcar there was handy.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I saw a couple of Halliburton cars, pictured in the alaskarails link, at a facility visible from Highway 99 in California north of Bakersfield the last time I was down that way. Probably about 8 yerars ago.
Halliburton cement hoppers built in the 1940's http://www.railgoat.railfan.net/other_cars/hwcx_cars/hwcx040800-040944.htm
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
DSchmittHalliburton cement hoppers built in the 1940's http://www.railgoat.railfan.net/other_cars/hwcx_cars/hwcx040800-040944.htm
Looks like the first LOs that Halliburton owned started as GACX cars during the war. Halliburton acquired them in '45. Assuming they were used for mud all along, which may not be a safe assumption, this may have been one of those cases where the government managed or otherwise allocated these cars to boost war production, then the cars were sold off at the end to users or others with a need for them.
The Rio Grande had a bunch of short gons that were similarly acquired by the gov't and used for shipping stuff out of the Geneva Works in Utah and which ended up on the ARR after the war. Pics show them running in Alaska for a long time still in the original Rio Grande scheme.
Given Halliburton was a leading company in that industry, it seems to have been an early user of LOs. I suspect a lot of mud still shipped in bags prior to ~1960.
Halliburton had a fleet of 2-bay covered hoppers per my April 1954 Official Railway Eqpt Register:
HALLIBURTON OIL WELL CEMENTING CO.
HWCX 40800-40943 29'3"inside length 1958 cu.ft. 140,000 lb.capy
HWCX 40800-41028 blt 1942. appears to be typical ACF 2-bay LO
with triangle "cutouts" middle of sides. pix _RMC_ Dec83 p.88
Should second 40800 be 41000?