Do 50's era coal hoppers look rusty inside, or does the coal dust cover it up.
We just vacationed on the Rocky Mountaineer and the coal hoppers we saw seemed to be aluminum inside and out.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Thank Jack Delano:
Hulett4 by Edmund, on Flickr
Rights AdvisoryNo known restrictions on publication.
These are being loaded with iron ore here but the effect isn't much different.
Here's a gang of PRR H21 hoppers I recently "rusted" by giving them a coat of Dullcote for "tooth" then liberally dusting them with rust pigment.
PRR_H21_rust by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_H21_rust-b by Edmund, on Flickr
I used a stiff brush to work the pigment into the crevices then tipped the whole bunch over to shake out the remaining dust for reuse.
Cheers, Ed
I remember being told the rusty interiors of coal hoppers was due to the interaction between the sulfur in the coal and rainwater. Perhaps someone with a background in chemistry can chime in. My information was obtained on the C&O in Newport News VA, circa 1970.
Wow Ed, now THAT'S efficiency in painting and weathering. And consistency.
Yes coal hoppers get rusty inside if they are steel, but it is also true that coal dust gathers at least at the lower levels of the interior, so it isn't all reddish brown inside. Gons definitely rust, too. I photographed some gons from a bridge over a yard where there were some gaping holes in the floor, presumably a consequence of rust and dropped loads. Other gons had standing water in them that would slosh around, something I assume hoppers avoid due to gaps in the hopper doors.
Years ago I climbed the ladder and photographed a gon interior that had been sitting idle long enough to have a modest little forest of what looked like tree saplings growing in it!
Dave Nelson
Thanks guys, not as rusty as I would have thought.
Rust looks good in steel open hoppers. The longer a car sits unloaded in rainy weather or snow the more rust color it developes (light orange to dark brown). Wet, dry, wet, dry, forms rust and eat steel faster then just staying dry or being submerged in water for years.
If a hopper gets loaded and dumped more often, let's say every two days, I'd think the scraping of product on the inside would be like sanding it, less dark rust and more light rust with metal color. Rust starts from an light orange color to a dark brown color as time goes on.
Heavy rains would wash down the coal dust and it would gather in corners. Some coal hoppers on the East Broad Top have panels rusted though that you could stick you hand though to the inside. If the holes became large enough that coal lumps would fall out, a chunk of straw was stuffed in the hole in the rusted panel or welded over with plate.
Coal will eat steel. Coal is made up of, Hydrogen, Sulfer, Oxygen, Nitrogen, now add water, eat, eat, eat. In the '50s it started, going up into the '70s there was a thing called Acid Rain made up of Sulfer Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide, that was a big creator of rust.
If your hauling Lignite (low grade) it would be brown in color, Bituminous (middle grade and soft) would be brown to black in color and Anthracite (high grade and hard) shiny black in color.
Nice hoppers ED.
I know natural iron ore is so rough that it tends to scrape the interior paint off of cars in a short time, leaving the exposed metal to rust. I would imagine coal could have a similar effect.
wjstixI know natural iron ore is so rough that it tends to scrape the interior paint off of cars in a short time, leaving the exposed metal to rust.
A lot would depend on how frequently the hoppers see service and the weather conditions they are exposed to.
Recently used cars would have bare steel exposed that would quickly turn to bright orange colored rust. Exposure to precipitation would speed this up.
Cars that sat stored would see an older, darker rust color.
Options and choices.
— Ed