Somebody from iron ore country could give you a more definite answer re. the change from raw ore to taconite, but I believe the change came about in the 1950's or thereabouts. During the period you model, I think raw, red ore would be much more common.
Someone mentioned sulfur. Shipments were frequently received at a Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing plant on the AC&Y at Copley, Ohio in open gondolas. The bright yellow sulfur was shipped fairly long distances without any covering.
The differences in the weights of various ladings reminded me that AC&Y bought 100 former coal hoppers (essentially PRR GLa clones) from the Cambria & Indiana and had them rebuilt for dolomite (limestone) service out of Carey, Ohio. Their AC&Y numbers were 5000 - 5099. By the end of May, 1937, all had been rebuilt and were in AC&Y serevice. Within a year, the cars' old Enterprise door locks, which had been fine for coal service, began to fail while on the road. I'm not aware that any derailments were caused, but the road began to retrofit the cars with the much sturdier Wine door locks in March, 1938, and completed the conversions in July. That solved the problem, but the cars were used hard, and began to be retired during WWII. The last two were reassigned to work service by July, 1950. Limiting their capacity might have lengthened their lives and made the door lock conversions unnecessarey, but it would have required more cars to do the job.
Sort of a side question about iron ore. Was iron ore generally shipped in pellet-form? Or, did it come in other sizes as well? From a Wiki page it looks like the pellets were ~1/4" OD.
I'm mainly interested in what form it would have been transported in hoppers in the early 40s in the NE/Midwest region. Thanks.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Another load that I didn't see mentioned was woodchips. Some railroads used repurposed hoppers with extensions and some have special cars designed for woodchips. (PACCAR and FMC being two companies that manufactured those cars.) I grew up with a woodchip plant west of where I live. Anytime I traveled west I made sure I observed that plant. I think always seeing that plant influenced me to have lumber and lumber products as one of the main commodities on my road.
For many years, Santa Fe had the unpleasent assignment to supply open top cars (hoppers/gondolas) used to transport putrid avacados to a rendering plant in Riverside Ca, where said product was used in the feed industry, dedicated cars of less then pristine condition were assigned as cleaning them between loads proved futile!
Dave
Taconite pellets used to be hauled from Minnesota to a steel mill in Provo, Utah.
Canadian Pacific runs long unit trains of sulphur in open hoppers that they call sultrans.
You can add raw sugar to the list. The Reading would unload raw sugar from ocean going freighers into "dedicated" service open hoppers. Many of the hoppers had removable lids to protect the sugar from the elements but some of the cars were simply covered with a tarp.
On the Reading you could easily tell to what service the open hopper was dedicated, there was a blue panel on the left end if it was sugar, orange if it was ore, and tan if it was sand.
A lot of the Reading's 70 ton ore "hoppers" were actually gons. They took several of their 70 ton hoppers and installed a floor in them to make them gons, leaving the hoppers in place. One of the RCT&HS magazines had an article on them. They were successful except that since they were old cars, they tended to rust out or go bad order. The RDG also did this with a series of twin hoppers also.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
mlehmanI'd hope those open hoppers are near the end of their useful lives. That's some pretty darn corrosive service...
They were mostly older UP 4-bay and CNW 3-bay cars last I noticed - kinds I don't really see hauling coal anymore.
Rob Spangler
wp8thsub locoi1sa I had to post this. The first train of hoppers is loaded with rock salt backing down to the storage area. You can make out the giant pile of salt in the backgound. That reminds me, there's a salt plant near me that loads 100-ton open hoppers with salt. They're tall, heaping loads that extend above the sides of the cars.
locoi1sa I had to post this. The first train of hoppers is loaded with rock salt backing down to the storage area. You can make out the giant pile of salt in the backgound.
That reminds me, there's a salt plant near me that loads 100-ton open hoppers with salt. They're tall, heaping loads that extend above the sides of the cars.
I'd hope those open hoppers are near the end of their useful lives. That's some pretty darn corrosive service -- even before it rains, although I can understand it a little better in certain parts of the West where it tends to stay pretty dry.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
locoi1saI had to post this. The first train of hoppers is loaded with rock salt backing down to the storage area. You can make out the giant pile of salt in the backgound.
I had to post this. The first train of hoppers is loaded with rock salt backing down to the storage area. You can make out the giant pile of salt in the backgound. At around 9 and 1/2 minutes you can see the loaded hoppers of iron ore. Those look to be 100 ton cars too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JErREoMOdDc
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
WP had open hoppers for hauling barite, a mineral used in manufacturing drilling mud (used in the oil and gas industry).
UP delivered coal to a cement plant in Oregon in open hoppers, and used the same cars to backhaul clinker cemet which was processed elsewhere. Once emptied, the cars would be sent back to Wyoming for more coal.
The Reading was one of the eastern roads that hauled iron ore in 70T and 100T open top 3 bay hoppers. They were loaded low.
Mark H
Modeling in HO...Reading and Conrail together in an alternate history.
That still goes on a lot today, directly from the mines in Minnesota to various places. BNSF has a fleet of steel coal cars they use for this. A small shot of pellets in each end makes up the 100 ton capacity.
Start Quote
In the east, railroads like the New York Central used regular hopper cars to haul iron ore from the Great Lakes ore boats to the steel mills. Because the ore is so dense, the cars could only be loaded about half full.
[/quote]
I saw a Discovery program about making Geletin. The bone bits were shipped in an old hopper ground to small 3/4 inch pieces. Kind of gruesome but we eat it every day. Moms GE plant in Cleveland hauled away glass in hoppers that were cut or broken in the lightbulb manufacturing.
I can recall reading in Model Railroader that sometimes out of necessity iron ore would move in ordinary coal hoppers but that due to the incredible weight difference, there would be what looked like two small piles of ore in a hopper car because its capacity had already been met. If someone got this wrong and overloaded the car it could crystalize and ruin the frame. That is true for the other alternative loads mentioned above: they might not fill the hopper to the brim as they do with coal.
The Koppers tie plant in Galesburg IL on the BNSF gets old railroad ties for reprocessing in retired BN coal hoppers.
Dave Nelson
When it comes to rail and a commodity in existence, I've sorta learned to never say never.
mlehmanWhen it comes to rail and a commodity in existence, I've sorta learned to never say never. I'm really not aware of any specific traffic,
If it can be hauled more then likely rail was used especially before the Interstate highways.
Today we see unit trains of garbage (trash packers as I calls 'em),loads of "dirty" dirt etc.
I would not be surprise if outdated 34' wooden hopper cars was used to haul stock yard or stock car waste.I seen gons loaded with dirty manure filled hay(the load smelled like a barn yard) on the PRR back in the mid 50s.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
chutton01MSW probably wouldn't have moved in either Gondolas or Hoppers during the WWII era - not sure if it was transported any distance at all by rail, as most major urban centers had nearby landfills or incinerators or both
When it comes to rail and a commodity in existence, I've sorta learned to never say never. I'm really not aware of any specific traffic, with one exception I'll get to in a moment. I was mainly thinking of urban centers for exactly the reasons you stated -- a need to get it out of town, but not far. In areas where congestion and/or legal restrictions made large scale truck traffic a problem, rail can serve to reduce congestion. I was primarily thinking of New York, a few other East Coast cities and Chicago, which had a freightb subway that moved that traffic out from underground. Most likely, when it wasn't used as fill for Grant Park, this moved on out of the city by rail, but I could be wrong about that.
Probably not in hoppers, but certainly in gondolas, was the brick trade. Now, a lot of that moved by boxcar, but gondolas of brick are not out of the question, especially if it's broekn brick for fill, etc.
mlehmanBuilding debris is something likely not found in hoppers back then, but some may have travled in gons. Also keep in mind that many commodities carried in hopoers now, were in gondolas back then. Clamshell buckets or conveyors or even good ol' shovels moved stuff out, because labor was cheap.
Also note that high-sided gondolas (of the style that now haul C&D, Scrap, MSW, etc) apparently came about (or at least became common) in the early 1970s (and bathtub gondolas, with additional capacity between the trucks , in the late 1970s), so debris hauling gondolas before then would have been the lower sided 40/50ft styles - hoppers probably would have had higher cubic capacity...
mlehmanScrap rubber in shredded or chunk form is probably more recent,
For general information
Mike and Tom,The loads of rubber I was talking about was in the 80s..I can not remember where those loads went to.
Tom,
They pretty much all would have been around, except that aluminum scrap was much rarer. The war vastly expanded production of aluminum, so it was a commodity that would grow in the future. Scrap ferrous metal on the other hand, was common as dirt. Wartime scrap drives cleaned up most of it, so probably declined a little right after teh war, but then would have picked back up.
Scrap rubber in shredded or chunk form is probably more recent, but old tires might have made it into gondolas, not sure about hoppers, though.
Building debris is something likely not found in hoppers back then, but some may have travled in gons. Also keep in mind that many commodities carried in hopoers now, were in gondolas back then. Clamshell buckets or conveyors or even good ol' shovels moved stuff out, because labor was cheap.
I really apprecitate the answers so far, fellas. Supplement question, if I may. Would any of the aforementioned loads not have been around in the early/mid 40s?
Thanks again for all the help.
Limestone used for flux in the steel and ore processing industries was a common material carried in coal hoppers. Like some of these other commodities mentioned, it's a lot heavier than coal. Sometimes, hopper cars are marked with a line to indicate maximum load when carrying rock or gravel. Otherwise, if loaded full the car would be overweight. So if you're making loads to add to your rolling stock, they should be considerably lower in the car than a coal or wood chip load would be.
MOH grew up in Billings MT., and she remembers sugar beets being hauled in what ever was availiable. She said some cars looked like "coal cars with extra sides". There was guy here in East Troy that dealt in recycled glass, and used "coal" hoppers, usually 2 at a time. The ET Electric took them to the WC interchange in Mukwonago. He was only around for a couple of years.
Mike.
EDIT: I also have seen "re-purposed" hoppers used to haul the raw "frac" sand to refineries, in western WI, where it was washed, the silica sand seperated, dryed, and put into covered hoppers for it's trip to the mining areas.
My You Tube
tstage BRAKIE Gravel,coke,ore,crush stone,glass shards, aluminum chips,old ties,ballast,mine wastage and sand for staters. Larry, I assume the old tires would have been pulvarized so that rubber/debris could be unloaded from underneath? Tom
BRAKIE Gravel,coke,ore,crush stone,glass shards, aluminum chips,old ties,ballast,mine wastage and sand for staters.
Gravel,coke,ore,crush stone,glass shards, aluminum chips,old ties,ballast,mine wastage and sand for staters.
Larry,
I assume the old tires would have been pulvarized so that rubber/debris could be unloaded from underneath?
I have an industry not far from me that gets huge blocks of Marble, granite and other things. They arrive in hoppers and are unloaded by a crane and made into countertops and other things. When I recently put down a marble floor in our house I cut some small pieces for the layout and was surprised at how well they scaled down. They also look good on a flatcar and add a good chunk of weight to boot.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."