Someone is selling me Atlas 17,360 gallon tank cars, that mainly carry chlorine, but would they support my layout that has a grain elevator, gas dealer, and cement plant? Here's a link: http://archive.atlasrr.com/HOFreight/arc-ho173tank.htm
If the cars don't support those industries, I can have them "pass through" along an interchange track.
They don't use chlorine in any of those industries. Chlorine is used in chemical production, cleaning products and water treatment plants. It is also one of the most dangerous chemicals out there.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Thanks for the response. I figured chlorine wasn't used in those businesses. Great with the sanity check!
kasskaboose...If the cars don't support those industries, I can have them "pass through" along an interchange track.
Definitely. If you only ran cars that served industries on your layout, you limit the variety that you'd see in most real trains (unit trains exempted).
For most of us, the size of our layouts usually means that we have to limit the size and number of industries, but if you think "beyond" your layout (either more home-road track, existing only in your imagination) or track of a connecting line, (also mostly imagined) where those interesting cars might go, why deprive yourself of the pleasure of running them before they're handed over to the other road.
My layout is run out-of and in-to staging tracks. Two of them have multiple tracks, usually for creating trains or re-boxing cars that have just arrived and are moving on to "elswhere" (a storage shelf below the layout).
The other three consist of only two tracks each. Two of those staging areas represent connecting railroads: trains from them bring interchange cars to my railroad, and and return with their own cars and interchange ones from my road and those with which mine is connected.The third pair of tracks represent my road's "not modelled" industries. Even though the tracks are each only 6' long, I can have an automobile assembly plant, multiple steel mills, refineries, etc., etc. - whatever I have that's suitable for the rolling stock that I send there - the industries can change from session to session, or remain the same...it doesn't matter, because none of them actually exist, other than in my mind.The smaller industries which are on the layout are those which will fit into the space I have. A couple are a respectable size, but most would receive only a car or two at a time. If you think beyond your layout, it will allow you to run stuff that's heading "elswhere", which should help to keep your trains looking "interesting".
Wayne
Many moons ago, while working for a real railroad, we had a bunch of trains backed up due to an issue. We actually prioritized running one train ahead of others, because it had a car of chlorine for a water treatment plant.
Chlorine is a toxic inhalation hazard (TIH) commodity and post-911, is a highly regulated commodity. The government requires that if the terrorist threat level reaches a certain point that if the DHS requests the railroads have to be able to tell the DHS where every single load of TIH is within 30 minutes, if it gets to a higher level they have to be kept where they can be checked on a regular basis and a chain of custody recorded.
LastspikemikeAny water treatment plant needs chlorine so no issues with including such cars in just about any train.
On a modern layout, if you handle more than a handful of chlorine cars per year, your railroad would be required by Federal Law to install PTC.
Your tax dollars at work.
LastspikemikeIn a model consist using these Cl tank cars would PTC affect how you ran that train?
No effect modelable, other than some radio equipment at switches and the "real" railroad would spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.
LastspikemikeMy question was intended to explore more operational aspects such as, if PTC requires extra time or manpower or such then would a prototype railroad serving rural locations with grain elevators tend to mix a chlorine car in when dropping empty boxcars at elevators or would they run a special with only chlorine cars?
I rather doubt that they would be shipping chlorine to "rural locations". Rural locations tend to use well water rather than a central water treatment plant. Also a rural area would probably not use enough chlorine or want to store that much chlorine on site, they would most likely truck it to the smaller water treatment plants.
If you are spotting boxcars at elevators then this discussion is kinda moot. They stopped shipping grain boxcars in the US in the early to mid 1980's, the TIH rules didn't kick in until after 9-11-2001 and PTC has only been a thing for less than a decade. If you are spotting boxcars at elevators for grain loading then all of these rules and PTC are decades in the future.
In any case, no they would not run a special with just loaded or empty hazmat cars.
The Atlas tank cars are too late a period to use for propane or LPG. You'd use a 30,000 gal tank car for that.Chlorine is also used in the paper industry. And a moderate size city is likely to have an industrial area where all KINDS of nasty stuff is shipped in. Just along side the old CNW yard in St. Paul, MN, parallel to Childs Road, is an industrial lead with facilities that unload chlorine, caustic soda, hydrocholoric acid, sulfuric acid, and a variety of other stuff with even more jaw-cracking names and horrific pages in the HAZMAT book.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
Bayfield Transfer RailwayChlorine is also used in the paper industry. And a moderate size city is likely to have an industrial area where all KINDS of nasty stuff is shipped in. Just along side the old CNW yard in St. Paul, MN, parallel to Childs Road, is an industrial lead with facilities that unload chlorine, caustic soda, hydrocholoric acid, sulfuric acid, and a variety of other stuff with even more jaw-cracking names and horrific pages in the HAZMAT book.
Hi Michael, I don't mean to butt-in on Kasskaboose's original Q'. Are you able to check your PM's re Railroad Chlorine Tankers along City streets and as used in Water treatment? Thanks, Paul L
"It's the South Shore Line, Jim - but not as we know it".
LastspikemikeChlorine is shipped as a gas then maybe model the tanker as an LPG car instead?
Actually chlorine is shipped in its liquid form. A tank typically contains 85 to 90% liquid chlorine with the rest being gaseous chlorine and a "pad" of air or inert gas. Liquified chlorine is different than "liquid chlorine" which is a solution of sodium hypochlorite.
Joe
With the grain elevator I assume you have an agricultural presence on your layout. Do you have room for an anhydrous ammonia transfer track? Might give you an excuse to handle larger tank cars.
A plant I used to work in recieved about four, 33,000 gallon anhydrous tank cars a week for processing tungsten.
Good Luck, Ed
So, how many cars back from the locomotive or swiching platform as cabooses are called today, do chlorine cars need to be for the safety of the crew?
Ralph
I swear they would routinely dump all 17,000 gallons of chlorine in my high school swimming pool on a regular basis (but the school was not rail served). I can still remember how my eyes would sting and our lungs would hurt walking into the room with the pool.
Sorry, OT.
Dave Nelson
Ralph, I don't know what the restriction is in the ditch light era but, according to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe's Western Lines, Plains Division, employees timetable No. 1, effective Sunday, Oct. 27,1985, that chlorine load "must not be nearer than the sixth car from the engine, occuppied caboose or passenger car. If the total number of cars in train does not permit, must be placed as near the middle of train as possible but not nearer than the second car from the engine, occuppied caboose or passenger car."
That is the same rule used on these crude oil unit trains of today, which is why there is at least one car not carrying hazmat between the tankers and occuppied equipment. If your train was to handle a single car of chlorine and nothing else, you must have a "cover" (non-hazmat) car between it and your engine, and your "shoving platform" if one is necessary.
Contraty to popular belief, a pool that smells strongly of chlorine actually is more likely to have not ENOUGH free choline. It's the combined chlorine - that which has reacted with and neutalized contaminates, that has the smell. And burning eyes usually means the pH is too high.
Perhaps a tank car full of chlorine would be used at a chemical plant that makes pool chemicals? Somewhere they have to process it into sodium hypo and cal hypo.
The reminds me of a clinic I attended at a meet last year. We were broken up into teams and given an 'industry' (I put in it quotes because our team was given "small engine facility for diesel servicing") and the exercise was to come up with all the car types that would come in and go out of such an 'industry', and what they would carry. In the electronic world, these are the gozintas and gozoutas. An interesting way to plan car types and how many you need at each industry on your layout.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
NHTX, thanks if I end up with some chlorine cars I will now know where not to put them. You too Lastspike, I guess those two won't mix well.
This reply may tell you more than you ever wanted to know about chlorine at water treatment plants.
Only very large municipalities would receive chlorine in tank cars. I did some work at Nashville's Omohundro water treatment plant many years ago. They received chlorine tank cars on a spur right adjacent to a major road. We did a hazard analysis and determined that a ruptured tank car at the water treatme plant would have resulted in having to evacuate the whole downtown. A new building with chemical scrubbers was built to house the tank cars.
Most water treatment plants got their chlorine in one ton cylinders. These were also shipped by rail on flatcars typically to a chemical supplier which would then truck them to the water treatment plant. Smaller communities used 100 pound cylinders similar to welding gas cylinders. By the 1980s most well systems were also being chlorinated even in small rural communities. They typically used the 100 pound cylinders. Really small systems may use sodium hypochlorite tablets.
In all cases, the chlorine "gas" is transported at high pressure and as a liguid. Chlorinators reduce the pressure and pull gaseous chlorine from the top of the containers. All water treatment plants using chlorine gas have to store it in separate rooms that have chlorine gas detectors and automatic scrubber systems.
Because of all the safety concerns most water treatment plants have migrated away from gaseous chlorine for disinfection. Commonly liquid sodium hypochlorite (bleach), UV light or ozone. Since the later two don't leave a measurable residual for continued disinfection protection in the distribution system, they usually still feed a small dose of sodium hypochlorite often with ammonia in a process called chloramination. That provides a continued chlorine residual in the distribution system.
Bottom line is that it would be more likely that the chlorine tank cars are being routed to industrial customers such as the previously mentioned paper mills, plastic manufactures, etc.
Ray
Ralph, if you do find yourself in possession of some tank cars "loaded with chlorine", the same employee's timetable requires that even when empty, they not be coupled directly to an engine, occupied caboose, or passenger car. Because chlorine is such nasty stuff, there are many more restrictions on placing it in freight trains: Loaded tank cars placarded CHLORINE shall NOT be placed next to: Car occupied by guard or escort.
Loaded plain flatcar
Loaded bulkhead flatcar
Loaded TOFC/COFC flatcar
Flatcar loaded with vehicles
Open top car with shiftable load
Car with internal combustion engine in operation. Car with any heating apparatus or any lighted stove, heater or lantern.
Cars placarded EXPLOSIVES A
Cars placarded POISON GAS
Cars placarded RADIOACTIVE
Chlorine gas is heavier than air and behaves much like a liquid, finding and pooling in terrain depressions. There was a derailment in the Florida panhandle about forty years ago, where chlorine had escaped a leaking tank car and formed a cloud of invisible gas that covered a depressed area adjacent to the track. Before the area was sealed off, a number of vehicles on the road that paralleled the track entered this cloud of chlorine, killing the occupants.
That is why there are so many restrictions on the entraining of these dangerous and potentially deadly subtances transported by rail, not just to make our switching more interesting.
Hi, I hope no-one objects if I gatecrash this post, but I have an Industry where my Atlas 17.3k gal Chlorine Tankers will be residential Street-running for part of their journey, to a specialist Water-treatment company. I have researched the prototype and I am pretty sure that it is Chlorine tankers they are receipt of.
In the past, I have worked a bit on Water Treatment Plants and so I added a couple of Sulpher and Lime Tankers for interest.
I have done as much research as possible into Health & Safety and off-loading the product. As I did this, I wondered about the H&S implications of the intended street running.
But I can only pressume it takes place? I have been reading with interest, the replies by Modellers who know a bit more than me about Chemicals and their Industrial uses and safe handling. Thanks, Paul
Lazers, I can't give you a definitive answer about handling chlorine tankers in street running but, I can assure you that the placement restrictions as far as properly entraining them is concerned is, a governmental regulatory edict that MUST be complied with by all common carrier railroads in the U.S. During the period in raliroading that interests me, (1984-1987), almost every employee's timetable has the exact same hazmat entraining chart in it.
Once that requirement is satisfied, it is up to the municipality or other local governmental body, and the railroad to work out the details such as days of the week and time, how much can be handled in one move, speed restrictions to be observed and, any other issues they may wish to address, concerning the movement.
LazersI have done as much research as possible into Health & Safety and off-loading the product. As I did this, I wondered about the H&S implications of the intended street running.
There are two restrictions on moving chlorine cars, the first is if the US is in a MUCH higher terrorist threat, as declared by DHS and the AAR, then its a matter of whether the car can be in a "high threat urban area" and the second is if its FRA "excepted" track, track that has minimal maintenance standards (and that restriction applies to pretty much all placarded hazardous cars).
Short of that, you can run as many cars of whatever commodity wherever you want. If you want to run 100 cars of chlorine down the middle of the street, its perfectly legal.