Places you'd find 'shorty' ore hoppers

[ericsp]

I once saw one loaded with rubish from a MOW project.

[Anonymous]

Saw them in Upper Michigan in early '60's. Scenery seemed to be even split of jack pine and shorty ore cars.

[nedthomas]

Penn Central and Conrail used the short ore (ex PRR ) cars to carry coils of steel during the winter months when the lakes were frozen over and the cars were idle.

[Anonymous]

My layout will be about 16'x21', and what I've got planned so far, is kitbashing a couple Walthers Glacier Gravel kits into a large rock quarry crushing/processing plant, which will ship out around 10-15 cars each session, some of these will be delivered (after a trip off the layout on the hidden continuous loop) to a concrete processing facility (Walthers Valley Cement), and a few carloads to an asphalt hot mix plant (Walthers Black Gold Asphalt, which will also see a steady stream of oil tank cars). Then from the concrete processing facility, processed concrete will be shipped in covered cement hoppers to a cement distribution plant (Medusa Cement) and trucked to a mixing plant (Blue Star Ready Mix) nearby.

I live about 30 minutes from the famous Stone Mountain, in Georgia, and while most of the aggregate industry in this area is now shipped by truck, nearly every aggregate industry I've mentioned so far was once served by the CSX line that runs through this area. We have about 6 quarries just between Covington (where I live) and Lithonia (which is about 10 minutes from Stone Mountain). There are cement plants, rock quarries, asphalt transfer terminals... just about everything you could need for a complete aggregate industry on a layout. But since I also love coal mines, I'm also going to have a shortline modeled after the Turtle Creek Central and branchline (MRR January 2005) that interchanges with the CSX mainline on the layout. I haven't decided if I'm going to have a 'delivery point' for the coal yet (it would be Walthers Tri State Power), or if it will just be interchanged and taken off the layout and swapped with empties.

Since the granite rock and gravel industry is something that I can see in person right up the street, I thought it would be a great thing to model on my layout. The story behind my line is 'loosely' based on the aggregate industry here, being CSX here in Georgia, and the branchline will be renamed the Great Walton RR (the local shortline here in Covington), but instead of hauling woodchip hoppers (their current once a week train from a pulpwood plant nearby), it will be coal (Walthers New River Mining).

I start buying lumber this weekend for construction (about $350 worth), and this summer my income will be increasing alot once a couple bills are finally paid off, so I'm hoping to have all of the track laid by the end of summer, and most of the structures in place by fall. Along the way, I'll be adding locos and rolling stock. It'll also be totally wired for DCC, block occupancy detection, and signalling. But in order to keep it a 'hands on' railroad, I'll most likely have all caboose industries 202s ground throws on the turnouts.

Anyways, I think I've rambled enough for one night (it's late, and I'm at work... yes I get paid to sit and surf the net all night... three days a week... AND it's a full time job! lol)

Hope yall have a great weekend

Jeremy

[bpickering]

QUOTE: Originally posted by JimRCGMO
Related question - what color would vanadium ore be? Same question on uranium ore (color)? And would they be using the ore cars in the 1950's around there?

Jim,

Uranium ores:
Pretty pictures:
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radore2.html

Vanadium ores:
Finding pretty pictures is left as an exercise for the student, but the following link lists a couple of the top Vanadium ores; finding images should be 5-10 minutes work using something like Google or MSN Search. [:)]
http://www.speclab.com/elements/vanadium.htm

(Sorry, a past life as a professor has left me permanently scarred- I can never give a complete answer to any question. Hope this'll help somewhat, though....) [:D]

Brian Pickering

[BR60103]

The size of the ore cars was originally established by maximum load on the rails -- a full ore car of that size (is it 24 feet?) was all the track could stand on 8 wheels. The ore docks at the lakes were built to unload cars of that length with those hopper spacings. Rather than rebuild the docks, all the succeeding ore cars were built to the same specs.
Newer operations that didn't use the old ore docks could be built to larger sizes.

[Anonymous]

Railroads have been hauling ore in cars pretty much like the "jennies" were talking about here since the 1880s (although the early cars were of wooden construction). The Milwaukee's steel cars, still very much in use in the 1970s, were originally built in 1928 and 1930, and were rebuilt in the 1960s. Ex-C&NW cars of about the same vintage and design were still hauling rock on the Wisconsin & Southern last year.

[JimRCGMO]

Question on the other end of the time frame - what about ore cars in the 1950's? I'm modeling a (fictional) branchline located in the Four Corners area (SW Colorado/NW New Mexico/SE Utah/NE Arizona). Mines there included uranium, vanadium, and (slightly west of the area I'm modeling) some coal mines. But I'll also have some 2-bay offset side hopper cars that I'll likely use for the coal needed by my line (steam-diesel transition era).

Related question - what color would vanadium ore be? Same question on uranium ore (color)? And would they be using the ore cars in the 1950's around there?

Blessings,

Jim in Cape Girardeau

[Anonymous]

Sounds like your rock hauling operation would be quite appropriate to contemporary railroading. I would expect that ore haulers such as DM&IR still use these cars in vast quantities. Your concept could turn out to be some fascinating operations if you develope either an interchange scheme or model the deliver point for the rock. Keep us informed!

[Anonymous]

From the sounds of it, these cars were primarily used in the '70's, am I right? I'm modeling present day operations, and I'll have a quarry on my layout that will be handling quite a bit of rock in and out. If any might be used present day, I'll probably use them there, but with the plethora of larger aggregate cars available I'm not sure if they would look in place or not.

[brazos87]

In the late 70's, the Milwaukee Road used the "jennies" to haul limestone from a quarry in northern Washington on the branch from Bellingham to Maple Falls.

[Anonymous]

On a visit to Horseshoe Curve in Pa. in 1978 I saw a unit train of about 100 loaded shorty ore cars ascend the hill out of Altoona. The train had two GP38-2's, a U23B & a GP30 pulling and two SD40-2's, an SD45 & an SD45-2 pushing and still couldn't make more than 10 mph rounding the Curve.

[Anonymous]

There were speed restrictions on trains handling ore cars. C&NW employee timetables from the 1970s limited trains with loaded ore cars (carrying any commodity) to 30 mph; with empty ore cars a train was limited to 40 mph.

On the Milwaukee Road, the speed limits were 35 mph loaded, 40 mph empty.

[fmilhaupt]

My favorite: In Ludington, Michigan, the Pere Marquette and later the C&O had a number of ore car-sized hoppers used to load coal into their steam-powered lake ferries.

They'd load up a cut of them at a coaling tower in the yard, then switch them onto the ferry, where they'd discharge into chutes between the rails which lead to coal bunkers in the lower depths of the ferry.

---

-Fritz Milhaupt
Web Guy, Pere Marquette Historical Society, Inc.
http://www.pmhistsoc.org

[dknelson]

On the Peoria & Pekin Union some years ago I saw former ore cars being used to haul scrap steel and ash - piled high on the car. I assume it was purely a local move and not for interchange. I remember seeing old barbed wire rolled up.
Of course here in the midwest we would see ore cars on mainline trains being moved from the iron ore range in MN down to the mills of Gary or Chicago.
Dave Nelson

[orsonroy]

There's usually a string of ore cars sitting off the Kennedy expressway in Chicago, in rock service for a local crusher (on the ex-C&NW line). And the WC used them a lot in stone service, even adding a new siding in Grayslake, IL, for local service. Beats me where these cars were loaded, but it was probably local limestone quarries.

[Anonymous]

Where else might you see these cars, other than at a mine or ore dock? Also, are their speed restrictions placed on trains hauling these cars because they're so short? Other than ore, what else could realistically be hauled in these cars?