Center flow hoppers

[Murphy Siding]

 

     I've seen miles and miles of stored center flow hoppers in southwest Minnesota. Examples would be CBFX 314672 & CEFX 300524. These are short guys. Would these usually be used for products like cement or frac sand? Or is there some ag product that ships in shorter cars?

 

[CShaveRR]

Cement and frac sand (far more likely) are the commodities I would expect; I know of nothing agricultural.  It used to be that CNW would use this size for bentonite as well, but I think that ships in slightly larger cars now.

[PNWRMNM]

Carl is correct. It is all a matter of the bulk density of the intended product. Assume 286K gross weight on rail and 60-65000 tare, so you have about 225,000# of carrying capacity for cargo. Tell me the bulk density of your product in pounds per cubic feet and I can tell you the number of cubic feet the car should have.

Wheat weighs 60#/bu. The standard 100 ton car was 4450 to 4600 cubic feet and that was actually more space that the wheat needed but some of that cube got lost in the corners. Corn is 48#/bu. If you look closeley I recall that BNSF has larger cube 110 net ton cars for corn than for wheat.

Now think about flexibility of use. You can not get a full load of corn in a car optimied for wheat, but you can get a full load of wheat into a corn car at a modest penalty in tare weight. Do you favor wheat cars for the lower tare and shorter train for given number of cars or favor corn cars for flexibility?

DDG  is lighter than corn, so they have more cube. Plastic pellets are the lightest covered hopper commodity I know of and they have even more cube. They do NOT get used for anything else because they are shipper owned/leased cars and part of the reason for that is to protect procuct purity.

The bulk density principal also applies to tank cars.

Mac

[Murphy Siding]

     Thanks for the info. I would guess someone is paying to store them. If anyone needs cars like that, I know where you could find maybe 4 or 5 miles of them!

[tree68]

Murphy Siding

     Thanks for the info. I would guess someone is paying to store them. If anyone needs cars like that, I know where you could find maybe 4 or 5 miles of them!

Perhaps one of the dangers of specialized cars is that when there's no need for them, they can't be repurposed (a la boxcars).  

That said, storing cars has become something of a cottage industry.  Short lines that were "stuck" with miles of track because the last industry on the line shut down suddenly have a regular source of income.

Rates for storing cars generally run a buck or two per day per car (possibly more?).  A line with 750 cars stored could thus see $1,500 per day - which may well cover the payroll.

I do recall seeing a long line of Railbox cars stored in a Conrail yard near me some 30+ years ago, so it's not a new phenomenon.