CSSHEGEWISCH That would explain why I've never seen an Air Dump that didn't look like it was about to turn up at Hyman-Michaels.
That would explain why I've never seen an Air Dump that didn't look like it was about to turn up at Hyman-Michaels.
Part of the beauty of the Herzog/Georgetown/MK-WashingtonCorp fleets is that somebody maintains the stuff. Imagine that! Always pained most of us M/W guys when ballast cars and air dumps were removed from the company fleet in budget numbers games because they didn't want to spend the number$ to fix stuff. (Intrinsic worth and reality do not show up on the balance sheets of the operating bubbas in their insulated mothership cubicles)
Paul_D_North_Jr - Paul North. *If mudchicken or anyone else here ever worked with these, I suppose they'd want to forget them too . . .
- Paul North.
*If mudchicken or anyone else here ever worked with these, I suppose they'd want to forget them too . . .
Most of Santa Fe's ballast hoppers were two bay sand hoppers (top removed) with Miner/MK doors (Couldn't overload 'em 176000-177000 series), there were 3 bay coal hoppers with Wine chain & crank gage & field doors that you could not close once opened until it all came out (76000 series), and there were retired grain 3-bay hoppers with the top cut off + miner doors and slots in the upper carbody walls to spill ballast after it got so high in the hopper, 178000 Series)
That being said, we rarely had a concern about excess weight, the cars were filled by front end loader (CAT 980 or bigger) or a chute. The cars went through an in-motion scale at either terminal end of the district the quarry was on. Being the ballast was for on-line use, no big deal. (186000 series Air dumps were a different story. Like the Air Dumps, weight was not as much an issue as was lack of attention by the mechanical tribe.[absolutely last priority to them])
Murphy Siding jeffhergert It's been a few years since I've seen it happen, but every so often when going over the train list for a unit coal train a few cars would be over gross weight for the subdivision. Not by much, maybe 2 or 3 tons. Normal procedure when something is amiss is to call the dispatcher, who will call his boss, etc until a decision on what to do is made. Many of the times for the overweight coal hoppers, they would instruct that new paperwork be printed off. The offending cars would usually lose about 5 to 10 tons and become legal. So it was just an error in the paperwork. Once in a while, they would have the crew set out the offending cars for further disposition. Jeff If someone at the railroad were to 'pencil trim' the weight on freight being carried, wouldn't that also trim the revenue the railroad collected on that car?
jeffhergert It's been a few years since I've seen it happen, but every so often when going over the train list for a unit coal train a few cars would be over gross weight for the subdivision. Not by much, maybe 2 or 3 tons. Normal procedure when something is amiss is to call the dispatcher, who will call his boss, etc until a decision on what to do is made. Many of the times for the overweight coal hoppers, they would instruct that new paperwork be printed off. The offending cars would usually lose about 5 to 10 tons and become legal. So it was just an error in the paperwork. Once in a while, they would have the crew set out the offending cars for further disposition. Jeff
It's been a few years since I've seen it happen, but every so often when going over the train list for a unit coal train a few cars would be over gross weight for the subdivision. Not by much, maybe 2 or 3 tons. Normal procedure when something is amiss is to call the dispatcher, who will call his boss, etc until a decision on what to do is made. Many of the times for the overweight coal hoppers, they would instruct that new paperwork be printed off. The offending cars would usually lose about 5 to 10 tons and become legal. So it was just an error in the paperwork. Once in a while, they would have the crew set out the offending cars for further disposition.
Jeff
If someone at the railroad were to 'pencil trim' the weight on freight being carried, wouldn't that also trim the revenue the railroad collected on that car?
Those doing 'pencil trimmng' have no concerns about the revenue stream. In some cases the transportation data and the revenue data reside in different data bases.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
PNWRMNMAs to scale technology, I suspect Earl's employer most likely uses a belt scale, which avoids all the PITA issues Paul describes.
He means a process belt scale, where the system that brings the product to be loaded to the truck is integrating the mass per unit time that is crossing it. So you know how much has gone in at any particular time, and to 'make a particular weight' you just stop the conveyor at an appropriate corresponding time.
This is not the same thing as load cells under the truck that measure what the total weight is, and then subtract the tare measured when the truck pulled onto them. Nor is it a system that allows 'rolling' measurement (as many current truck scales do) compensating for the truck's momentum, shock through the suspension, etc.
My father was an over the road trucker. When he loaded dry cement at the S.D. Cement plant, they would blow in as much as Earl thought was needed and then weigh the truck. Then they would blow more in, or blow some out and weigh the truck. On a good day this would only take 4 or 5 tries to get the weight right. All the while, some trucker sat in the cab getting paid zero per mile.
PNWRMNM As to scale technology, I suspect Earl's employer most likely uses a belt scale, which avoids all the PITA issues Paul describes. Mac
As to scale technology, I suspect Earl's employer most likely uses a belt scale, which avoids all the PITA issues Paul describes.
Mac
PHEEEEW! I can appreciate the explanations by BaltACD and Mac; I can remember as a 'green, new-guy', being sent to load a pneumatic tank at a mine, with no scale. Driver loading instructions were to beat on the loading tank's conical hopper(utilizing that rubber hammer) til you felt a large mass discharge into the truck's tank. Then judge the depth in the truck of the product. Then beat on the bin with a rubber hammer, til you had product loaded to within a foot of the opening in the tank...( Oh,Yeah, The product was damp clay)
Then drive 150 miles to a place to scale the trank... If too much weight blow the excess off into a storage trailer. The more I think about how Balt's railroad handles it.. the better I like that system!
A belt scale? Is that maybe a scale weighing the rock on the belt and then dumping the appropriate weight in each car? In the more precise situations do they use a belt scale and a suspenders scale?
Good question, Murphy - and great answer, BaltACD !
There are also small load-cell type scales (not the old-fashioned balance beam type), commonly used at shipper's facility. They're typically used to weight just 1 truck of the car at a time, so they're like only 10 to maybe 25 ft. long. (So with these, Ol' Earl has to add only 2 numbers . . . ) For examples, see:
https://www.averyweigh-tronix.com/globalassets/products/rail-scales/rail-overview_na_awt35-501241.pdf
https://www.averyweigh-tronix.com/products/industrial-weighing-scales--applications/rail-weighing-scales/
http://american-scale.com/products/railweight-railroad-track-scale/
http://www.mt.com/nl/nl/home/library/product-brochures/transport-logistics/VEH_Rail_Scale_Brochure/jcr:content/download/file/file.res/Rail_Scale_Brochure_en_05-2014.pdf
http://www.emerywinslow.com/pro_railroadscales.html
https://www.ricelake.com/en-us/products/vehicle-scale-systems/rail-scales
One notable attribute (and a major PITA !!!) of these is that the rails at all 4 'corners' - the approaching and leaving joints - are cut and not connected so the scale rails are not affected by the approach leaving rails. Worse - and I'd forgotten* about it until writing this - those cuts had to be mitered at 45 degrees from square to the length of the rail, supposedly so that the wheel contact point transitioned smoothly from one side of the joint to the other, without the impact and "Clunk !".
Left photo: http://b-tek.com/Products/Rail-Scales/B-TEK-Rail-Track-Scale - "Live rail is provided with 45° mitered ends"
https://www.fairbanks.com/documents/opmanuals/90840/50538.pdf - Sec. 1-C, manual & PDF pages 6 - 7 of 52.
Worse yet, those cuts were supposed to be in the 2 different directions - 1 'left-hand' and 1 'right-hand'. The rail saws (typically a gas-powered abrasive or cut-off type saw) could usually do one of those directions without too much trouble, but the other one was practically impossible - we'd have to turn the rail over, but then there was no way to attached the supporting/ stablizing bracket for the saw. . .
But absolutely the worst is depicted on this drawing PDF:
http://www.fairbanks.com/documents/drawings/90842/12-1494%20AAR%20Combo%2070%20x%2010%20Setting%20Plan.pdf
At the bottom center is a "Miter Cut Rail Detail" and a "Weigh-Rail Miter Cut Detail". Study them carefully, and you'll see that they appear to depict that the base and lower half of the web are to be cut at 90 degrees to the longitudinal axis of the rail, but the head and upper half of the web are to be cut at 45 degrees to that axis. Doing that in the field is extremely difficult-to-impossible as I've pointed out above, and not many shops can handle pieces of rail 39 ft. long and weighing 1,700+ lbs. (132 lb. RE). Nevertheless, that's how it's been interpreted and directed to be performed and installed on several installations with which I've been involved. Next time I'm going to get a hacksaw, a box of blades, and a bunch of laborers witrh strong arms - I figure about 4 hours for each cut (I did it once for a fireplace andiron during a Super Bowl game - took about that long, just me by myself).
NAW! Earl weighs each rock individually and sums the total as he tosses them into the hopper car... He does the sums in his head, but sometimes has to take his shoes off to keep track of the count... He doubled his productivity when he started weighing 2 rocks at a time!
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Don't know the specifics of your territory.
Some shippers ship their products under what is known as a 'Weight Agreement' where the shipper 'weighs' and certifies those weights to the railroad for the purpose of assessing freight charges.
Some consignees have means to weigh the product that is delivered to them and they certify those weights to the carriers under their 'Weight Agreement' for carrier revenue purposes.
Weight Agreement shipments normally are not weighed while in transit and are normally applied to manifest commodities.
Shippers may specify their shipments should be weighed by the railroad. At one time this was performed by individually switching cars over a balance beam scale. The reality today is that weighing is performed on 'Weigh in Motion' scales that are in strategic locations for each carrier, where a complete train traverses the scale at less than 8 MPH and the weigh data goes to a central location along with the AEI determined car data of car number and tare weight. Weigh in Motion weights are done on Bulk Commodity trains (coal, ore etc. etc.)
My carrier, and I am sure all carriers, have Tarriff's in place that specify how much excess weight constitutes a 'Overload' and where overloads will be reduced and the charges that apply to the load reduction operations, including Demmurage charges for all the time the overload(s) are awaiting load adjustment. If memory serves (and it may not) I believe the straight up charge for a overload is $1000 per car and after 24 hours Demmurage will apply at $105 per day.
There are other scales that exist on the property. Automated Hump yard have weigh in motion scale for cars going to the Hump that will assist in setting the braking pressure individual cars receive going through the Retarders on their way to their classification track(s). These weighing will cause a overload to be identified and kicked out for regular merchandise traffic.
My territory also has a line of road WILD (Wheel Impact Load Detector) that in addition to detecting flat wheels, also has a scale that can determine side to side differential loading and will identify cars that are dangerously unbalanced.
Eyeballs not required. You mileage and territory may vary.
Weighed at loading point? Don't know, but there are good reasons to weigh at origin: avoid overloads, avoid giving rock away, buyer not want to pay for rock not loaded. My guess, yes weighed by shipper at origin but without knowing agreement between shipper and railroad, or a site visit it is impossible for an outsider to know.
In the old days many bulk commodities were weighed on railroad scales both for figuring weight based freight changes and for settlement between buyer and seller. I have done that myself at Appleyar (Wenatchee) WA in late 1960s. Weighing costs money and railroads have moved toward per car freight rates and deactivated most, if not all of the "country" scales. Most hump yards have weigh in motion scales, largely for the purpose of catching overloads. Odds are your Quartzite does not see a hump.
Fixing an overload is always unpleasant, the car has to be partially unloaded where ever the railroad catches it. Generally the railroad will not knowingly move an overload either forward or back.
An experienced Eyeball Earl can do a good job IFF material density is constant, and cars are all identical. If using a front end loader he will know how many scoops are needed to make weight, again assuming density is constant.
Mac McCulloch
I see a lot of cars of pink Sioux Quartzite roll through my area. The height of the piles of rock in the cars varies quite a bit. Would these cars typically each be weighed at the load-out? How do you fix a car that's overloaded? Is there some guy named Earl that has such a good eye that he can eyeball each car and know when it has the correct amount of rock?
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