Those trains on Csx are about the only place to see "Chessie" if they haven't been bleached out by the phosphate.
stay safe
Joe
Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").
CN has had a good business for decades hauling phosphate rock/concentrate to the massive Agrium (now Nutrien since the merger with Potashcorp) fertilizer plant at Redwater, AB, northeast of Edmonton.
While the rock originally came from Florida's Bone Valley region the source has switched several times, first to Dahomey (West Africa) and several Pacific islands (including Nauru), then to a Agrium-owned mine near Kapuskasing, ON (on the former National Transcontinental line), and finally to the current source of Morroco's occupied Western Sahara territory.
While shipments from Kapuskasing (and probably Bone Valley too) were entirely rail moves, the rock from overseas is brought by ship to Neptune Terminals in Vancouver and transloaded into covered hoppers there.
The cars are the same worn-out 3 or 4 bay CN-owned covered hoppers (many are initialed CNIS or CNLX) that have been in phosphate and/or potash service for the past 40 years, and are now very obviously showing their age. For a time CN tried to backhaul phosphate in the same unit trains that hauled potash to Vancouver, but cross-contamination led to bad results at chemical plants and Agrium forced CN to stop this practice.
CN no longer moves phosphate in unit trains, normally a block of 30-40 cars is seen semi-daily on the head end of Vancouver-North Battlefield, SK through-freight 412, or a empty grain train destined for the Prairie North Line. The phosphate is set out at Scotford Yard (just outside of Fort Saskatchewan, AB) and taken to the plant by a roadswitcher crew.
These phosphate moves are currently scheduled to terminate in April 2019, as part of the Nutrien merger the Redwater plant will cease processing phosphate rock, and focus on other products instead. There is talk of starting a unit train of acid (sulfuric one way, phosphoric the other) between Redwater and a Nutrien plant in North Carolina, but so far nothing is set in stone.
Meanwhile the ancient, worn-out hoppers roll on, receiving next to no maintenance and facing an uncertain future (no one will miss them...).
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Saw a K 812 go around the SW wye at Deshler headed west to Chicago.The hoppers are close to retirement grain hoppers.
Phosphate out of CSX's Bone Valley is normally shipped in covered hoppers!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
When railroads ship phosphate rock,what types of cars are used to move the rock?
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