mudchicken If the bridge is gone, the very limited number of air dumps to haul rip-rap gets even smaller. (and the emergency orders pile up) Wonder how many air dumps of D&I and other railroads are trapped behind the washout? Not good for the UP and BNSF in IA, NE, MO flood zone. (The Class Ones seem to have all 33 - 40* cy air dumps anymore. There are a few of the smaller 30 cy air dumps still around on short lines. How many of the smaller cars are left of the Magcor/Difco heritage cars are still out there? A subset of the Ohio/ Bucyrus crane outfit (JMA/JK-CO) still builds new cars on a limited basis. JMA is an interesting custom railcar builder.) (*) The difference has to do with the size-height of the side doors of the car and what they are normally used for based on weight of the contents. Overload the car and it "rabbits" (jumps off the kingpin on the trucks when the load gets too far away from the center of gravity of the car)... A lot of the iron ore air dumps used in the great lakes taconite mines railroad air dumps had very tall doors.
If the bridge is gone, the very limited number of air dumps to haul rip-rap gets even smaller. (and the emergency orders pile up) Wonder how many air dumps of D&I and other railroads are trapped behind the washout? Not good for the UP and BNSF in IA, NE, MO flood zone.
(The Class Ones seem to have all 33 - 40* cy air dumps anymore. There are a few of the smaller 30 cy air dumps still around on short lines. How many of the smaller cars are left of the Magcor/Difco heritage cars are still out there? A subset of the Ohio/ Bucyrus crane outfit (JMA/JK-CO) still builds new cars on a limited basis. JMA is an interesting custom railcar builder.)
(*) The difference has to do with the size-height of the side doors of the car and what they are normally used for based on weight of the contents. Overload the car and it "rabbits" (jumps off the kingpin on the trucks when the load gets too far away from the center of gravity of the car)... A lot of the iron ore air dumps used in the great lakes taconite mines railroad air dumps had very tall doors.
Instead of D&I handing off to other roads at Sioux City, Iowa they could just hand them off to BNSF at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. BNSF could then go to Sioux City by way of Garretson, S.D. and make the connections with UP and CN.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Caught a UP MoW Train with about 20-25 dump cars and a couple of ballast hoppers yesterday on the KC Webcam heading towards Omaha. Probably one of many in route.
Last night I saw about a dozen RJ Corman trucks loaded with heavy equipment parked at the BNSF yard in our city. Hmmmm... Today I think I found out why. A railroad bridge on the Dakota & Iowa railroad at Canton, S.D. dropped over into the flooded Big Sioux River a couple of days ago. It is/was a 1910 vintage Milwaukee Road Pratt truss bridge. I've found photos on Facebook but haven't seen anything in the local news yet. Someone I know from Canton said that a nearby car lot has security camera footage of it tipping over. I'll have to keep looking. The Dakota & Iowa hauls lots of big, pink Sioux Quartzite rocks from a quarry in Dell Rapids, S.D. to Sioux City, Iowa. Ironically, a lot of it is used for rip-rap on riverbanks and to shore up areas that are flooded.
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