What did I see?

[lonewoof]

Spotted today, on CSX at cayce, SC: a solid train (probably 75-80 cars) of (I think empty) hoppers, all marked LAKX. (according to my references, LAKX is "City of Lakeland, Florida"). They all had some kind of pickup shoe (like a BIG Lionel center-rail shoe), about frame high, near each end. Also had what appeared to be a second brake line, with hoses coupled ABOVE the couplers. All had a stencil near the shoe, saying "Exceeds Plate F When Shoe Is Extended. Within Plate B When Gagged", followed by instructions how to "gag".
(I have seen LOTS of cars with "Plate Something-or-other. I had always assumed that had something to do with the thickness, weight, strength, whatever, of the steel in the car side. Evidently not; this sounds like it has to do, maybe, with Clearances?
Can anyone shed some light on this? Why all these cars from "City of Lakeland, Fl"? Any ideas what they carry? What's with the extra air line? What do these Plate X designations mean? What does the shoe do?
Thanks!!

[Anonymous]

You're correct, Plate B, C, D, E, etc. refer to the clearance dimensions (height and width) of the car. Maybe CShaveRR would be so kind as to tell us what the dimensions of all these Plates are. Most plain, ordinary, boxcars and hoppers will not exceed Plate B. Plate F is the largest common plate size (I think), and anything taller or wider than Plate F is non-clearing on most rail lines. Tall double-stacks exceed Plate F. These cars will not exceed Plate B so long as the shoe you saw is "gagged," that is, folded in and pinned in place. If the shoe sticks out, then the car will exceed Plate F.

The shoe and the extra air line you saw are to activate the rapid-discharge feature. These are hoppers with air-operated doors. When the train arrives at the place where it is supposed to open the doors and dump, the shoe is extended. At the exact place the doors are supposed to open -- usually when its crossing a trestle over a dumping area --the shoe contacts a metal plate. That completes an electrical circuit and activates the door opening mechanism. The doors are opened and closed by air, supplied by the second air line which charges an extra reservoir on each car just for the doors. The dumping mechanism air line gets its air from the locomotives, but it is isolated from the train line and doesn't have any bearing on the braking.

I don't know what these car carry, or what the owner does. CShaveRR probably will.

OS

[Anonymous]

This sounds like something similar to a Herzog rock train used for ballast. The are often all similar cars with what looks like a second brake line between cars above the couplers. I may be way off, others may have a better idea.

[spbed]

Make they were carrying oranges to Tropicana for making into juice as Lakeland is a large orange producing region.

[Anonymous]

Here are two photos of cars with LAKX reporting marks.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=49592

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?id=2274

[lonewoof]

Thanks, guys! These cars (in the pix) are the same as what I saw. The shoe is just above the LH wheel in the RH truck. Also the ones I saw today seemed to have all 3-digit numbers...

[CShaveRR]

Mr. Sheet has it right--the "Plates" are clearance diagrams. Plate B is the standard clearance diagram for all tracks anywhere in the country. Maximum height is 15'1". Plate C is pretty much the same thing, but the maximum height is 15'6". Plate D will not be seen on a car; it's more like a template, dealing with the relationship between a car's length and its width (longer cars are narrower so they can fit within clearances around curves). Plate E is another clearance plate; the maximum height is 15'9". Plate F is the largest plate for standard freight cars; it shows a maximum height of 17'0". Anything taller than that (and that includes most auto racks, some of which are as tall as 20'2") is usually stencilled "Exceeds Plate F". There might be a Plate G, but I can't find any information on it. Plate H deals exclusively with the height of loads in double-stack cars --it looks like Plate B with a container-sized height extension up to 20'2".

Now, besides height, these plates deal with other clearances toward the bottom of the car (probably more important in the old days when platforms had to be closer to the rails). These particular hopper cars, as O.S. says, exceed the width of all of these plates (basically 10'8") when the shoe is extended.

I haven't ever seen or been involved with these particular cars, but would surmise that the city of Lakeland, Florida, has its own municipal power company, and these cars haul coal to its plant. They own 198 of them (LAKX 101-298), which means that there are probably two unit trains in service. Hopper cars such as this offer the fastest possible means of unloading the coal (they're up on a trestle, and when those hopper doors open it's like the bottom drops out from under them!). That's a lot faster than a rotary dumper. The down-side, though, is that the cars, with their doors and mechanisms, are heavier than rotary-dump gondolas, so they can't carry as much coal (they have only about 87% of the capacity), and the doors are also a maintenance item.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. Don't have an ORER in this office.

Like everything, there's no free lunch. That's the economic trade-off between rotary gons and rapid-discharge hoppers: haul steel back and forth instead of coal (and pay for the priviledge), or build an expensive rotary dumper and lose some cycle time. A lot depends upon the quantity of coal that's moving and the estimated lifetime of whatever it is that's burning the coal. Usually, small plants (and old plants) getting only one to three trains a week find it a better deal to go with rapid-discharge hoppers, and large plants getting one to two trains a day find it a better deal to go with a rotary dumper. But there are some interesting exceptions.

OS

[corwinda]

I have seen boxcars stencilled plate G, and some marked Exceeds plate F. I think the plate G cars were CSX.