Clam shell cranes or men with shovels were how some of them were unloaded, depending on what the load was. Even today, clam shell cranes are used to transfer coal from gondolas into the tenders of some steam excursion trains.
In the days of steam operation, cinders from a roundhouse were sometimes loaded into gondolas and hauled out to track maintenance sites for use as ballast, where they had to be unloaded by hand if a crane was not available.
Loads in gons...
The big disadvantage of the gon - as you will have realised - is that the side that holds the load in makes life hard work for getting it in and getting it out in many cases. Those sides can make access to tie things down low enough difficult as well. The car also doesn't keep the load dry without the addition of a tarpaulin... and you have
Neutrino- Where in Florida are you?
Flip
Dave's answer is one of the most thorough I've seen on this forum!
To add to his list, add:
1) Vehicles. The USA before about 1970 had a chronic shortage of flat cars, and drop-end gons were regularly used to haul bulldozers, tractors, and even busses around when a flat couldn't be found. This was an extremely common practice during war years.
2) Pulpwood. The concept of a pulpwood flat is a fairly recent one, with that type of car only being invented in the late 1940s. Even today, pulpwood is loaded into flats (on end, rather than laid flat on, er...flats)
3) Offal. Animal guts. Chitlins. Talk to any old time railroader, and virtually all of them will have one close encounter with an old gondola loaded to the rim with rotting entrails. It sounds disgusting (and is), but that's how the stuff was shipped from slaughterhouses to rendering plants before the EPA. Those old timers would remark about both the stench and the giant clouds of flies that followed the cars.
So Dave's initial answer is essentially correct: anything that won't get hurt by getting wet.
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
Dave-the-Train wrote: Loads in gons... Corrugated iron sheeting and Armco... both probably banded together in batches (by weight -for the machines lifting them). THis makes me think... Box cars got "nailable floors" but I've never heard of a gon with a "nailable floor"???
THis makes me think... Box cars got "nailable floors" but I've never heard of a gon with a "nailable floor"???
1. What sort of steel product are you calling "Armco"?
2. Yes there were gons with nailable steel floors, some of the PRR G36 class, for example.
KL
Neutrino wrote:fec153 - Kissimmee or little Puerto Rico/Disney World.
What goes in gons? Steel shapes,steel plates,steel coils,junk truck trailers,angle iron,pulp wood,old batteries,dirty hay from stock yards,garbage,old dump truck beds,mill scrap,scrap tires,scrap aluminum,crushed glass,pipes of all types,old railroad ties,old rail and just about any thing else that doesn't need protected.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Up in my neck of the woods Alcoa gets large ingots 4 or 6 to a gon ( depending on size) they sit at a slant with wood slats between them. Alcoa uses a crane to get them but it has a pincher type arrangement that squeezes 4 small teeth into the aluminum and then up in the air they go.
Also what we all call "slinkies" go in them. thats those steel wire bundles that well look like slinkies.
Gons haul it all man.
Yes we are on time but this is yesterdays train
Kurt_Laughlin wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: Loads in gons... Corrugated iron sheeting and Armco... both probably banded together in batches (by weight -for the machines lifting them). THis makes me think... Box cars got "nailable floors" but I've never heard of a gon with a "nailable floor"??? 1. What sort of steel product are you calling "Armco"? 2. Yes there were gons with nailable steel floors, some of the PRR G36 class, for example. KL
Highway crash barrier sections, mainly the miles and miles of straight stuff... you got any alternates to load?
While I'm here... at least into the 70s we "handballed" loads of bricks on/off trucks and earlier large consignments went by rail (Bedford to London between the wars for the council house estate building programmes... billions of bricks). Anyone who's ever done it know you need to use gloves! Where I worked between school and college we were near the brickfields so the loads came in early morning and still hot. A netted load wasn't so bad as the net let the dust blow off but a sheeted load was a monster. I always used to get out to the truck sharp so that, having unsheeted, I was up on the truck with the driver chucking the things down.
Building stone, dressed, semi-dressed or not dressed could go in Gons... loads of packing and craned in/out.
I think that so far we've also forgotten gons with drop floors... normally flat but could dump (almost) like a hopper. Very early I've seen "convertible gons" that culd become side unloaders when the floor was re-arranged. Like a lot of early variable cars I don't think that they lasted long.
Someone mentioned offal... subject to sheeting it down I imagine trash would have been loaded in gons... maybe the trucks backed up on a ramp or dock... and taken out with grabs. I know that trash trains on the SECR about 1905 caused problems with waste paper blowing everywhere and the smell.
How about Christmas trees???
Oh... and you can add tractor / machinery tyres, RR axle sets (though more often on flats) Re-bar and coil-upon coil of steel wire usually with the frst leaning on one end of the gon and the rest leaning on it and each other in turn. I've not seen a car or loco truck in a gon... I suspect that the journals wouldn't fit between the sides... if they would it would make a nice load if you have some good quality trucks looking for a home.
...and I've just read... all this for just two...TWO gons
Dave-the-Train wrote: Highway crash barrier sections, mainly the miles and miles of straight stuff... you got any alternates to load?
Pre-assembled boxcar sides.
At a spot nearby woodchip gons filled with building demolition waste from the northeast are unloaded into trucks for backfill into old stripmines.
Kurt_Laughlin wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: Highway crash barrier sections, mainly the miles and miles of straight stuff... you got any alternates to load? Pre-assembled boxcar sides. At a spot nearby woodchip gons filled with building demolition waste from the northeast are unloaded into trucks for backfill into old stripmines. KL
Sorry... I meant - have you got any alternate interpretations of "armco"... just 'cos I know what I mean it doesn't mean that we're speaking the same English! I keep having to relearn that
Great posts guys! What a plethora of ideas for gon loads! Thanks for the tips!!!!
Regards,
Tom M.
Dave-the-Train,Here is Armco Steel-now AK Steel Corp.
http://www.aksteel.com/markets_products/default.asp.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch