"other" gondola loads

[Blind Bruce]

I read the thread about all the various ways to load a gondola with scrap. What else are gondolas used to haul?

[chutton01]

Well, lots of things, but they are big players in the steel/metals industry (think slabs, sheets, steel components, pipes, frames, etc) - heck, there are subgroups called 'Mill Gondolas'. In the same vein, covered gondolas for steel coils (started with placing cradles in standard gondolas to hold the coil, then hoods place over the coils to protect them, and eventually in the 1960s specialized gondolas for this service were designed). Minerals & waste dirt go by gondola too, usually the high-sided ones (Bathtubs), but sometimes low-sided (cover the contaminated soil with tarps).  'Beth-Gon' style gondola are very common in coal service (those are the high sided ones with half-cylinder solid floors).
Otherwise anything that could go on (shorter) flat cars can go in gondolas, and does.  During the 1980s, gondolas hauling intermodal containers were common enough sights in the US.

[tomikawaTT]

Open-top gondolas can carry:

A:  High side:

• Coal
• Light weight mineral ores
• Wood chips
• "Landfill," aka trash.

B:  Low side:

• Machinery
• Green sand
• Gravel
• Heavier mineral ores
• Cut stone
• Precast concrete units (traffic blocks, columns etc.)
• Rough timbers
• Coal
• Pipe (metal, plastic, ceramic)
• Just about anything not listed that can survive exposure to the elements
• 'Mystery loads,' odd shapes under tarpaulins.

Ballast and other mineral products might be carried in drop-bottom gondolas.

My prototype fitted all gondolas with drop sides, so they ended up carrying just about anything that could be palletized: bricks, block, drummed and canned products (petroleum, chemicals, paints...) bundled firewood...

Actually, a gondola can be loaded with just about anything except cardboard boxes!

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[loathar]

I've been seeing strings of them with construction debri running through town. I think they're still hauling Katrina trash to other dump sites.

[inch53]

Don't forget about railroad ties

[leighant]

Don't forget about railroad ties

And don't forget "GREEN TIES", tie blanks cut to size but not yet treated and on their way to the creosote treated plant.

[fmilhaupt]

...or "tankage" from a meat packing plant. Nasty stuff- pretty much all of the non-edible waste.

Needless to say, this was usually the last assignment for gondolas used in this service!

 

[METRO]

I've got a train I'm building on my Conrail Fenway Division, a special
local just to serve the Big Dig project.  In this train I use gons for:

1: construction equipment like tracked diggers (flats can also be used)

2: gravel

3: structural steel

4: specialty parts such as vent systems

5: coiled metals

6: wire spools

 

Cheers!

~METRO 

[inch53]

Don't forget about railroad ties

And don't forget "GREEN TIES", tie blanks cut to size but not yet treated and on their way to the creosote treated plant.

Forgot green ones and I've seen gon loads of the ends where they squared up and cut the green ties to length. There also the scrap ties from replacement.

[Dave-the-Train]

A lot of stuff that can go on a flat car will go in a gon... but, most times, it still must be tied down...blocked/wedged or both.

In fact a whole lot of boxcar loads are restrained - you just can't see the gear or timber used unless the door(s) are open.  (Interesting side issue... some "packing" gets left around yards... more-or-less neatly... some will go to feed yard office heaters or home to the furnace...).  Some boxcars are stencilled with notes or even advertising that they have load restraints fitted.  Fitted load restraints increase the tare weight of a car so they tend to be in more specific service.  General use cars will tend to be as light as possible to maximise paying load... you also don't need to keep track of the load restraint gear... which can get damaged or go missing.

Meanwhile, back at the gons...

Apart from holding it down and stopping it shifting... you have a desire to be able to get the load out at the other end... so you will rarely see anything that can't be shovelled or tipped out packed solid in its own right.  There will usually be some sort of packing... usually at least at one end.  Space will not be left as a rule because you do not want the whole load to either shift along if the car/train stops suddenly.  Also, you do not want the product to dent or scratch itself by rattling around loose in the car.

Drums stood on end are a classic example.  They may be packed in staggered lines so that they nest with each other or they may be straight.  Either way you don't want them to damage themselves and you certainly don't want them to start leaking... it costs their contents and messes up the car.  When unlaoding you don't want to be splashing about in what's supposed to be in the drums.  These days there's also loads of environmental stuff. 

Depending on the value/nastiness of what was in the drums they could be loaded with minimal packing or have packing between each line... and also between the drums and the car sides/ends.  I don't know when drums started to be strapped in fours (soemtimes twos) on pallets.  This also serves to teher and protect them.  All you then have to do is wedge the pallets in tight.

Empty drums can be loaded on end or on their sides.  In the first case they may be double stacked if enough of the upper level will stay within the gon to keep them in.  In the second case they may be heaped to three or four levels and secured by ropes end-to-end.

The same thing can be done with sacks of stuff if the contents won't be damaged by water... e.g. sacks of sand or chippings.  It also applies to all sorts of boxes, crates and the several modern variations on drums

Full drums would tend to be uniform in size,colur and labelling/stencilling.  Empties can be the same drums going bck for re-filling or a mixed up batch going for recycling/re-use. 

If whatever is in the drums is of a higher value they will tend to go in a boxcar (assuming one is available) but they could be sheeted with a tarpaulin.  These days some pallets of drums are wrapped up in stretchy plastic... usually black but all sorts of other colours ... and clear.

Completely different loads...

rail and switch parts have not been mentioned.  Both new and old can ride gons.  I've seen pics (here) of gons loaded with chunks of new switch on edge or on a frame to set them at an angle and keep them withing gauge.

Ballast, rip-rap and spoil go in gons.  Also all sorts of aggregate.

Re-bar and weldmesh make nice loads.  The mesh can be stacked high and strapped down tight.  (often a timber or two will be placed along the top of the load to help with the hold-down.

(to make weldmesh...

• get a piece of wood a little wider than either the width or length of the mesh sheets.  (Remember which)! and several times longer than the 2nd dimension.  the wood can be a number of lengths or widths long. 
• You do not want a big square - this gets too much heat wandering about when sweating the wires together and is way too awkward to wind with consistant tension.
• mark the lines of the bars of the mesh carefully along and across both faces that you are going to make the mesh on.
• At each edge where the lines leave the wood cut a careful notch.
• When it's all been carefully set up fix one end of a thin copper wire and start to wind the copper wire round and round the piece of wood.  It's probably easier to do the long wires first and then the cross wires.
• The important thing is to make sure that the wires are tight... otherwise the sheets will be wonky.
• When you've wrapped the whole thing up you check all over for loose bits, kinks etc and straighten out as much as you can/want... or undo it and start again.
• You can lightly wash the whole thing with a flux if you find it necessary.
• I tend to cheat and lightly brush everything with a thin solder paint.
• A gas torch would be good but it tends to mess up all the work you've done preparing the wood and it doesn't garuantee that the majority of the intersections will get soldered together.
• A large tipped iron that can be really hot is better.  Wipe this in long, smooth straight line and watch progress.
• Hopefully everything will sizzle briefly and be locked together as it cools.

This does take some experiment and practice.  The "least worst" sheets of mesh that it produces can often go mid stack.  Then they work down ... loading a gon would easily use up some of the poorer sheets down in the body.  The really bad ones are good for scrap loads and bits heaped at the side of a construction/demlition site.

Personally I have several spools of dumped armature wire (of immense vintage).  Almost any copper wire would probably do but I haven't actually tried the thin stuff out of flex...

MORE GON LOADS

Sugar beet... rack sides were added.

Coke (the carbonised coal kind - the other stuff leaks out any holes)  also had side racks added.

All sorts of timber plus cordwood.  Boards or poles would be stood on end around the car - usually in a U at each end... sometimes in two Us plus a couple of areas mid side if there were two, or more stacks in the car.  Once the lower car has been filled up the timber can go on being piles up high within the standing poles.  I haven't noticed whether these loads were roped or chained down as well as wedged???  Sometime the really battered sides of gons meant that these loads were wider at the top than the bottom..,. or all wiggly down the side.  So long as the whole thing stayed in gauge it was not an issue.  IIRC the tops of a number of poles were strung together across the car...  I'm sure that there have been articles in MR about these loads.

[Attaboy]

My father worked in a small steel mill whose bread and butter product is railroad wheels and axles. The finished wheel and axle assemblies were frequently shipped in gons as well as the seperate wheels and axles alone.

[Dave-the-Train]

If you like a load that tells a story one option is to sacrifice a girder bridge - the bigger the bridge the more loads you get - cut it up in something like the way the wrecking crew would and load it into a number of gons.

The great thing is the detail that you can add on top of the weathering... things like the burn marks from cutting it up, chalked instructions for the removal, holes cut for hooks and chains to make the lifts - sometimes arrowed in chalk/burnt, instructions for which car the lumps are to be loaded in to make correct weight balanced loads.  Cars can be identified by their last numbers or have "A", "B" etc chalked on them... or these days a spray can would often be used.  These are not going to be fresh painted cars... except for the instructions

Don't forget all the bits need chocking, wedging and tieing down to secure them.  Again.\ old ties would be used.  Sometimes some of the lumber is new and clean ... but it soon gets gouges and greasy marks on it...

Any of the engineers out there have a rough guide to how much lumps of bridge weigh please?

Take the Atlas short through giirder sides or deck bridges as an example... or the Walthers through trusses...

TIA

[markpierce]

The last loaded gondola I observed (2006) was one loaded with steel reinforcement rod in Rocktram, CA (at the former Kaiser pipe plant), just south of Napa on the Fairfield/Vallejo/Napa branch of the former S.P.  The gondola was in a highly abused (beat-up) condition.

Mark

[BRAKIE]

I read the thread about all the various ways to load a gondola with scrap. What else are gondolas used to haul?

 

I have seen old scrap simi trailers turn upside down in gons..It looked funny with the trailer stands sticking up in the air..Back in the 50s I recall seening loads of dirty hay on the PRR.I was told the hay came from stock yards.

[ndbprr]

A plant in Harvey Illinois makes conduit and usually ships on flats but I have seen gons also.  the Bethlehem Burns Harbor plant shipped plate in gons with a BIG structural member support system so the plate was shipped at about a 30 degree angle.  The northeast railroads used them to load snow after a big blizzard in the late 60's with a destination of anywhere south!

[nbrodar]

We still do.   During really heavy winters, we load the extra snow into gondolas, and ship it south.

Nick

[Dave-the-Train]

We still do.   During really heavy winters, we load the extra snow into gondolas, and ship it south.

Nick

Couldn't you send it the other way this year and help out the polar bears?

[tatans]

I remember in Calgary 3 gons filled with thousands of green 7-UP bottles off to the glass factory. (this was a thousand years ago !)