Jeffrey's Trackside Diner, July 2018

[NWP SWP]

Who is selling what?

Too of page, drinks are on me so everyone belly up to the bar, just stay away from whatever Track fiddler has been drinking, at least until he explains himself!

[hon30critter]

Track fiddler

I'm sorry sometimes I don't buy something someone is selling

Sorry, I think I'm missing something. I'm not sure what someone is trying to sell you, and I don't get the 'K' responses. Can you elaborate?

Thanks,

Dave

[Tinplate Toddler]

hon30critter

Unfortunately Toronto has you beat Ulrich. Toronto has been awarded the dubious honour of having the worst commutes in the world.

Isn´t it the 6th worst city?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toronto-is-6th-worst-city-for-commuting-study-finds-1.3983117

 

[Track fiddler]

After looking over the calculations I think Dave's got everything right we're all good here.

[Track fiddler]

NWP SWP

Who is selling what?

Too of page, drinks are on me so everyone belly up to the bar, just stay away from whatever Track fiddler has been drinking, at least until he explains himself!

 

  Didn't buy the train car you  Modeled sorry no I didn't buy it

[Track fiddler]

All I got to say is the pictures of 9:22 p.m. do not fly with me

[NWP SWP]

What exactly are you insinuating sir? I am missing the point of your comments, perhaps its me, I don't know. Please clarify so I know whether to be mad or not, just kidding, but still please clarify the meaning of your comments, PLEASE!

Are you trying to say I didn't actually build the car? 

Or is it you don't think my model is accurate enough?

Or is it something else?

In light of your last post...

Are the photos too blurry? I will retake them in the sunlight tomorrow. 

At this point I'm quite utterly confused, please explain more in depth, so I can stop scratching my head, perhaps it's too late at night.

P.S. track fiddler, thanks for the kind words of encouragement about life in general earlier.

[hon30critter]

Tinplate Toddler

Isn´t it the 6th worst city?

I could be wrong. Maybe I'm confusing the 'commuting times' with the amount of traffic on the major arteries. I believe we beat Los Angeles on that one not too long ago. I guess it's who you are asking.

Bottom line is that the money and time spent commuting is a waste. The Ontario government is doing a lot to try to mitigate the situation, but all I think they are going to do is change things from 'dead slow or stopped' to 'slow if you are lucky'.

The town we are in (Bradford West Guillimbury) is a real bottleneck, espescially on the weekends when all of the cottagers are trying to get to their paradises in the wilderness of Northern Ontario. On a Friday afternoon in the summer it can take 45 minutes to get from Newmarket to Bradford. That's only 14 kms. The poor cottagers have another two or three hours of traffic congestion ahead of them after that.

Bradford was promised a bypass 30 years ago! It hasn't happened. I doubt that it will get much better even if the bypass is built. The cost will be huge. The bypass has to cross about five km of pure bottomless swamp land.

Anyhow, it doesn't matter whether we are first or sixth. Driving anywhere in the area is becoming a major time consuming task. Moving to a year round cottage in Northern Ontario is becoming more attractive every day. There are communities like Elliott Lake that go out of their way to attract retirees. The only problem is the long winters. If you don't go south in the winter you could freeze to death

Dave

[Track fiddler]

I'm sorry I'm just not buying your posts from your build of 9:22 PM sorry I'm just not feeling it.

[Track fiddler]

Pictures have flaws and defects such as mine.... it can't be helped

[Tinplate Toddler]

Dave - there is time wasted more than the time spent waiting in a traffic jam or at an airport!  I lost so much precious time of my life on both accounts than I dare to admit.

We live on one of the major holiday routes to the North Sea and Baltic Sea beaches. During summer weekends, it can take easily up to 45 minutes to cross our little town and that´s the whopping distance of 3kms! Each time there is a jam on the Autobahn to Hamburg, the recommended bypass route goes through our town, which just isn´t prepared for that amount of cars to pass through. Plans for a bypass to divert through traffic have been vetoed by local merchants for over 30 years now, as they fear loss of business. Utter nonsense, but it is comforting to find out that stupidity can be found all around the globe! So far, I had come to the conclusion that Germany is the capital of stupidity.

[hon30critter]

Tinplate Toddler

During summer weekends, it can take easily up to 45 minutes to cross our little town and that´s the whopping distance of 3kms!

OK Ulrich, you win hands down!!! Three kms in 45 minutes is pretty bad!

When we were travelling to our cottage in Northern Ontario we never had any of the traffic problems experienced by the daytime travellers. We would leave Bradford at about 3:00 am. There was nobody on the roads at that time of the morning except for a few truckers. The only minor traffic that we encountered was around Sudbury at about 6:00 am where we ran into a few early commuters on their way to work.

However, traffic wasn't the main reason why we started out so early in the morning. Our cottage was 24 kms from the marina (no road access) so unless you wanted to get pounded to death in high waves, you made sure to leave the dock as early in the morning as possible just after the gas pumps opened up for the day. The route took us across some pretty big water in northern Georgian Bay. On several occassions when we didn't start out early, we found ourselves looking up at the tops of the white caps on the waves and we had green water coming over the bow! Dianne hated those trips. The kids and I were grinning from ear to ear!! I think the boat trips to the cottage were the highlight of my year!

Too many memories!!

Dave

[Tinplate Toddler]

Yesterday´s mail saw the delivery of my order of figures which I thought had been lost! Now Talheim is not a ghost town any longer!

 

 

 

 

Semi-fast passenger service E 3188 to Schaffhausen (E stands for "Eilzug") is pulling into Talheim station, pulled by DB class 141 207-1, while the local freight train NG 8817 to Lörrach (NG stands for "Nahgüterzug"), headed by DB class 194 112-9 is waiting for some express freight to be loaded into the goods van.

[hon30critter]

The people look good Ulrich!

Dave

[Jimmy_Braum]

Good morning all. 

[NWP SWP]

Morning diners,

So track fiddler, you don't think the photos are a good enough quality?

OK then I'll post some better photos.

Glad that got cleared up I thought I'd have to pull out the big guns.

[ricktrains4824]

Good afternoon all.

Flo - A RBF please. Thanks.

Trackfidler - The difference between your build, and Steven NWP's build, is yours is entirely scratch built out of styrene, whereas Steven's is a kitbash of two different cars combined to make one longer one. Hence the difference in looks between the two pictures.

Steven NWP - Looking good so far, now you need to show it with paint! 

Hope all are well, and all enjoy the day. 

[NWP SWP]

Here's better pictures!

http://imgur.com/a/YYHZQDm

 

[Tinplate Toddler]

Steven - it´s much nicer to see the picture in your post than to have to click on a link before being able to view it!

Time to call it a day and head for the hay!

CU tomorrow!

[Heartland Division CB&Q]

Howdy ..

Ulrich ... the figures look good.  It’s nice to see the happy travelers on the station platforms. 

Dave ... it’s been a long time since I was last in Toronto, but I do t recall traffic bring bad enough to be sixth worse in the world . 

Steven .. your kit bash project came out well . You deserve to be proud of it . I did not see if you said anything about the prototype and what it hauls. The picture you showed appears to have wood chips in it.  Where was the photo and what railroad owns the car? 

[NWP SWP]

http://www.railgoat.railfan.net/railwhales/aa-kcs404000.htm

[Post edited by moderator to copyrighted material]

[NWP SWP]

Steven,

 

Around 1970, KCS's holding company formed a subsidiary called Howe Coal Company to exploit strip-mining potential beside the mainline at Howe, Oklahoma.  It also built a rail-to-ship bulk terminal at Port Arthur, Texas, from which the coal would be exported.  To haul the coal between mine and port in single-line captive service, the railway had Thrall build 75 gigantic rotary-dump coal gondolas in 1970.  They were 75' 11" long, and 13' high (72' 5" and 9' 6" internally).  Capacities were 6,100 cubic feet and 300,000 pounds.  (The typical car in unit-coal-train service holds about 4,000 cubic feet and 200,000 pounds.)  They were built of Cor-Ten ("pre-rusted") steel and rode on six-axle Buckeye trucks.  Distance between truck centers was 55'.  Axle spacings were 5' 6".  The 75 cars were numbered between 404004 and 404748, with the first five digits in series and the sixth being a validity check digit.

 

After two shiploads of coal went to Asia, the buyer there suddenly became subject to stricter environmental requirements and had to cancel the contract.  At the same time, the strip mine was plagued with ground-water intrusion.  The Howe Coal Company fizzled.  Two or three of the cars had already been destroyed in derailments (a possible indication that their loaded weight was excessive for the KCS's track quality at the time).  The remainder of the fleet, still practically new, was stored in a siding at Spiro, Oklahoma.  While KCS searched without success for a buyer who might want these monsters, a tornado descended on Spiro and derailed 40 of them.  One or two had to be scrapped, but the rest were re-railed.

 

Before long, Georgia Pacific bought a hardwood paper mill on KCS industrial trackage at Port Hudson, Louisiana (15 miles north of Baton Rouge on the east side of the Mississippi River).  Among GP's upgrades was a rotary dumper designed to handle, at the same time, two of KCS's old 40-foot gravel hoppers that had been extended upward (to a capacity of 5,104 cubic feet) for woodchip service.  A remote wood chipper was also installed on the KCS at Legonier, 58 miles above Baton Rouge on the opposite (west) side of the river.

 

Somebody soon realized that the monster coal gons would fit Georgia Pacific's rotary dumper (one at a time), and their 6,100 cubic-foot capacity would allow KCS to give the customer a better freight rate.  KCS pulled 20 cars out of storage at Spiro (the first 20 on the track, without regard to number) and replaced their six-axle trucks with four-axle trucks in order to reduce tare weight.  The railway was able to sell the Buckeye trucks.

 

Georgia Pacific was so well pleased with the lower rate that it asked KCS if the cars could be extended upward, like the old gravel hoppers, in order to increase cubic capacity and reduce the rate even more.  That wasn't an option, because such greater cubic capacity would make the gross weight (hardwood, remember) too much for the four-axle trucks.  Georgia Pacific was so set on higher capacity, that KCS decided to take the other 51 cars still at Spiro, leave them on their six-axle trucks, and extend them upward by 30 inches.  This made them 15' 6" tall (12' internally) and increased their capacity to 7,880 cubic feet!  The higher sides and ends added 16,000 pounds to tare weight and reduced cargo weight capacity to 284,000 pounds, but a full load of hardwood chips wouldn't exceed that anyway.

 

These cars served well in woodchip service, both the low 4-axle and the high six-axle versions.  They were never renumbered to distinguish which was which, so the numbers are all mixed up.  Eventually, another woodchip mill was established on the KCS near Clarence, Louisiana.  The cars were used from there to serve the first mill (173 miles) and another one only ten miles from Clarence.

 

By early 2006, 70 of the cars remained.  That's when KCS retired them and sold them to General American.  They became GACX 914-983.  The new owner removed the upward extension and put them all on four-axle trucks, giving them a gross weight of 286,000 pounds.  They were put into service for hauling garbage.  The cars are no longer listed in the UMLER (Universal Machine-Language Equipment Register)--the database of all interchangeable freight cars in North America--under their GACX numbers.  I do not know whether they have been, resold, renumbered or retired.  The "40-year rule" would have restricted their use in interchange service after about 2010; however, their Cor-Ten construction should give them permanent durability.  They might continue to serve somewhere in single-line (non-interchange) use, as they did for most of their careers on KCS.

 

Lowell G. McManus
Eagle Pass, Texas, USA

 

[NWP SWP]

Those are from a Web page detailing the history of the cars, the president of the MSMRC Chris "Casey" LeBlanc was on of the contributors, and one of the guys at the club actually built a few, I spoke to them and they did advise me on the project, the other bit of information is from the KCS historical society.

[Little Timmy]

WOW ! That was a lot to "digest" .

Flo,... could I have a Coke to wash all that down ???

Actually I enjoyed the information.  Loved the truck's on the car in picture # 2

[NWP SWP]

I am waiting to see if the KCSHS archivist can get me a copy of the car blueprints.

My plan is to build around 20-40 cars to run as a unit coal train, as the cats were originally built for, I think I might decal them for the Rio Grand or Southern Pacific as if they bought the cars off KCS or they ordered some too.

The first car isn't perfect I have some more tinkering to do before I'm satisfied enough to start making them either from resin or something else.

[BigDaddy]

NWP SWP

My plan is to build around 20-40 cars to run as a unit coal train

20 cars would be a 17' long train.  Better start building that layout.

Laid some track today.  Really a nice day just to sit outside.

[tstage]

Steven,

Any chance of just posting the link to the webpage you pasted in your post above?  Some of the text gets cut off and it would be easier to go directly to the webpage.  It also cuts down on loading the post.  And it avoids possible copyright issues.

Tom

[Edit: Just checked.  The material is copyrighted so I'm going to edit your prior post with just the link]

[NWP SWP]

http://www.railgoat.railfan.net/railwhales/aa-kcs404000.htm

That's a link to the webpage.

[NittanyLion]

Went and looked at a house in Northern Virginia today. It was just at the top of the budget, but would have needed way more renovation than we expected and thus could afford. Have to pass, which we a huge shame. The basement had a 20x15 I shaped area of completely blank walls and some space in another room that would have made great staging  Oh well!

[BigDaddy]

Turn the volume way up, Iphones aren't good directional microphones.

You can't see them but this is the sound of a great blue heron rookery.  The are nesting in a Virginia pine, and for such big birds, they are impossible to see.

Their cackle sounds more like a barking squirrel than it does in the video.  A squirrel on speed and they just go at if for hours on end.