The memory jolt is continuing. I got thinking about double side door auto boxes w/ and w/o end doors. Also 40 and 50 foot flatcars w/ and w/o stemwinder brake wheels and w/ and w/o fishbellies.
The last cattle cars were shipped out of Irricana, AB a few years before we got there. The last autobox however, was unloaded the first spring after we moved there. It was a load of 1957 Plymouth's for the dealership there. The other dealership in town, a Pontiac Buick GMC franchise had switched to receiving their new vehicles by truck a number of years earlier.
My father was surprised that I couldn't remember three dome tank cars. He figured I must have missed that by only a year or so. I don't remember wood outside braced autoboxes, only the smooth steel side ones.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Well, Bruce, one good jolt deserves another! Multi-compartment tank cars are still around, but without domes the difference isn't always too obvious. I, too, remember two- and three-dome tank cars, as well as a few six-dome tank cars used for wine service. Come to think of it, most of the modern three-compartment (or four-compartment) tank cars have individual compartments coming close to the size of the old 8000- and 10000-gallon tank cars, so I guess those smaller three-dome tank cars are truly bygones!
Even though I lived in a state whose name is practically synonymous with auto production, I don't recall seeing box cars used for that purpose (I'm pretty sure that to this day an auto rack hasn't traveled through Grand Haven!). Well after shipments had been shifted to auto racks, we'd see end-door cars in use for other commodities, and I recall seeing lots of cars from a particular GTW series in storage before they were sent to scrap. I also remember box cars (mostly MILW) with small doors in one end for loading lunber more easily.
Outside-braced wooden box cars: saw lots of these in my time. But I was in a time warp, because one of the industries in Grand Haven was a tannery, and they used the oldest, least-desirable cars for shipping the hides in. Most of the cars like this were MILW and RI. I actually remember seeing one MILW car on which you could still see "CTSE" lettering underneath (for the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern). Some exotic steel cars used in hide service were from the Chicago Great Western (small-cube cars from the 1920s) and the Chicago & North Western (former wooden cars that had been rebuilt with steel sides, but still retained the truss-style outside bracing).
Since Grand Haven was a sand-shipping city, I was also in (vicariously) on some of railroading's earliest covered hopper cars. C&O itself had what were probably the first of the long-time standard covered hoppers (1958 cubic feet), built in 1937, but the C&O cars I was catching in sand service were actually old coal hoppers with roofs installed and gates modified. And we'd get some DT&I cars that were smaller than standard, but looked very much like their more modern contemporaries. The most unusual sand cars we'd get were from a fleet of about five old tank cars that C&O (and Pere Marquette) had converted with top hatches and discharge pipes! And with all of this exotica, most sand was still shipped out of town in open-top gons!
Bruce, you wondered about offset-side hoppers: they were just ordinary hoppers with ribs on the inside instead of the outside (these smooth sides would often slope inward toward the ends and top, hence the name). They could hold about five percent more coal than ribbed-side cars with identical dimensions, but didn't hold up as well under the typically-brutal loading conditions. They were popular from about 1934 through 1947 or so (at least that's when C&O was having them built--examples survived well into the 1970s, and sold-off cars lasted a bit longer).
Wartime emergency cars were built with steel framing and wooden sides, to conserve steel for other uses during World War II. Lots of railroads had gondolas with the truss-style outside bracing. By the time I saw them, most of the wooden sides were replaced with steel. Same with hoppers: C&O had 3000 of these cars, but they were given steel sides by the 1950s, while retaining some of the diagonal bracing. One railroad that kept the wooden sides on their wartime cars was the CB&Q: I saw them in CB&Q garb, and in the 1980s, C&NW bought a bunch of these (as well as ex-SLSF offset-side twin hoppers) for use in ballast service!
This is fun!
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
CShaveRR Outside-braced wooden box cars: saw lots of these in my time. But I was in a time warp, because one of the industries in Grand Haven was a tannery, and they used the oldest, least-desirable cars for shipping the hides in. Most of the cars like this were MILW and RI. I actually remember seeing one MILW car on which you could still see "CTSE" lettering underneath (for the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern). Some exotic steel cars used in hide service were from the Chicago Great Western (small-cube cars from the 1920s) and the Chicago & North Western (former wooden cars that had been rebuilt with steel sides, but still retained the truss-style outside bracing). This is fun!
Johnny
CShaveRR offset-side hoppers: they were just ordinary hoppers with ribs on the inside instead of the outside (these smooth sides would often slope inward toward the ends and top, hence the name)
offset-side hoppers: they were just ordinary hoppers with ribs on the inside instead of the outside (these smooth sides would often slope inward toward the ends and top, hence the name)
We did have those although they were referred to as smooth side hoppers. You mentioned wood sided hoppers. When I first read that I thought it was really strange, but then I remembered CP did have those. I can recall seeing cars where the top two or three row of boards were getting pretty broken up and you could see a lot of daylight around the boards. The first covered hoppers I ever recall seeing were, according to my Dad, loaded with flour. I guess there were small mills around the countryside that ground the wheat, but then sold the flour in bulk to famous name brand mills, who bagged it for retail sale. Later there were different variations of covered hoppers that carried dry chemicals for use in the coal mines around Drumheller and East Coulee.
As to cattle cars (CP called them stock cars, which after we got our first TV and saw NASCAR racing on Wide World of Sports, created all kinds of funny images in my head), I never saw any loaded with livestock going either direction. I never knew what was going on there until about twenty five years later when I read CP used empty stock cars returning from Vancouver, BC to the prairies, to haul ties and other track materials not subject to weather damage in OCS service. Those stock cars would have been sent to section men along the line.
I suspect that after 1960 or so the auto boxes I saw were being used in some other service. Loaded NB toward Drum and the Coulee, empty SB.
Do you have any interesting info on old little flat cars? I was going to phrase it differently, but it would have sounded like a line from a used car salesman.
And Johnny, I hadn't considered how those cars would smell until I read your post. And I really wish I hadn't done that. Geezz!
I saw an old three dome tank car once. It was at Brooklyn, Iowa (IAIS,exRI) on the siding that was used for car storage at the time. There was just one, all the rest of the cars were box cars or covered hoppers if my memory is correct. I remember it had private owner marks, but I didn't write them down, nor did I have my camera with me. This was about the time (late 1980s) the CNW was being threatened with a strike and the UP was going to send some trains over the IAIS for the duration. They cleared the siding so they could use it to meet trains and I don't know where the car went.
I did get some pictures of UP 40 foot stock cars (similiar to Athearn's HO stock car) in storage at Fremont, NE. That would've been 1984ish. I also took pictures of UP trains with cabooses, I think this was right before Nebraska repealed it's caboose law.
Jeff
Further on the covered hoppers, how could I forget fertilizer. In particular "Elephant Brand". You know you grew up in an agricultural area when you can remember TV and Radio fertilizer commercials like other people remember car and cereal commercials.
Elephant Brand was made by Cominco, or as Kootenay Central refers to it, Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company.
Fortune (and luck!) finally caught up with me.-Two, count 'em two, C40-8s;-One was actually leading;-"Golden Hour" light;-Batteries in my camera;-A second chance!
I first caught the pair just south of Waupaca but had bad light. I was a tad surprised on the first shot...then I realized I had a rare second chance.
...so I hopped back on US 10 to head back West. I was able to get ahead of 'em just outside of Amherst...and even by doing the speed limit:
Q199 at CTH T (intersection of US 10 and CTH T)CN 2126
CN 2118
It was nice to catch a few things I've been after...and in some sunlight for a change.
Dan
Dan, that second shot of Q199, in sweet light, is spectacular!
Bruce, I don't think I saw a grain or flour covered hopper until sometime in the mid-1960s. Through here they were all sand, or calcium carbide (!--imagine if one of those loads had gotten wet!). We'd still see grain and flour being shipped in box cars (anybody else remember the Buffalo Creek Railway's fleet of 40-footers?). It was about 1966 or so that one of the places on the GTW started getting fertilizer in those cylindrical NAHX covered hoppers with IMC "Products For Growth" markings. Those things seemed huge, and modern!
CShaveRR calcium carbide (!--imagine if one of those loads had gotten wet!)
calcium carbide (!--imagine if one of those loads had gotten wet!)
Carl, I admit my chemistry and Hazardous Material handling knowledge isn't good. Does the hopper involved explode, melt, vapourize into thin air, or poison everyone for miles around? Or all of the above?
Dan, that broom on the 2126 doesn't look like it has seen its' first snowfall yet. They will get to see if a new broom really does sweep clean.
Thanks for the commentary Carl and Bruce. I posted the first, less-desirable shot to illustrate what I was initially presented with. I knew he'd have to slow down briefly in Waupaca and the highway going paralell to the tracks had a 65 mph speed limit. An easy decision!
I 'discovered' a couple things on my business related trips:-2 more "PTC Towers" are up on the Neenah Sub. One near Dale, WI at MP 196.8 and the other just south of Stevens Point, WI at MP 241.5.-CN moved one defect detector about 3 miles. The detector formerly at Readfield, WI (MP 204) is now just outside of Fremont, WI (MP 207.3) Initially when I heard a detector's voice on my scanner I heard "CN Detec..(static)...Mile two..(static)..seven point three...". That made me think that I was hearing the detector just outside of Stevens Point at MP 237.3. I found that odd as I was around MP225 when I heard that so I figured it was just my scanner acting up. The final trip home confirmed the location as I have a clear recording of this detector talking. A later check of 'reliable sources' indicates the move may have taken place in late October.-CN is adding a couple of spur tracks at Readfield, WI for sand loading capacity. The two or three tracks are not 'cut in' to the main yet. I think one more track may be built but we'll see. This is in addition to the plant at that location already serving grain/co-op loading. Scanner traffic and my observations indicate that this area may well warrant it's own job soon. Currently Readfield is served by the Waupaca, WI job usually on the way back to Neenah. As I understand things, traffic between both places is almost to the point that two or three crews are needed to get the work done almost every day. In other words the 'first job' goes out to Waupaca and does work there and usually hits their hours. The second job finishes at Waupaca and then heads to Readfield where they tend to hit hours there or would on the way back to Neenah. A third crew is then required to bring the train back to Neenah and switch it out in the yard. By adding more traffic at that location (sand) this may be the tipping point that would tell CN that the jobs need to be separate, or a different means to serve the area needs to happen. I don't see road trains (thru type) setting cars out at Waupaca as it's single track main in that area and any backups would snowball quickly.
Bruce,If you get calcium carbide wet you get the potential for explosive gas (acetylene) formation...and that stuff burns hot. Think of how hot those torches get...yikes!.
CNW 6000 Bruce,If you get calcium carbide wet you get the potential for explosive gas (acetylene) formation...and that stuff burns hot. Think of how hot those torches get...yikes!.
You certainly would want to allow no water to come into contact with the compound whenin transit.
I used to have a great-uncle near Binghamton, NY who used a 'carbide cannon' to scare the birds - esp. crows - away from his blueberry bushes when they were bearing fruit in the summer. He was a pretty clever fellow - chief maintenance guy for an ANSCo film plant in town, as I recall. He had rigged the thing up with a timer, so that every couple of minutes a charge of carbide would be dumped into the water and a spark generated to ignite it - the resulting BOOM !!! was roughly equivalent to that of a shotgun. Perhaps needless to say, it was situated further down the hill where his house was - a rural wooded area, of course - and was pointed away from the house.
The acetylene torches get so hot only because they are force-fed by injecting compressed pure oxygen - from the other cylinder that's usually part of a cutting or welding torch set - in with the acetylene. I'm sure acetylene in open air would burn quickly and hotly, but with an rolling orange flame front instead of the concentrated blue-white cone that is typical of a cutting torch - perhaps more like liquid gasoline. There might even with a low-order explosion if there was enough of that gas mix concentrated and confined, as in the carbide cannon above.
- Paul North.
Deggesty CNW 6000: Bruce,If you get calcium carbide wet you get the potential for explosive gas (acetylene) formation...and that stuff burns hot. Think of how hot those torches get...yikes!. Dan, it is not just a potential for explosive gas; calcium carbide reacts immediately with water to for acetylene. Indeed, this reaction was found to be of value for providing illumination in mines (miners' lamps) and for automobiles (automobile lamps). Of course, the speed of the reaction was controlled by limiting the amount of water that came into contact with the calcium carbide. You certainly would want to allow no water to come into contact with the compound whenin transit.
CNW 6000: Bruce,If you get calcium carbide wet you get the potential for explosive gas (acetylene) formation...and that stuff burns hot. Think of how hot those torches get...yikes!.
Back when we were youngsters, we would take a miner's carbide lamp and get an automotive headlamp reflector,,,,{8" or so in dia.}, and fasten it onto the lamp.
With a flame produced out about 4" or so in length....and the reflector polished, would make a light that would shine hundreds of feet in distance.
Quentin
IIRC, some early automotive headlights were carbide... Not that I was there at the time.
On a more current note - I have in my possession a "Locomotive Engineer's Certificate" with the "Student" box checked - watch out - new engineer on the rails.
Actually, it'll be next spring/summer before I get my hand on the controls...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Congrats Larry! Good to see the tree 'branching out' to new areas on the road...
CShaveRR Even though I lived in a state whose name is practically synonymous with auto production, I don't recall seeing box cars used for that purpose (I'm pretty sure that to this day an auto rack hasn't traveled through Grand Haven!). Well after shipments had been shifted to auto racks, we'd see end-door cars in use for other commodities, and I recall seeing lots of cars from a particular GTW series in storage before they were sent to scrap.
Even though I lived in a state whose name is practically synonymous with auto production, I don't recall seeing box cars used for that purpose (I'm pretty sure that to this day an auto rack hasn't traveled through Grand Haven!). Well after shipments had been shifted to auto racks, we'd see end-door cars in use for other commodities, and I recall seeing lots of cars from a particular GTW series in storage before they were sent to scrap.
I didn't have time to check on this until this morning, but your comment here reminded me of something I had read on another forum a couple of weeks ago.
It seems that CP didn't start using auto racks until the winter of 1962-63. So I guess auto boxes came into Calgary to be unloaded onto trucks well after the spring of 1957 I mentioned above. Some of the auto boxes I recall seeing as a kid could still be carrying cars to towns more distant from Calgary.
This brings up another interesting point. We read so often about how one railway car can take 2 to 2 1/2 trucks off the road, but since an auto box can only carry four cars, it would take 1 1/2 auto boxes to fill a car carrier truck. I think that would have been the size of car carrier trucks back then. Quentin could tell us for sure. This sounds like a question right up his alley, as it were. It is no wonder the change to auto racks seemed almost instant. The old auto box system must have been really labour and cost inefficient.
Congratulations Larry on your new certificate. Hope you don't have to keep your "learner's permit" too long.
tree68 IIRC, some early automotive headlights were carbide... Not that I was there at the time. On a more current note - I have in my possession a "Locomotive Engineer's Certificate" with the "Student" box checked - watch out - new engineer on the rails. Actually, it'll be next spring/summer before I get my hand on the controls...
Just when I thought the tracks were safe.
I should have done this RR thing as a volunter. Probably would have get my license sooner. Lousy remotes. Maybe I'll try to get north and see your territory once it warms up, Larry.
Anyone want to go to work for me today?
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Yeah, maybe I'll take you up on that. Really. When I've been out in the rain, or in cold and wind - which has been for at least 1/2 hour at a time most days this week, doing a lot of walking - I often think of the guys on the hump that have to stand there and yank the cut levers, or people like you who have to slog back and forth for hours at a stretch, grabbing onto all that well-chilled metal, and yet still being able to manipulate the remote's controls or the small keys on computers and other 'smart' devices with numb fingers . . . That said, I think I could do it - for a few days, anyway.
Did Mike Rowe of the "Dirty Jobs" TV show ever do one on being a conductor or switchman in this kind of weather ? Not 'dirty' in the sense of muddy, greeasy, etc., but definitely in terms of 'bad'. Somehow I doubt it . . .
I think my next job is going to be indoors. I've been outside enough for a lifetime.
No robot engine today.. good ol' fashioned 3 man crew (how it should be). As far as staying clean, I never elarned how to do that. Some guys can wear a white tuxedo out here and never get a speck of dirt on it. I walk from the locker room to the engine and look like I've been in a coal mine. I don't get it.
PS. Sent you some links and a very interesting thread to your inbox from near your current stomping grounds , Paul.
Know how you feel, Zug! If there's dirt anywhere around, it's likely to find me. I swear that the salt from the road loves these black jeans the best! We had one guy at work whom they called "Mr. Clean" (too much hair to be a ringer, though nowadays the color is right!), and another guy who was "Mr. Dirt". I didn't know him that well.
Congratulations, Larry! I wanted to do that once, but was told that I'd be down at the bottom of their seniority list, unable to escape...and that didn't sound good to me (I had asked about studying, obtaining my license, and just keeping qualified...no go!). I was, according to my official page on the computer, an RCO student, or engineer class 6, I think it was. But I lost that after a couple of years of inaction in that direction.
Up in Michigan again...this seems to be an every-other-week thing for us. It was a funeral today, a wedding shower tomorrow, then back home before the really nasty weather hits. We're under a winter storm something-or-other for Sunday (our map shows it as a warning, but the accompanying text says it's a watch).
This trip has been a total frustration for me so far, train-wise. We got to Porter, Indiana, and there were three NS freights staring us in the face! Two eastbound, one westbound, nothing moving. We moved away from the tracks to get breakfast, and the first thing I heard was a horn--either from one of those three trains or the Amtrak train they were probably all waiting for. In Kalamazoo this afternoon I just missed a rare train on CN's branch line into that city (again, a meal was the culprit--the train was gone when we got done). Coming up to Grand Rapids, I caught a glimpse of the ditch lights of a Grand Elk freight moving toward me, just leaving the yard at the "Grand" end of the line. Had I adhered more closely to the speed limit on 131, it would have been in a better place to see--as it was, it came through the piers of the 28th Street overpass at the same time we did.
Justin, if you're around, I owe you an e-mail. I can't send e-mails from here, for some reason (I receive them just fine, and can update other pages).
Well, let's see if I can figure this out. We're getting a new yard where I currently work. They are taking away half our new yard, giving us a new half, and rebuilding what was left over. They are going to use steel ties for the new yard, and here's a couple bundles of them.
Use the "img" and "/img" tags
<edit>Oops - either I spelled something wrong (interesting, as I highlighted and copied) or Flickr doesn't allow outside links...
I can see it just fine. I use Flickr, too, and it lets me post here. Maybe the problem is that it's not zug who's trying to post, but Larry instead ?
Figured it out. I needed the right link.
Yay for small victories!
Happy birthday today to Randy Vos, out truckin' in the path of the storm.
We go home from Michigan in the rain last night. It's light snow out there today, and the wind has come up. I have to go out and do my weekly chore with the Historical Society (part of it, anyway--the banks are closed) this afternoon.
Ray mentioned the Michigan Shore Railroad in his "Today in Railroad History" column. By coincidence, I saw some MS motive power for the first time yesterday. Not closely, because I wasn't the driver! (My brother-in-law, my nephew, my nephew's father-in-law-to-be, and I were out on the town in Grand Haven and Muskegon while the ladies were having a bridal shower for my nephew's gal.) Anyway, it was a spartan-cab Geep (38-2, I presume), freshly painted red and white. There was also an EMD switcher in the same paint scheme, and another Geep in Mid-Michigan Railroad blue on the premises at the old GTW engine house in Muskegon. We had just finished lunch at The Station, which was right by some yard trackage there (however, it was an old gas station, not a train station...good burgers!).
Got a neat ride in a caboose once at that very yard. The GTW manifest had just arrived in Muskegon from Durand, and I was going to ride it back to Durand (amazingly, I had the blessing of the trainmaster and even the superintendent to be on board that time!). As soon as the inbound train stopped, I was told to get on the caboose. A yard engine (Alco S2--amazing sound!) cut it away from the train, rared back, and kicked it the entire length of the yard! At the other end, the inbound train's road power tied it onto the outbound train, then wend down to the east end to double up and put the train together. The air test was a lot quicker than they are nowadays, and we were out of there after only a few minutes. The conductor boarded his chariot on the fly at the yard office, and we were on our way. Definitely a portent of things to come for me...got inoculated by the sights and sounds of mainline railroading, but couldn't stay awake. I do remember heading into the sunrise somewhere around St.Johns, but the fact that I could be easily lulled to sleep by the motion was one of the things that kept me in the yard for most of my eventual career.
tree68 On a more current note - I have in my possession a "Locomotive Engineer's Certificate" with the "Student" box checked - watch out - new engineer on the rails. Actually, it'll be next spring/summer before I get my hand on the controls...
zardoz tree68: On a more current note - I have in my possession a "Locomotive Engineer's Certificate" with the "Student" box checked - watch out - new engineer on the rails. Actually, it'll be next spring/summer before I get my hand on the controls... Do you get a "Student Driver" sign to hang on the cab?
tree68: On a more current note - I have in my possession a "Locomotive Engineer's Certificate" with the "Student" box checked - watch out - new engineer on the rails. Actually, it'll be next spring/summer before I get my hand on the controls...
Just wait until he has to parallel park that F....
Wind averaging 35 mph, snow drifts averaging 4'-6' deep...in Oshkosh. We got about 10" of snow overnight. Some still coming, more wind, more drifting...thawing now, more snowblowing later.
zugmannJust wait until he has to parallel park that F....
Our "new" RS-18's will probably be in service by the time I get my hand on the throttle, but the F's will still be a force to be reckoned with...
Or maybe the RS-3 with the 6 brake...
Wheeeee!
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