Holy Bulging Box Cars Batman!

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod

OK, this has been a hoot, but nobody seems to have figured out the situation.

I thought I knew the answer right away, but additional confirmation came from a later post that noted what was being loaded into these cars.

If a boxcar is loaded full of a commodity that will swell if it gets wet, and then gets a roof leak, the commodity will expand. Transverse loading like this will rapidly bulge out, and eventually break, flat surfaces... both roof and side... on boxcars. (There were some very good pictures of this in Trains many years ago... for some reason I remember 1971 as the year).

Bulges in the roof only would imply that the car was full of something that swelled fairly quickly in response to a leak in the roof material or seams... but that kept water away from material 'lower down' in the car once it had done so. Also that the material lower down was fairly dense in compression.

Scrap paper, especially if 'bundled' using one of the presses commonly in use, would be a prime candidate for this kind of problem imho.

Hmmm...that makes sense. I wasn't thinking about the cargo itself...between that and the forklifts......Thanks.

[Anonymous]

My mommy told me that bulging boxcars were where little new baby flatcars came from[:-^][:-^]

[Anonymous]

" what do you mean?"
....
"that huge hole was when we hi... got it!"
....
"we arn't paying!"
....
"the hole was there!"

UP: *click*

[Overmod]

Mark, I think you're onto something here. (Now see if we can get Mook to catch'em in the act...!)

[edblysard]

Overmod,
Dont know what railroad you work for, but if I delivered a leaking box car, with a swelled load to Pasadena paper, I would be back out there in about a hour, to pick up the bad order car, and our claim agent would be on the phone with a POed customer...
All the boxes we have ever delivered with paper, scrap, newsprint or other, may look like crud on the outside, but the insides are operating room clean...
shippers wont take a leaking boxcar, and if one is damaged in route, it is bad ordered before delivery to the customer, repaired, and the contents paid for....

I have watched the forklift drivers down here on the dock, they bang the heck out of the roof, tear up the doors, I even watched one drive out the other side, after his buddies removed the crossover ramp...
Randy pointed out the mill gons with the brake wheel bent, or the morons hook a tow chain to the cut lever, just about anywhere but the tow eye or tow pocket...

Count on the bulge being mechanical damage caused by loaders...a leaking box would be bad order at the first chance...
No road would want to take the chance of being tagged with the repair cost and the content damage claim, count on it being set out to the rip long before it got to the receiver or the shipper..

Ed

[jeaton]

I know what the roof damage is from. Haven't you guys ever seen the loading/receiving foreman get really PO'd?

Jay