Some years ago when Powder River was running lots of trains. The coal dust was mucking up the ballest and caused some derailments. There were several attmepts to stop the dust from blowing out of the cars and some interesting ideas. The cover on the coal porters was one. Tarps were tried, water mist during loading was tried, not the best answer. Saw unit trains coming through Rochelle at the time with different covers on the coal cars. Was interesting.
cv_acr CShaveRR I doubt that they exist, Norris. I've heard of Bethgons used in DDG (dry distillers' grain) service that have retractable roof covers that can be rotary-dumped at their destination, but those weren't normal covered hopper cars. Yeah, I'd bet that is what he is seeing - rotary gons originally built for coal service bumped to a different service and fitted with removable covers.
CShaveRR I doubt that they exist, Norris. I've heard of Bethgons used in DDG (dry distillers' grain) service that have retractable roof covers that can be rotary-dumped at their destination, but those weren't normal covered hopper cars.
Yeah, I'd bet that is what he is seeing - rotary gons originally built for coal service bumped to a different service and fitted with removable covers.
Those cars are used by Cargill and I believe they're the only ones to use them. I see them regularly coming out of the Cargill plant at Blair, NE. Cars are either BNSF cars or Cargill owned cars.
They don't haul grain to the processing plants, only by-products from the milling process that's used for animal feeds.
I doubt that they're the ones Murphy saw.
Jeff
The stripe was different color for specialty services. The blue stripe was for covered hoppers used in unit train service. A green stripe was used on the Soo's Reefer cars. I think that there was a red stripe used on special heavy-duty flat cars. Finally I think a batch of special pulpwood gondolas also had a special stripe.
There was also an ad slogan on the blue stripe: "Another Soo Line Colormark Car". Don't know what it meant.
Backshop Soo Line used to have some covered hoppers with a stripe on one end. I think it just denoted certain pools, though.
Soo Line used to have some covered hoppers with a stripe on one end. I think it just denoted certain pools, though.
Nah, that was just their late-sixties paint scheme.
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=soo70695&o=soo
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
An N-scale model version (and real-world reference photos on the following link) made by Kato:
https://www.pwrs.ca/announcements/view.php?ID=16816
CShaveRRI doubt that they exist, Norris. I've heard of Bethgons used in DDG (dry distillers' grain) service that have retractable roof covers that can be rotary-dumped at their destination, but those weren't normal covered hopper cars.
I doubt that they exist, Norris. I've heard of Bethgons used in DDG (dry distillers' grain) service that have retractable roof covers that can be rotary-dumped at their destination, but those weren't normal covered hopper cars. You'd require a large roof hatch to make it doable, and the dumper itself would have to be a different length (by five or six feet) to make it possible. There would also be the problem of keeping out the crud that accumulates on the car roof (I recall seeing some pretty flourishing gardens on top of some cars).I wish you had a number for one of these cars, so I could check it out. Google makes the cars you saw look like ordinary coal gons. Don't know what would be around there for those, though.
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)
I doubt that they exist, Norris. I've heard of Bethgons used in DDG (dry distillers' grain) service that have retractable roof covers that can be rotary-dumped at their destination, but those weren't normal covered hopper cars. You'd require a large roof hatch to make it doable, and the dumper itself would have to be a different length (by five or six feet) to make it possible. There would also be the problem of keeping out the crud that accumulates on the car roof (I recall seeing some pretty flourishing gardens on top of some cars).I wish you had a number for one of these cars, so I could check it out.
Not saying they can't exist, but I've never seen or heard of grain cars or other covered hoppers that can be rotary dumped.
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Maybe I'm out of touch. East of Kimball S.D. on the Dakota Southern RR is a ginormous grain elevator. It has a 12 or 13 track storage area that butts up to I-90. I noticed that the covered hoppers there were all red at one end, the way coal cars are painted. Do these run through a rotary dumper to empty the cars?
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