Weathering Sea, Air, & Land effects.

Hay Irv

The weathering on a Box car just run across new york Harbor on a barge won't be any different than the weathering on a box car setting in a yard in Pittsburgh Pa. simply because they don't have cars that are exclusively run on barges.

Any type car can be run across a harbor at any time the weather is good. The Railroads don't or didn't use the barges in extreme bad weather where waves were crashing over the barges soaking the cars with salt water.

Train Barges were used to cross from one side of a harbor to the other and didn't make ocean Voyages where they spent days or weeks on end on the oceans getting hit by waves of salt water.

If and when they did move train laden barges the bay had to be fairly calm. Now they moved them in the rain which would rince the cars in fresh water but the cars on that barge may be on a barge in a bay today but, by tomorrow that same car could be pulling into a yard in west Texas in the middle of a dust storm.

For the most part the weathering will remain the same on most cars and it's coloring depends more on the dust, dirt & Road grit and discharges from the engines pulling them and the color of the dirt and dust that they are transported through. The real difference between cars on the coast near salt water is the amount of rust on the trucks and the rusty colors under the car again more rust.

In my younger years (after moveing away from home) I spent a lot of time along the west coast working in Los Angeles Harbor at Todd Ship Yard. I also worked as a longshoreman for a couple years after leaving the Military and saw thousands of cars that had been run up and down the coast as well as those run from California to New Jersey and I couldn't tell where any particular car had received their weathering from.

 Basically the main difference between coastal cars and central US weathering on cars is the amount of Rust and corrosion on the metal parts that is found to be heaver on the lower parts of coastal cars.

As far as cars haveing just rolled off a barge in the bays along the west coast that I witnessed there was no reel noticeable difference over cars setting in the yard at Mojave Calif.

Dan

That's not what my research shows.

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East coast car floating would be different than weather isn't as much of a factor due to the fact that east coast ports like New York are not as exposed to the weather asare wthe west coast ports. So the raltively more sheltered waters of the Port of New York would be less likely to be closed due o the weather than other places.

Back during the days when carfloat service was at its height in the Port of New York, it seems that the car floats ran on a regular schedule so they would run most of the time despite the weather. The Port of New York wasn't as susceptible to wild weather consitions because of how its located. Car float service was hardly ever cancelled due to weather and there seem to be records of car floats actually loosing cars overboard due to either improper handling given the weather conditions prevailing. Naturally, having that happen can ruin somebody's entire day.

Also given the fact that prior to 1960, railyards handling refridgerator and cars did exist and were used on Manhattan Island. These yards were served by car floats alone as Manhattan Island never had rail lines for freight trains. Obviously, those cars must have had problems due to salt water and salt air exposure. Of course theses cars might have been delived by car float in the morning and possibly returned to NJ either that afternoon or the next morning.

Most of these opeations dried up by 1960 due to the shift from manufacturing and wholesaling from NYC to elsewhere in the country and the opening of the Inter-City and Inter-State Highway systems from 1950 on. I have thus never gotten the chance to personally witness car float operations of any kind as an adult and as a kid they really didn't hold much interest.

Irv

Most likely, there would not be a lot of salt spray

hitting the cars on a float.  The float would be designed with enough freeboard that waves would be unlikely to break over the float, so the hull would protect the cars from the salt spray.  There might be a little salt spray from wind, but I doubt that the result would be a lot different from what would occur on railroad equipment running right along the coast such as the FEC in Florida.  The relatively short time that the car is actually on the float compared with the time it would be going across the country on rails is such that I would agree with Dan.  I don't think the weathering would be appreciably different for cars on a float verses cars not on the float.  In addition, the cars on the outside perimeter of the float would protect the cars to the inside from any wind blown spray.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the railroad does maintenance differently than the trucking industry, for instance.  If a large trucking company has 1000 trucks running across the country and one breaks down, they take it to a local garage, or have it towed to their nearest repair facility if there is one nearby.  They have delayed the load in one or at most two trailers.  If a train has a breakdown, it can delay all of the freight that train is hauling at the time.  Produce and livestock were particularly time sensitive, requiring frequent re-icing or watering.  The result is that the inspections done to rolling stock between trips would be much more extensive than what a trucking company does between trips.  Components would be replaced as soon as rust started to look bad enough to have the possibility of causing a breakdown.  In a trucking company, the driver is required to do a walk around inspection of his truck before he leaves the yard.  If the truck was not due for service and the previous driver did not write up any repair items, a mechanic may not even see it between trips.  Railroads have car inspectors inspecting every car before every run.  Before the advent of roller bearings in the wheels, every box on every wheel bearing had to be inspected for an adequate supply of fresh, oily rags to keep the plain bearings lubed.  The result of all of these inspections was that rolling stock did not tend to be heavily rusted if it was in regular service.  It might look bad, but since the steel in a box car is much thicker than the body of your car, surface rust looks much worse than it is.  You would never see holes in the metal like you might find in rusted out cars still being driven on the highway. 

I thought so.

I did think there was a reason why I couldn't find any photos of this, so thanks for clearing up this mystery.

I didn't believe that damaged car floats would be tolerated even in times like this where the make one trip a day at most. But again I couldn't be sure from what I have read.

As for freeboard, that can change depending on the list induced by loading and unloading since even a slight change in weight on one side over the other can induce enough list to create problems. I am sure the moorings and lines with whch the cafloat is secured to its dock are designed to keep things withn reasonable limits but I have yet to see this discussed in my references.

Irv

The Key Word...............

Is EXTREME.............See, there is this thing called fog, and it plays havock with navigation. Most of the railroads did NOT have radar in the "golden age" of carfloating and ferryboating. I realize we are talking about carfloating, but it was quite common for the railroads of New York Harbor to issue "fog tickets" to their morning commuters when the fleet was "socked in" due to extreme weather.

The tug and carfloats also did not have any to little freeboard, so any extreme wave action could be dangerous, thogh as noted, NY Harbor's well sheltered waters made this danger rare. Tides did play a role in carfloating though, as extra high neap and flood tides due to hurricanes could keep the floatbridges (especially the pontoon-type) from properly leveling out and allowing the pining of float to bridge.

And to address the original point of this e-mail, no, saltwater is not going to adversely (or otherwise) weather cars for the time they might spend in the NY Harbor area, unless they are something like home-service cars like ideler flats that are exposed 24/7.

RAH

The Keyword..

Extreme weather is something that is familar to anyone who lives or works in the NYC metropolitan area. WE all get affected by it, but fog isn't that much of a problem since most of us don't make our livings on the water. Even with radar fog can still cause lots of problems. But this is 2010 and not 1960 or earlier. Fog back then could and did shut down the harbor. I don't remember ever having the Staten Island Ferry not run due fog back then but I was kid back then and probably wouldn't have been conscious of it because I lived on the Lower East Side in 1956-58 and in Brooklyn from 1958 until I got married in 1974. I stopped taking the Staten Island Ferry when I helped out at my father's Farmers Market stand in 1962 when he opened his store on Grand Street in Brooklyn.

Extreme weather is when they close the Verazzano Narrrows Bridge these days. That happens once or twice a winter. So it isn't that bad. I wonder how that would have affected carfloat service? According to my references, it rarely did anything but slow it down. Now I need to consider this as my layout depends on carfloats for generating traffic to Oak Point Yard in the Bronx. So what would you recommend? Please note that my operations assume car floating was never terminated in the late 1960s on this route and that these operations would be occuring after 2000.

Irv

Irv If I were you I'd just

Irv If I were you I'd just weather cars like everybody does and not really worry about Corrosion or rust any more than normal.

As far as the car ferry's I doubt that any car ferry built before 1960 would still be used by the Railroads after 1970 as they would have taken all the old ones out to sea loaded with garbage and sunk them 35 miles off shore with the rest of the trash.

By 1970 all the barges would have been up graded and would more than likely be larger to accommodate all the advanced revenue occurring after 1970 and the larger cars being produced.

If you are going to have your railroad assume the car ferries never closed down then you have to remember progress in America for the most part grows it's just part of being a US Business. Progress and growth also means bigger, better, faster, and stronger because if things stayed the same they would have gone out of business and the Barge industry would have been replaced by better faster methods which is what happened.

So your main concern should be the beefing up of the Barge services if your going to play that they never folded with larger self propelled barges or Just larger barges and more tugs to accommodate the increased business.

By doing this you have a free hand in what the barge services would be like with more Barge Head ends, bigger yards and heaver traffic and I wouldn't worry about the weathering because you have a lot more to think about with the new and Improved Barge system and all the heavy traffic you'll need to tend to.

Actually Irv if that's what your planing it sounds like it will be a lot of fun and produce some great operating sessions as well as give you the opportunity to create some larger barges for the new services and some really great dock operations.

Dan

That is exactly what I was thinking

I do plan to use larger self propelled barges. They would be about 400 feet long and carry 4 tracks of cars. I am thinking of making them similar to World War II LSTs though those were only 328 feet long in actualiity. I am going to have to work on the width a little. but the two outer tracks would most likely combine with two innertracks thst eil mate up with the existing type of car float dock. Of course these vessels will have sides that rooves to protect the cargoes from the elements as these new types of car floats would need to operate in all kinds of weathers and also make oyages beyond the confines of the Port of New York. This would make my original concept of using the car floats as a kind of staging since I thought I might use the structure of the car float as box in which to store freight cars under he layout on shelves desiged t hold the car floats.

Irv

Irv, I found 2 companies that you might check out.

here are probably other places in the world where railcars are still transported by barge, but the one that comes to mind for me is the route from Seattle, Wa to Alaska, or from Vancouver, BC to Alaska.  

I did a search on Google and came up with 2 companies-they are the Alaska Railbelt Marine and Canadian National Aquatrain.  You might also try a search on Mississippi River barge operations.  I doubt that rail cars are used on floats in the Mississippi, but I'm thinking that the barges used on the Mississippi today would probably be similar to what would be used today in the N.Y. Harbor.  The equipment used in Alaska is probably a bit different than what would be used in NYC because they go over open ocean, but perhaps these resources would give you some ideas of how to design a more contemporary tug and barge for your railroad.

Self Propelled Car Floats

I am looking at those sources but they don't include deck plans or lines for the barges. Those would bew more helpful than photos since I am used to that format since they give the dimensions and other useful data. While it can e gotten from photos, you still need dimensional data to let you know how to scale the photo.

Frankly, self propelled car floats aren't a new idea as they have been used since teh 19th Century on the Great Lakes as well as other places. And of course, we can't ignore thew classic Sea Train car ferries that would load freight cars and transport between various ports in the US. While the Sea TRain ships are gone or converted to other uses, there are some vessels that still provide these services using RO/RO technology.

Irv

Self Propelled Sea Going Barges

This is the Canadian Pacific shipTrailer Princess when she was serving on the coast of British Columbia. And here is a link to were you could propably find more information:

http://ferriesbc.proboards.com/index.cgi

You can calculate the length of the ship from the trailers.

Depending on when the photograph was taken, the length of the front trailer on the ship in the front track is 40', 42', 45', 48' or 53'.  The height of the van "box" on the trailer will be 8' regardless of the length.  You can either arbitrarily assign the length you prefer to the trailer, and use it as a basis for measuring the length of the ship, or assign the length as it would have been in the years you are modeling and use that length asd the basis for measuring the length and height for your ship.  Alternately, you could use measure the height of the trailer box, and knowing that it is 8 feet, you can get your measurements from that.  It appears that the ship's smoke stacks are @3-4 feet thick.  That probably sets the thickness of the support for the superstructure bridge at @3-4 feet.  For the width overall of the ship, use the width of 4 tracks (I think that was what you wanted to use)  plus necessary clearance spacing between tracks, plus the 3'-4' on each side to clear the smoke stacks and superstructure. 

If you want to do barge and tug, you could eliminate the superstructure, and smoke stacks, and probably make it a scale 2 feet narrower; but if you are going to model a tug with it, then if the tug is going to move it with an along side tow (typical where the tug needs to manuever the barge), that would add extra length to your barge models.  If you are modeling the barge after it is tied to the slip and the tug has left, you can make the cart just the width of the barge.

Just what I need

Thanks, that's juat what I need. Interesting that CP would have this kind of self propelled car float.

Irv