No Models

Nope. No one makes anything like any of these two cars.

You could do a lot of slicing and dicing to an Intermountain cylindrical hopper to kitbash the first car, the bays would have to be scratchbuilt.

Close enough

Both Athearn and Intermountain make 2-bay covered hoppers that are "close enough" to the GATX unit unless you have to have the prototype.  Yes there are many differences between the models, but reasonable if you want to get your mill up and running cars.  A little modification to the bays is needed. 

Flex Flow cars

How about something like these cheap FlexFlow cars?
 

Old AHM model

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/p/267292/3024973.aspx

RMC kitbashing article

Marcel Devliger (spelling?) did an article in Railroad Model Craftsman back in the 1990's about kitbashing these cars.  If anyone has access to the back issue it could be useful.  I suspect I have it lurking somewhere in my basement.  

Marc Simpson

if you know the issue I have

if you know the issue I have a full set from 1949 - 2002

rich

Close Enough

Not even by a mile really.

However there are some modern ACF/ARI CentreFlow sodium chlorate cars and something close to these cars could easily be kitbashed from an model ACF car just by changing the hopper outlets:

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=shpx432274&o=shpx

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=shpx432921&o=shpx

ACF / ARI CenterFlow

Thanks everyone.

Looks like Intermountain makes a 2 bay center flow hopper that is a close approximation to the photos that Chris supplied.

Next question:

Wood Chip Gondalas

I plan on purchasing sixteen to twenty-four wood chip gondolas ("unit trains" of eight arriving at the mill and empties in staging).

I want to be able to use them in an animated walthers rotary dumper so they all need to be the same length and height.

It'll be a long time before I put the rotary dumper kit together so I need advice about which cars will fit.

I also need to consider which company had the largest production run to increase my chances of getting a large number of the same type of car over time.

Any suggestions?

Joe Baker

Try this one

Try this one.

http://www.bowser-trains.com/history/70twoodchip.html.

Athearn & Walthers has many out of stock cars. Try finding them at local train shows or ebay. hope the Bowser link helps you out.

E&C Woodchip hoppers

E&C Shops made some 62ft wood chip hoppers. See these on occasion at local hobby stores and swap meets. I've picked up a few for $5-12 range.

You probably won't find many of these, but Ambroid made some sticks in a box kits years ago which surface every now and then. 

chip gons vs hoppers

rotary dumping chip gons

Wood Chip Gondolas

The inspiration for the paper mill I'm modeling was in Ontario, Canada, so I am looking for gondolas instead of hoppers for the cold weather reason. 

The mill didn't have a rotary dumper but I bought the walthers kit before I ever did prototype research so its been incorporated into the layout. Plus I don't want to pass up an opportunity to add more operational interest.

The deck of the walthers rotary dumper that I have measures 68 scale feet. I'm guessing a 65 foot gondola would do the trick.

CN serviced the mill so any CN car or car used by CN will do.

I figure something like the photo below is what I want.

neither cheap nor a FlexFlow

CN Woodchip Cars

CN (and CP) both had an interesting collection of chip cars.

CN had purpose built gons from Canadian builders, and similar secondhand cars acquired from American roads like MILW and CIRR. They also had chip gons converted from older 52' gondolas with side extensions added.

They also however used to use old 40' boxcars with the roofs cut away and converted into chip gons. If you're modelling a modern mill however these have been retired and scrapped for quite a while now.

Trucks, Wheelsets, Car Capacity and Load Limits

A couple of questions in this post for the forum:

I recently purchased a download of Joe Fugate's 'Make It Run Like A Dream' books and started the process of tuning up my rolling stock.

I'm thinking about purchasing Intermountain wheelsets and Accurail Trucks like Joe describes to standardize my fleet.

Q1. How do I tell if my rolling stock already uses Intermountain wheel sets and/or Accurail trucks? Is there a list of manufacturers that use them? What about rolling stock that I purchased on Ebay that came with truck and wheel set modifications?

Looking at my rolling stock, some of the cars do not have the Capacity listed on the side and only the the Load Limit.

Q2. What is the relationship between Car Capacity and Load Limit? Would the load limit serve as a reasonable estimate for Car Capacity to determine wheel size?

Q3. Does wheel size change as soon as you cross the car capacity guidelines. For example: would a car with a capacity of 196 500lbs have 36" wheels or 38" wheels? It's right at the edge of 200,000lbs.

Q4.  Is there somewhere where I can look up the reporting marks of my rolling stock to determine the actual capacity, load limit, wheel size,truck type etc....of the prototype. I've looked at RRPicturesArchive.net but you can't always find the right car, nor can you always read the lettering.

Q5. How do I measure the wheel sets on my existing rolling stock to determine if the correct size of wheels are on already? Are prototype wheel diameters measured across the flanges or the tread?

Q6. From a purchasing perspective, I'd like to save money on the exchange rate and shipping. Are there any manufactures in Canada of similar quality HO 110 all metal wheel sets like Intermountain and rigid plastic unsprung trucks like Accurail?

Any help is appreciated.

Q&A #1

A2Q1: I think only Intermountain uses their wheels on OEM cars.  If you look at different brands you will see slight differences in the wheels.

Likewise, except for some resin kits, only Accurail uses Accurail trucks.

While you can't go wrong following Joe's advice, I don't see a need to replace the OEM wheels and trucks _unless_ they a) are plastic wheels,b) don't roll well, c) have too much side to side slop, or d) really don't match the prototype I'm modeling.  The first three are deal breakers, the last is only esthetics.

I have plenty of experience here.  I joined the metal wheels only camp in the mid '80s and have never wavered.  But I used to run 45 car trains on a display layout, 8 hours a day, 313 days a year, for over ten years.  While I did swap out cars occasionally, many of my cars and locos have thousands of actual (not scale) miles on them.  And many of these cars had their factory-equipped metal wheels and original trucks.  Athearn, Atlas, Intermountain, Kadee, Walthers, and I later ExactRail, Fox Valley, and Tangent.  All good. 

My few brass freight cars got appropriate plastic trucks with metal wheels just because every one I bought rolled like a brick.

I'm in HO.  Same applies to N scale.

Scott Chatfield

Q&A #2

Capacity and Load Limit are almost the same thing.  Capacity had to do with carload rates, while Load Limit is the actual value.

What determines these?  A car's total weight loaded, called Gross Rail Limit (GRL) is determined by the bearings in the trucks, with wheel size a secondary factor.  Post-1995, you have three common bearing and wheel combinations.  "70 ton" is a GRL of 220,000 pounds, with 33" wheels in a 5'8" wheelbase truck.  "100/110 ton" is a GRL of 286,000 pounds with 36" wheels in 5'10" wheelbase trucks.  "125 ton" is a GRL of 315,000 pounds with 38" wheels in 6'0" wheelbase trucks.  All these values are for typical 8 wheel cars.

Two notes.  Lots of autoracks and some piggyback flats use 28" wheels in "70 ton" trucks for clearance reasons.  And before 1995 the "100 ton" GRL was 263,000 pounds.

So, Load Limit is calcuated by actually weighing the empty car (light weight, LT WT)  and subtracting that from the truck's GRL.  The value is rounded down to the nearest 100.

The stenciled capacity (CAPY) on a car could not exceed the Load Limit (LD LMT).  Period.  It could be somewhat less than LD LMT because of other factors.  In such cases a star was placed to the left of CAPY.

As I said, CAPY had to do with car load rates in the pre-deregulation era.  After the Staggers Act was passed in late 1980 the need for this value went away.  The requirement to stencil CAPY on cars was removed in 1989, although some car owners were painting over it in 1988.  By 1990 a very large percentage of the US freight car fleet was CAPY-less.  I don't know if the same was true for Canada.

Scott Chatfield

Q&A #3

Again, wheel size relates to GRL.  Cars with 263,000 and 286,000 pound GRL are by far the most common today and they all use 36" wheels.  A car with a 286k GRL that only weighs 55,000 pounds empty has a Load Limit of 231,000 pounds, or 115.5 tons.  Still has 36"wheels.

Scott Chatfield

Q&A #4

While the Equipment Register will tell you the rough CAPY or Load Limit, it tells you nothing else about the trucks or wheels.

The individual railroads' General Arrangement drawings will tell you more, usually illustrating the wheel size and wheelbase, and listing the various vendors for components.  Problem is, GA drawings are not as common nowadays, at least not in a form that modelers and railfans can get ahold of, and they were never easy to find for private-owner cars.

I would think the various railroad historical societies would have their roads' GA drawings.  I know the Southern Railway Historical Association has the Southern's for instance, plus some for Norfolk Southern (post-1991).   But we don't have any for other roads, and nothing for private owners like the tank car lines.

Scott Chatfield

Q&A #5

Wheel diameter is measured over the tread at the beginning of the fillet, which is the curve between the tread and the flange.

Scott Chatfield

Q&A #6

This Yank can't help you there....

Blind Dog

Thanks

Thanks Blindog10 for the detailed answers. That clears things up.

Sodium Hydrosulphide or Hydrosulfite?

Another question for the forum:

I have found some online model railroad posts discussing paper mills shipments saying that sodium hydrosulfide is used in bleaching recycled paper. I can't find any examples of rail cars for sodium hydrosulfide though nor mention of sodium hydrosulfide in scientific articles explaining paper making.

I have found examples of sodium hydrosulfite in scientific articles regarding the bleaching of recycled paper and found examples of it shipped in blue drums in transport trucks, but no examples of rail cars.

Does anyone know if it is sodium hydrosulfide? or Sodium hydrosulfite? for recycled paper bleaching (mabye both?) and is it ever shipped by rail?

I have read that the West Rock paper mill in NY received shipments by rail of sodium hydrosulphide, but no explanation as to what type of car it was shipped in.

GATX car

The GATX car appears to be an aluminum car likely loaded with sodium chlorate ID#1495 (placard number) that is used in paper making for bleaching pulp.  The cars are common on CN between Chicago and Port Huron (Sarnia, ON)

Robert