I think it's just flat steel. Best way would probably ask someone to climb on and take a picture for you. I think most of these cars are now permanently parked and used for storage.
I have no idea where these cars are. I'd prefer to have a few pics of the car frame. From what I can tell, you should be able to see the tracks through certain portions of the flatcar. So, to get the crossmembers done correctly (hard to determine in the drawings) I'd need the pics. I can make a best guess in the meantime though.
Not a flat, but an open framework. The frames were made by FMC. It does have a "flatcar" profile from the side. The three tanks are each 820 cft, for a total of 2460 cft. These "teardrop" tanks are manufactured by Halliburton, and nestle down between the side frames. The vertical supports on each tank were extensively "webbed" with triangular shaped pieces of sheet metal. Difficult to see from some photos, the bottom section is a cone that comes down to a trucated tip about 1' diameter. These cars were for transporting bulk cement (dry powder) used for cementing oil and gas wells. The walkway on top is ordinary industrial grating. The regular 2-bay covered hoppers you may see with the Halliburton logos were most often used for transporting sand, barite, and other non-cement materials. The cement has to be kept very dry and as such these cars were sometimes loaded from the "loading hatches", or via 5" rubber hoses attached to the manifolding you see on the side. The smaller 2" line is for feeding air to the tanks to aerate, pressurize and offload the material, once again through hoses. There is no provision for dumping the material. The hatches on top are for access to the inside for cleaning (by vacuum), and checking and replacing aerators in the bottom of the tank, an assembly known as the "spider" due to its appearance. The hatches are very thick, about 1", and have an O-ring seal. They were offloaded at 35-50 psi. Yes, you read that correctly. Unlike other bulk materials, if cement gets wet it becomes hard. At the very least it will get lumps ("rocks") in it and make it difficult to blow, and plays hell on the mixing equipment. So these cars were designed to load and offload quickly through hoses. These hoses have FMC hammer unions (they screw together) rather than the weaker, but more common Cam-lock connections. Dry bulk cement, when aerated, is about 1.2 cft /sk. Once it settles down, it is approximately 0.95 - 1.0 cft/sack. One "sack" of cement weighs 94 lb. You can't really get all 2460 cft into such a car. About the most you can get in before it begins blowing out of the vents is about 2100-2200 sacks. At 94 lb/sk that is about 100 tons, and does not even include the weight of the car itself. This really puts a load on the frame and trucks. After some years the frames began to crack, and no way to repair by welding, so they were retired. The last one I saw was in Harvey, Louisiana (New Orleans area) at a Halliburton bulk plant parked at the end of the siding. It was permanently piped into the bulk plant, being used as extra storage. That was back in the mid to late '80's. It is my understanding there are no more in service. Well, that's about all I have to say on that subject. Colors were subjective. While Halliburton had specific colors, as you know red and gray are both subject to fading, and particularly additional fading from the lime residue in cement. Good colors to use would be Caboose Red for the frame and lower portion of the tanks, and SP Lark Light Gray for the upper portion. Logos, you are on your own. I have not found the logo from time period online. The current logo is quite different from that period. The logo at that time was a globe, the Earth, what a sort of Saturn ring around it. The ring was actually a road with Halliburton trucks driving around the world. There was an old style font (I don't know what it is) H over the globe, and smaller letters for the rest of Halliburton. There was a wing coming off the globe to the right. Under Halliburton, in the 50's-60's was Oil Well Cementing Company. Later the globe, wing, H was separated, and under that was simply "Halliburton Services". That was all in a gray oval with red outline. The globe and wing was known as the "Super Cementer" logo. For those that don't know, Erle P. Halliburton was an aviation buff, and he and Oklahoma humorist Will Rogers often flew around in Erle's private Ford Trimotor with the Super Cementer logo on the door. (I've seen a print of the actual photo, not online.) He and the Lofland Brothers started an airline called SAFEWAYS (Southwest Air Fast Express), with a fleet of Trimotors. One day walking out to the plane, seeing the corrugated Duraluminum skin, he got the idea for a suitcase made similarly, light enough to fly with, strong enough to withstand abuse. Yes, he was the inventor of the "Halliburton Case". And SAFEWAYS eventually became part of American Airline. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SA006.html And now you know... the rest of the story. Good Day!
Found a little more info. Still no overhead shots, but there is a link to a modeling page that does have an overhead photo of a completed model. http://www.alaskarails.org/fp/halliburton.html
That site says the cars were made by Pullman, but my recollection was FMC. "In 1961, the Halliburton Company introduced a railcar designed to carry dry products such as cement, pozolin (an additive) and fly ash in bulk," Fly ash IS Pozolin. This is the tan powder left over from burning coal... literally smoke. It is purchased as a waste material from coal-fired power plants. When combined with a certain percentage (by weight) with lime, it has cement type properties, that is, it gets firm. It can be blended with cement, and utilizes the excess lime in the cement to harden the fly ash. This makes a very good, cheap, low density cement blend that has good compressive strength. Also, by using up the excess lime in the cement it keeps that from being leached out over time, honeycombing the cement. Most all of the cost of fly ash is in handling and transporting it. Another material used is silica flour, which is sand that is ground to a fine powder resembling white baking flour. It is blended with cement and is for high temperature strength retention. That is useful for deep, hot wells.
Anyone know off-hand what the mounting height for body-mounted couplers is and the hole diameter for the screw?
Also, at this point in the design, it looks like the MINIMUM radius is going to be a hair under 10" (250mm) without having to start gouging the frame. This restriction is due to how low the car rides. Do any of you have a problem with this? As a quick fix, you could always add a thin washer to raise the body up so that the wheels could pass under the frame in very tight turns, but it won't look prototypical.
Here's where I am so far: The first image is an overall shot showing the car frame. You can disregard the colors as the model will be produced in semi-clear plastic. The white box at either end is a solid block that the trucks will screw in to. In the second image, you can see the finer details of the frame. The grabrails are going to be an experiment since they are much smaller than I've ever used before. Let's hope it works. The third image shows the undercarriage so far. I still need to figure out how to create provision for body-mounted couplers. Yes yes, I know the grabrails aren't on the ends of the car yet, but they will be. Also, the tanks will have weld seams because I'm just like that. Speaking of the tanks, the entire upper portion will be removeable to add weight as you see fit. Making the cap removeable only allowed for about 2mm DIA hole to fill it with sand of lead shot. Not very practical. This car will come in a kit form because of that reason, and because if all of the tanks are connected, it would be near impossible to paint the areas between the tanks where the color change occurs. I will be ordering some sets of BLMA 70ton trucks once the model is ready to be test-built. I know the flange on the main beams looks a bit thick, but it's only .3mm . I had it at .2mm which matched the drawing pretty well, but my concern there is that it would run the risk of just flaking off during the printing process. I also thickened up the web in the 2 cross beams to provide a bit more structural integrity in addition to the thicker flanges.
A little something on the "oh no" side... I just did a quick and dirty estimate from shapeways and it came out to over $60 The tanks apparently really consume a lot of material, eventhough they're hollow and only 1mm thick. I'll thin things up a bit and see what happens. There are other options than shapeways if this cost gets outta hand, like getting a limited run of injection molding done. That'll be a pretty big upfront cost to me and I'll consider it only as a last resort. I've never gone through that process so hopefully, when divided over 100 units, it won't send me to the cleaners, or price it out of you all's range.
If these things actually happen, I would like AT LEAST four !!! Mounting platform for M/T #1015 is .279, or .293 using their shim. Measurement is from railhead. Mounting hole is #62 (.038) and threaded with 00-90 tap. Hole is 1/8" back from end of car. Hope that helps some !!!
Just a word of caution about this model in advance: It's VERY crowded where the trucks and couplers mount. I've made every reasonable effort to make supporting structure in the area sufficient while allowing for clearance for the wheels. It's going to be a tight fit, and the mounting screws will have very little surface to grab on to. They will probably have to be CA'd on the tip as you place them. Also, the coupler mounting surface is fairly thin, with no lateral support, so actually torquing the mounting screw to any useful amount will break the mount. Again, I would expect to have to CA the coupler in place. To add ANY support on the sides, the wheels will rub on the slightest turn. As it stands right now, the trucks have a 9 degree angle of rotation (left or right) before the flanges hit the coupler. This still allows the same turning radius as mentioned before. New images will be up tonight. With all of the intricate pieces in that area, making a mold is most likely not going to work. Also, I've never attempted to make a mold before. I did another price estimate and it looks like, after adding all of the other details, that it'll work out to around $45 :uhoh: That's better than almost $70, but still too high in my opinion for an unfinished body without trucks and couplers, no matter how detailed I make it. Moving over the the next cheaper material sacrifices details and requires thicker walls, further ruining the detail.
Progress: I'm actually pretty happy with the way the modeling is coming. Next step is a few more pieces for the frame (handrails, hose fitting, small "boxes?" at either end of the frame) then it's on to the ladder and overhead support. After that, it's tank details (vertical weld seams and weld plates) then I'll finish up with all of that crazy hose on the one side. On a couple of the pictures, you can see the the coupler will slip into a notch, and be screwed in through part of the frame first, then through the coupler instead of the other way around. I do need to extend the support all of the way to the car's end though now that I'm looking at it. The last picture is the proposed "kit" layout that will facilitate easier painting, adding weight to the tanks, and simple assembly. I need to cut the tanks for assembly in this fashion.
No, I know what injection molding costs... making the dies is VERY expensive, and they have to be able to withstand 40,000 psi or so. If not heat treated properly they will crack. And the work required to make them, you won't recover the cost of the dies in 1,000 units. Probably more. Printing is the way to do this. I'm just bummed this is N scale, not HO.
The red covers the bottom cone of the tanks, and comes up about 18" above the lower welded seam on the cylindrical section.
Paul, thank you for the info on dies. The color in the images I post on here is really only for reference, since the model will come in semi-transparent plastic. For a minute, I thought you meant I had missed a structural element and I went back to examine the drawings. As for HO scale, it would most likely be an entire rebuild. I'd have to readjust wall thicknesses and whatnot. I'm surprised nobody has made this car for HO. Right now, the way the cost is looking for printing one in N, I would imagine it would be twice as much for HO, making it completely unreasonable. I was really hoping dies could be had for under $5000. I doubt there would be buyers for 1,000 of these.
