JPT Sub - my new layout project

Yeah I would like to see them next to the River Point since I own a bunch of those These Oxfords look cool!

 

@in2tech I did get a chance to make some vehicle comparison photos for you. RPM, Atlas and Oxford together. See what you think. There is a little difference but to me they all look good together.

 

I don't see enough of a difference to worry about. They all look relatively close enough to use without worry. Thank you!

 

More boxcar loads this past weekend

Here are the 3 victims


I like how easy these are to do. Just pop the floors out and tack the loads to the floors


After they dry a bit, pop the shells back on and all done. Here they are on the ready track




They could all use a nice spray of flat finish

 

Wow, those are turning out really nice. I should get a New Haven boxcar load and somehow deform the load to look like it has been crushed after humping at excessive speed. My Dad told me that when we lived in Boston in the early 1960's, the distribution plant that he worked in would receive smashed loads of salad dressings and mayonnaise courtesy of the New Haven's Cedar Hill Yard. They'd unload them with snow shovels.

 

The most difficult to meet storage and transportation products specs to meet were rail hump shock. Thank goodness we were allowed to incorporate mitigation into the shipping packaging, rather than the product itself. But the operating shock and vibe environments were pretty bad too.

Do intermodal container cars go through hump yards? Most seem to be on unit trains that would avoid hump yards, but I see cuts of intermodals in mixed freights too.

 

Not to say that it doesn't happen but I've never seen any intermodal go over a hump

 

Thanks sir.

After seeing some hump yards in action, I'd think glass jars in a boxcar wouldn't fair so well.

 

Those are really nice looking loads, but how are they un/loaded through the boxcar door?! I get it that they are all molded together, and in real life they would be separable, but some of the "pieces" still look too big to go through the door.

 

Those Oxfords look awesome next to the River Point pickup truckwhich I think is the first one? Who makes the CN pickup? I'd like to have the SUV, and a few VW beetle's. The rest are British right?

 

What's a Hump yard? Is that the one where they roll down an incline?

 

Yes, exactly. Over the hump, devices called "retarders" squeeze the wheel flanges to control car speed to (hopefully) provide a safe coupling at the end of their ride. You can see them (surrounded in black) in the foreground of this photo taken from the the hump tower at SOU's John Sevier Yard at Knoxville, 01/1980. The area where the cars assemble is the "bowl".

 

The CN Pick Up and the Ford Explorer are Atlas models.

The Oxford MG and Mini are British as is the black Land Rover but all can be seen on the streets here in the US. The real British Mini is smaller than it's US cousin the Mini Cooper but there are some British versions around. I see one at the local Kroger occasionally that is painted just like the Oxford Diecast version.

 

Those guys that load those cars are masters at Tetris. Requires a lot of moving things around and maneuvering to get things in and out. Kind of like moving furniture into or out of a house.
While I am putting these loads in more modern boxcars, I think they are really designed for order cars and an era when hand unloading was an accepted practice, Most modern loads are designed to be handled with fork trucks and businesses today usually have special requirements and extra charges and fees for loads that require hand stacking.

 

That is such a cool shot Hardcoaler! Reminds me a lot of the one at DeButt's Yard in Chattanooga. Wish I had the space, time, and dollars to model something like that

 

Agreed! Each commodity has its time-proven standards of optimum product placement and dunnage use, using various carlengths, roof heights and customer requirements.



Did y'all ever have a lift truck fall through the floor of a highway trailer when the floor "unzipped"? We did. Scary stuff. (not my picture)



We used "dock locks", wheel chocks and would not permit a driver to remain in the cab to prevent this sort of equally frightening event. (not my picture)

 

Hmm... are local freights assembled in hump yards? That would require not just selection of which cars go to which tracks, but in what order, such that multiple cars to the same customer (and possibly from different sources and/or in-bound trains) are in consecutive spots in the local manifest.

Or would the local freight manifest be assembled in a hump yard, but the manifest would be pulled aside afterward to shuffle the car order for the customers?

Or are multiple hump yard tracks used for the same outbound train, so they can finally assemble the outbound train in desired order by pulling the cuts from the separate hump tracks?

I have no idea if hump yards are capable of completely assembling a full length train on one track anyway. That adds a lot of length to a hump yard. You can see in the pic how the hump yard is broken up into sets of tracks that share the same retarder anyway. Perhaps it's not just to share the same retarder, but to allow the necessary cuts to be assembled, and easily pulled in the desired order into a train at the other end.

Interesting problem & potential solutions...

Just one more question I wish I could go back and ask my grandfather...

 

I have seen a floor drop out of a trailer like that but not from a fork lift, it was a loaded trailer that a driver drug over a big yellow pole and it ripped the ribbing loose and as soon as he cleared the pole, it collapsed. We have had several fork lifts over the years hit weak spots in trailer floor and a single wheel drop though grounding the lift.

As for the bottom picture, despite all the safety precautions, that kind of thing still happens. One facility I know of had this happen just like in the photo and it ended in a fatality. Was a bad deal.

On the loading part, placement dunnage and maximum use of space are all important. Many folks would be surprised at what it takes to do it right. I created a presentation form my company back in the mid 2000's on the proper ways of loading that also included the forces loads encounter in transit and how that affected loads based on how product was placed and what types of dunnage was used. till in use today our company and at least one of our customers uses it as well. I learned loaded containers in well cars fair considerably better that trailers on flat cars when it come to the dynamic forces railcars endure.