Freight Car Friday # 69 – ONT 6051

While today’s Freight Car Friday subject isn’t an AC car, nor taken anywhere near the ACR, it is definitely related.

This shot courtesy of an antique show find by Keith MacCauley shows an almost brand-new Ontario Northland triple hopper # 6051. 72 of these cars numbered ONT 6000-6071 were built by National Steel Car in 1971 for use carrying iron ore from Adams Mine near Dane, ON to steel mills in Pennsylvania. Canadian National, Ontario Northland, and New York Central/Penn Central provided cars into a pool for this service, with many of the PC’s portion coming from the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo and Canada Southern Railways (although that’s clearly an actual PC car coupled at left in this photo). Given the freshness of the ONT car, the date is almost certainly summer 1971. We haven’t identified the location, but it’s likely somewhere in the States.

In the late 1970s this service ended, and these cars were disposed of by the Ontario Northland, with the Algoma Central picking up thirty of these cars in 1978. They would run for several years in original numbers with just the reporting marks patched out, and then in the mid 1980s these cars were renumbered from their 6000 series numbers to the 8600-8629 series.

Slope Sheets and Hopper Body Assembly

Continuing to make progress on my hopper scratchbuilds this week, assembling the body sides and end sheets.

The above photo shows the layout of the end sheets on the styrene sheet, these were laid out and cut out at the same time as the body side sheets. The angles in this project make things interesting, but essentially it’s a fairly straightforward exercise in geometry.

The tops of the ends are completely straightforward being a simple flat panel, and with the .060″ square top chord extended around. The square stock was filed to fit and the ends assembled to the bodies.

Next step is installing the end slope sheets into the body. The main trick here is to be very carefully to install everything square.

  

I have a few more of the cars to work through this week yet, and then the next step after that will be to cut out and install the intermediate slope sheets for the central bay.

AC 8600-8629 Series Hoppers Part 1 – Background and Body Sides

AC 6056 at Wawa in March 1981. Slide from my collection, photographer unknown.

In the 1980s, the Algoma Central rostered three types of 100-ton hopper cars in Wawa iron ore service: 100 of the distinctive and unique round-sided black hoppers in the 8000 series, built in 1971 by National Steel Car, 300 of the green rapid-discharge hoppers also built by NSC (using an Ortner Freight Car design under license) in 1974-75, and 30 “standard” triple hoppers acquired secondhand from the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission around 1978.

The Ontario Northland hoppers were part of a 72 car series ONT 6000-6071 built by NSC in 1971 and were used in iron ore service from Adams Mine at Dane, ON to a steel mill somewhere in Pennsylvania. For this service, triple hoppers were provided into a pool by Ontario Northland, Canadian National and New York Central (CASO and TH&B cars). Around 1977 or 1978 this particular service to Pennsylvania had either changed or ended completely, and the cars either went back into general usage by their owners (CASO cars were likely renumbered back to original NYC & PLE source series) or were sold off. 30 of the ONT cars were sold to Algoma Central in 1978; I’m not entirely sure where the other 42 ONT cars went initially, but today they can be found on the New Hampshire Northcoast Railroad in New England. When first acquired, the cars were just given AC reporting marks and kept their original numbers for a few years, but were later renumbered into the 8600-8629 series sometime around 1984.

AC 8620 at Scotch Block (Halton Hills), ON October 18, 2008. Photo by David Graham. All the years of weathering have obscured the original colour and much of the lettering, but these cars were painted in the Ontario Northland’s dark green “Progressive” scheme.

While basically a standard design for a hopper, there’s no model out there that exactly matches this car. These are relatively modern welded cars built in the 1970s, but as they were intending to haul iron ore and rock, their size is much smaller than many other modern cars. Most models that are out there that are of an appropriate size tend to represent 90-ton cars a few decades older than these cars, with a different number of side posts/panels and riveted construction. One could accept a riveted car as a stand-in, but the difference in side panels causes issues for the spacing and placement of the lettering.

So, to solve this problem, I turn to my styrene supply to build a few of them for the fleet…

First of all, I spent time carefully working up my own scale drawings as a guide for this project. With the angles involved with the hopper bays, it’s a little more complicated of a build than a small shed or something. Using equipment registers I can find out the major overall dimensions, and using some relatively side-on photos available online, I was able to scale out a few dimensions and work up a drawing.

Actual dimensions of ONT 6000-6071 series, from ORER:

Inside Length 40’6″
Width 9’8″
Height 6’0″
Outside Length* 44’2″
Width** 10’7″
Height*** 10’8″
Capacity lbs 200,000
Cuft 2700

* Over couplers
** At top of side
*** From rail head to top of side

Basic undetailed scratchbuild hopper side.

The basic sides/end are constructed from .020″ styrene plastic sheet, with HO scale 4×4 side posts and an .060″ square top chord. To represent the angled bracing at the bottom, I cemented a strip of .060″ angle, open-side down along the bottom edge of the car side. (The bottom of the side posts are all cut off at a 45 degree angle with my Chopper.) General side dimension notes – top of side: 40’6″; top chord overhangs by 6″ for length of 41’6″; height of side: 7’6″, length of bottom of side: 31’6″ (length of bay cut-out: 4’6″), height of top ends, 2’9″.

Note the different spacing between the ribs at the middle of the car compared the outer bays – this was deliberate and I took a lot of time to try to make sure the panel widths were scaled out properly based on the prototype photos. I worked it out to about 25″ between the 4″ ribs (or 29″ rib centrelines) for the four middle panels and 30″ (34″ rib centrelines) panel width for the outer panels.

Since if I’m going to build one, I can build more than one; and if I build more than one, it’s efficient to build them all at the same time, assembly line style, so once I finish basic construction on all of the sides for the cars, I can move on to assembling the sides with the ends…

Note: for anyone working in N-scale, I found this model on Shapeways.

Freight Car Friday #51 – NOKL 732348

An innovation in the 1970s was the design and development of the centre-divided bulkhead flatcar for the shipping of lumber. Designed with a central truss structure that both strengthened the car and supported the load without the need for additional stabilization in the load and equipped with built in ratchets and tie down cables to eliminate a lot of strapping and with or without deck risers for the first row of packaged lumber bundles. This made it much easier to load packaged and bundled lumber as bundles no longer needed to be staggered in order to create a solid and secure load and a lot of waste generated in the form of strapping and blocking material is prevented.

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NOKL 732348 was photographed on July 16, 2015 at Hearst (Wyborn siding) with a load of lumber from Lecours Lumber in Calstock, Ontario. Leased flatcars with the reporting marks of shortline Northwestern Oklahoma Railroad (actually a mark used by cars leased to various railways by First Union) are among the most commonly seen in this service, and these blue painted cars in the series NOKL 732300-732349 and 733050-733099 (built by National Steel Car in 2000 and 1998 respectively) are specifically leased to Ontario Northland. Brown painted NOKL 734500-734599 – built by NSC in 2004 – also seems to be a series exclusively seen in ONR service in addition to Ontario Northland’s own ONT 4100-4149 series, built by NSC in 1997.

Series Builder Date
ONT 4100-4149 NSC 1997
NOKL 732300-732349 NSC 2000
NOKL 733050-733099 NSC 1998
NOKL 734500-734599 NSC 2004

Additionally, CN provides some cars for loading in the area, in various family reporting marks (CN, IC, WC, BCOL, etc.) and a few other NOKL groups.

CN Operations at Hearst

Hearst was the Algoma Central’s northern terminus and connection to the Canadian National Railway. For yard, station and other facilities the ACR shared with CN.

The ACR wye and connection to the CN main was just to the west of Hearst yard, and any movements on the CN main from Hearst Junction to Hearst would have to be made under the CN dispatcher’s authority. Conversely, if CN needed to turn some equipment, movements over the wye required the ACR dispatcher’s authority.

Equipment Restrictions

When the ACR first connected to Hearst in 1914, Hearst was a division point on the transcontinental mainline of the National Transcontinental Railway. However when the NTR became part of the Canadian National Railways in the early 1920s, this became a secondary line to the ex Canadian Northern Railway main line (crossed by the ACR at Oba) which is still CN’s primary transcontinental route today. As such, this line languished and was never maintained to the same standard as a more major route.

The Pagwa subdivision between Hearst and Nakina featured exceptionally light rail – often less than 80 lbs/yard – that had never been upgraded since the steam era and probably in these late years a fair bit of deferred maintenance in general. This line was *severely* restricted as to the weight and types of equipment that could run over it, with the heaviest diesel locomotive permitted on the line being an SW1200RS. (CN 1387-1395 are known to be in Hearst in the late 1970s.)  Cars with greater than 177,000 lbs (88 tons) *gross* weight required special handling, and during the months of May-June for the spring thaw cars exceeding 142,000 lbs (71 tons) gross weight are banned west of Calstock.

East of Hearst is better, but still light rail. GP9s could operate west of Kapuskasing to Hearst, but between these two stations heavy six axle units like C630s and SD40s were explicitly banned and even modern four axle road switchers such as C424s, GP38-2s and GP40-2s are to be used “only in emergency, and at 10 miles per hour below” the regular speed limit making a GP9 pretty much the biggest unit that could be expected to run into Hearst in the 1970s and 1980s.

The north end of the ACR was also relatively light rail (but definitely better maintained than between Calstock and Nakina, which CN was trying to abandon anyway) and AC trains typically avoided using their six axle SD40 units north of Hawk Junction.

Passenger Service

Passenger service west of Hearst to Nakina (junction with CN’s main line) was actually still provided during the early 1980s by trains 272/273. While officially listed as mixed (freight and passenger) trains in the timetable, most sources seem to agree that in practice it was passenger-only in the 1980s, with any westbound freight routed via the ACR to Oba, as there was zero on-line freight traffic except for the Lecours lumber mill at Calstock, which by this point would be served by a turn job out of Hearst yard. CN was petitioning to abandon the line between Calstock and Nakina at this point, and moving the through traffic off of the line probably helped to destroy any remaining on-paper revenue and support their petition. And due to the extreme weight restrictions on the line, a lot of traffic simply could not go that way. Abandonment formally happened in 1986 and the line was torn out west of Calstock.

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CN 7210 combination baggage/coach at Hearst in 1976. Paul O’Shell photo.

The (non) “mixed” typically ran with an SW1200RS and single heavyweight baggage/coach combination car. CN 7210 appears to have been the regularly assigned car on this line. This car remained in CN colours all through the early 1980s, although passenger service was officially operated by VIA Rail then. In my summer 1979 CN timetable, 273 departs Hearst at noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with 272 from Nakina running on opposite days (Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays) and scheduled to arrive at 5:30 pm.

There was no passenger service running east out of Hearst anymore by this point in time. Hearst was once the final destination of local passenger service from Cochrane, connecting with southbound trains over the Ontario Northland to Toronto, but by the late 1970s passenger service was provided only as far as Kapuskasing by the joint CN-ONR train the “Northland” from Toronto. (Replaced later by the Toronto-Cochrane coach-only “Northlander”, which itself was discontinued in 2009.)

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ACR No. 1 at Hearst, July 2, 1972. Robert Schwenk photo in my collection.

The Algoma Central’s passenger service ran daily except Monday from Sault Ste. Marie to Hearst during the spring/summer, and on the weekends only (Fridays through Sundays) during the fall/winter season. No. 1 had a scheduled arrival time of about quarter after seven during the summer, and quarter to six in the winter. The ACR train would tie down on the main track in front of the station and depart early the next morning as no. 2. (On days that the CN “mixed” ran, the inbound ACR would arrive up to two hours after, and the outbound train would be almost to Hawk Junction by the time of the 273’s noon departure.)

Freight

Local switching of the yard and local industries around Hearst would have been performed by CN, as it was their track and facilities. The lumber mill at Calstock would have also been handled by an extra turn job out of Hearst yard although I do not know when this would run.

The 1979 CN timetable shows a Kapuskasing subdivision freight departing Hearst at 11 am on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for Cochrane. I would presume that the CN crew would spend the morning performing the local switching requirements

The corresponding westbound is not timetabled, but I would assume it to operate as an extra on opposite days (Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays) the same as the mixed train to the west of Hearst.

My 1989 CN timetable does not have any freight schedules actually listed for the Kap. sub, and sadly I do not have one from closer to 1985.

As mentioned above, except for the lumber mill at Calstock, there was no on-line freight customers on the Pagwa subdivision towards Nakina, and due to the condition of the line, really no traffic at all was actually routed over this line anymore at this point, instead being handled by the ACR to Oba to be returned to CN for the trip westward.

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ONT no. 516 prepares to depart Hearst for Kapuskasing with several loads of lumber from Lecours and several loads of copper concentrate from Michigan bound for Rouyn-Noranda. July 2015, my photo.

The Kapuskasing subdivision and the remains of the Pagwa subdivision to Calstock (the rest abandoned in 1986) were sold to Ontario Northland in August 1993.

On the ACR side of things, ACR freight no. 5 would arrive in Hearst in the evenings on weekdays, Monday through Friday, with no. 6 departing south with interchange traffic the following day, Tuesdays through Saturdays.