Category Archives: Freight Cars

Freight Car Friday #62 – Hydrochloric Acid Tank Cars

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RCRX 1074 tank car for hydrochloric acid service near Watford, ON February 20, 2011

Hydrochloric acid is a commonly produced industrial chemical that has applications in many chemical and industrial processes including steel making. In steel mills it is used to remove rust, scale and other surface impurities from finished steel.

While the car above was not photographed on the Algoma Central, it is representative of a common type of car in hydrochloric acid service. (Note that the Athearn 20,900 gal. RTC acid tank car is pretty much bang on for this prototype.) I did see a couple of similar SHPX cars at Hawk Junction, but didn’t get a good photo; I could also see some similar tank cars from a distance in Steelton yard from the Canyon Tour Train.

A related byproduct of using hydrochloric acid in the steelmaking process is the production of ferrous chloride as a waste product. This corrosive chemical has uses in water treatment systems, and a CN conductor friend of mine recently mentioned that he occasionally delivers a tank car of ferrous chloride from Sault Ste. Marie to the water treatment plant in downtown Toronto. Ferrous chloride (and related compounds like ferric chloride) is also shipped in tank cars of a similar size and design to hydrochloric acid.

ACFX 72346 tank car placarded for ferrous chloride at Sarnia, ON October 10, 2011

Slope Sheets and Hopper Body Assembly

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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.

Freight Car Friday #61 – CN 136559

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CN 136559 is a 52’6″ inside length gondola that was built in 1972 by Canadian National’s Point St. Charles shops in Montreal. An overall pretty standard mill gondola, it features drop ends and a wood floor. The design and rib spacing is quite similar to other cars built for CN, CP, British Columbia Railway and Ontario Northland by National Steel Car and Hawker-Siddeley in the late 1960s to early 1970s.

At Hawk Junction July 19, 2017, loaded with steel pipe from Essar Steel.

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

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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 #60 – BR 50222

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BR 50222 is an interesting woodpulp service boxcar with a storied history. The car was originally built for the Southern Railroad (SOU) by Pullman-Standard. The “waffle” pattern of the car sides accomodated load tie-down attachment points on the inside of the car. Southern acquired a large number of these “waffle-side” boxcars from Pullman-Standard, and this design would become a real signature car on that railway. Only a few other identical examples were built for some of the “Family Lines” railways which later became part of CSX.

This particular car was sold by Southern to Helm Leasing (HLMX) and was reconditioned for woodpulp service with end reinforcement and carbody vents in the corners and then saw service on BC Rail as BCOL 850222. When BC Rail let the lease expire, they were renumbered BR and dropped the leading 8 from the car number. Currently these BR cars are commonly seen in woodpulp service for Canadian Pacific.

At Hawk Junction, July 19, 2017.