US Aluminum Coal Gondola

[PaulRhB]

I have started collecting a BNSF train of these Aluminum Coal Gondolas and after looking at a few pics on the web it seems they sometimes mix those with different reporting marks. Does anyone know which would be likely to run mixed in trains with BNSF ones if any?

Here are three other reporting marks available as models, are they compatible with BNSF?

 

CCTX

COEH

JECX

 

Cheers Paul

[Adrian Wintle]

Reporting marks http://www.pwrr.org/rrm/ or Wikipedia

 

CCTX is Central Power & Light Co, may be Texas-based

COEH is Conecuh Valley Railroad, which connects to CSX (not likely seen on BNSF)

JECX is Western Resources Inc which is such a generic name that I'm not sure about them.

 

I would think that you might see BNSF cars mixed with one other reporting mark on specific traffic (mine-power station or similar), but since the trains seem to work fixed flows I would doubt that there would be too much mixing.

 

Adrian

[ANT]

Hello Paul

 

Try the link below for pics of Gondola's

 

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsRRList.aspx?id=6

 

Thanks

SEEYA

ANT

[PaulRhB]

Thanks for the info, provides some good idea for weathering. I've been looking at a lot on railpictures.net but I can't see what reporting marks are on them just the liveries which is a bit difficult as several of the marks have the same yellow panel!

[Northpoint]

Photographed at Fostoria, Ohio in Sept 08 - as far as I remember, all the cars had the same reporting marks. Again, if I remember correctly, all 125 of them!

 

[PaulRhB]

as far as I remember, all the cars had the same reporting marks. Again, if I remember correctly, all 125 of them!

Ta only another 105 to go then I was going to order the 5 car sets that are due out later this year but I was wondering if I could bulk up the train in the meantime with some private owner ones too.

Only 15 different numbers on the new sets but I doubt that anyone will count that closely . . . I'm hoping 30-40 will look pretty impressive in HO as I used to have 50 in N gauge and that looked huge from low level.

[Jim Martin]

Reporting marks http://www.pwrr.org/rrm/ or Wikipedia

 

CCTX is Central Power & Light Co, may be Texas-based

COEH is Conecuh Valley Railroad, which connects to CSX (not likely seen on BNSF)

JECX is Western Resources Inc which is such a generic name that I'm not sure about them.

 

I would think that you might see BNSF cars mixed with one other reporting mark on specific traffic (mine-power station or similar), but since the trains seem to work fixed flows I would doubt that there would be too much mixing.

 

Adrian

 

 

Information on Western Resources Inc. from http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=LPmdYyjZWpPdNFKDgB628rJTTJYc1Zfrcg1bn0X2n0W60zq4HK8n!1405698317!-937560419?docId=5002267060:

 

 

"Western Resources, Inc. (WR) is a diversified public utility primarily providing electric service to 585,000 customers in Kansas and natural gas service to 637,000 customers in Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. The two electric subsidiaries operated by WR are Kansas Power and Light Company (KP&L) and Kansas Gas and Electric (KG&E). WR was formed in 1992 with the merger of KP&L and KG&E. KG&E was acquired for $454 million in cash and 23,479,380 shares of common stock. WR also paid approximately $20 million in costs to complete the merger."

 

The October 2003 issue of Trains included a map titled "Where Western Coal Goes". This showed the locations of coal-fired powerplants west of the Mississippi, colour-coded to show which coalfield they were supplied from. Obviously, this kind of detail might have changed in the last seven years (although perhaps not as much as all that, since powerplants are often designed around the specific characteristics of the coal to be burned), but at that time practically all of the plants in Kansas and Oklahoma were shown as being supplied from the Powder River basin, which is served by BNSF and Union Pacific - both of which have routes from there across Nebraska and down into the Kansas / Oklahoma / Kansas City (which is not, of course, actually in Kansas) area. So I'd say that those would be appropriate in a BNSF train.

 

Jim

[Adrian Wintle]

So I'd say that those would be appropriate in a BNSF train.

 

 

I'd agree, but the real question with these flows is whether there are mixed trains or whether the company owns enough cars that you just have block trains with the same reporting marks.

 

With the tub gondolas (not the hoppers as pictured earlier in the thread*), they tend to use a rotary unloader that doesn't requre the train to be uncoupled. The coloured panel on the gondola marks the end with the rotary coupler, so all cars in the train should have the coloured panel at the same end which allows any individual car to be rotated without affecting the other cars - this also means that the coloured panel has to be at the front since the loco doesn't have a rotary coupler.

 

*looking at the pic again, that looks like a hopper converted to a gondola, it has the coloured panel at the front.

 

Adrian

[dave1905]

Coal cars are assigned to specific service to specific customers or utilities. Some agreements require the railroad to provide the equipment, some require the railroad to provide some of the equipment, others require the utility to provide the equipment.

 

One utility can own several power plants and can source from several mines. So the same set of cars may show up at several utilities or a several mines.

 

The sets of cars are usually segregated by car type. Steel traditional hoppers, steel rotaries, aluminum rotaries, aluminum bottom dump, aluminum bottom or rotary dump.

The utilities lease cars so any car in any series assigned to that utility could end up in that utility's train. Normally a train is all the same intiials. As cars break down or are damaged the railroad will substitute "spares" to fill in out the train to the correct size. So if 5 cars are damaged in a 125 car set, the railroad will fill it back out to 125 cars with spare cars from the same series, spare cars from the utility's other leased cars or with railroad spares.

 

A set will normally start out as a uniform set, but if a utility buys 125 ton aluminum rotaries from 2 different manufacturers, they could over several years get more mixed as they go through shop programs, etc. From the railroad's perspective they are the same car, the railroad or utilty don't really care about specific model (as long as they have the same unloading method and capacity) or the paint scheme. If Ameren has leased ABCX and CDEX cars the utility and railroad will see both initials as the same and interchangeable.

 

Your most varied trains are the steel bottom dump railroad sets. In the west they are usually made up from cars from pre-merger roads, on the UP it is common to have UP, MP, CNW and DRGW cars mixed in one train.

[dave1905]

Kansas City (which is not, of course, actually in Kansas) area.

 

Kansas City, Missouri is not in Kansas.

Kansas City, Kansas is in Kansas.

 

Two cities, same name, separated by a river and a state line.

[Glorious NSE]

Just did a reply but IE died and I lost it including some photo links.

 

CCTX is Central Power & Light Co, may be Texas-based

 

Yes, Texas based. UP seems to have the contract.

 

COEH is Conecuh Valley Railroad, which connects to CSX (not likely seen on BNSF)

 

COEH I think are owned by American Electric Power which also has plants out West, if you put COEH into Railpictures you will find a shot of a rake of COEH gons in Texas behind BNSF power, with about 4 BNSF family cars right behind the loco. It may be the case that the COEH gons contribute to a combined AEPX fleet so get used indiscriminately, or maybe they move sets around when traffic is quiet on it's normal route?

 

JECX is Western Resources Inc which is such a generic name that I'm not sure about them.

 

Western Resources is the company owning the operation, but JEC stands for Jeffery Energy Centre, a Kansas power plant. Service is by BNSF according to the recent Trains coal mag, although UP do final delivery as it's on their track. Putting JECX into railpictures got me a shot of an interesting train with a UP AC4400 leading two BN SD70MACS

 

I would think that you might see BNSF cars mixed with one other reporting mark on specific traffic (mine-power station or similar), but since the trains seem to work fixed flows I would doubt that there would be too much mixing.

 

I'd generally agree with that, it would be a solid rake of one companies cars, but you might have one or two mixed in from the relevant hauling railroad either as maintainence cover for the normal cars or where train lengths have been increased by a few cars (example 110 cars was the norm a few years back, these days many are up to 135)

 

*looking at the pic again, that looks like a hopper converted to a gondola, it has the coloured panel at the front.

 

Lots of modern (1970s+) coal hoppers have been built to be rotary compatible, you can then mix one into a rake of gons and still unload it the same way - the one earlier in the thread is a purpose-built rotary capable coal hopper.

[Glorious NSE]

Found a different JECX pic - looks like the UP-on-BNSF power is a regular feature on these:

http://www.pbase.com/intermodal/image/99231451

[Jim Martin]

I'd agree, but the real question with these flows is whether there are mixed trains or whether the company owns enough cars that you just have block trains with the same reporting marks.

 

What you really need to answer this sort of question is a copy of the Official Railroad Equipment Register (ORER for short). This lists every car operating in interchange service in the USA, Canada and Mexico with its dimensions, weight etc. I have an October 1996 copy which I got at a very good price from eBay several years ago (there are several copies on eBay.com now, but the most recent seems to be from 2002).

 

The listing for the JECX reporting marks (listed under Western Resources, as is KPLX) at that time was:

 

Nos. 1001-1638, 4400 cu.ft. aluminium gondola, single rotary coupler (638 cars)*

Nos. 2001-2012, 4400 cu.ft. aluminium gondola, double rotary coupler (12 cars)

No. 2101, 4400 cu.ft. aluminium gondola, double rotary coupler (1 car)

Nos. 3001-3120, 4400 cu.ft. aluminium gondola, single rotary coupler (120 cars)**

Nos. 4001-4120, 4400 cu.ft. aluminium gondola, single rotary coupler (120 cars)

 

* The ORER lists main series of car numbers, then any cars within the series that have minor differences. Car no. 1313 is shown as an exception, having a considerably larger load capacity than the others. So much larger, in fact (242000lbs, as opposed to 200000lbs) that I suspect it's a mistake - not unknown in cases like this.

 

** Here, 79 cars are listed in the main series, 40 are listed as exceptions with a capacity of 241000lbs (242000lbs for the main series) and car 3078 is listed as an exception with a capacity of 200000lbs.

 

All the above are exactly the same size to within an inch; and all are classed as "GT" (which means a gondola with solid bottom) and "J311", which means they have a "depressed bottom" (as opposed to flat).

 

I don't keep up with what's happening in the US these days, but the rate at which new cars are delivered is such that all this may be irrelevant now. 14 years is quite a long time in this context. The link that ANT posted above includes photos of (very similar) cars in the 50xx and 60xx-64xx number ranges. Presumably they're newer cars.

 

Kansas City, Missouri is not in Kansas.

Kansas City, Kansas is in Kansas.

 

Two cities, same name, separated by a river and a state line.

 

I never knew that (although I suppose that if I'd thought it through I'd have concluded that the urban area wouldn't just stop dead at the state line). So Armourdale and Argentine really are in Kansas, although Air Line junction and the yards around there are in Missouri. You learn something new every day

Jim

[PaulRhB]

Many thanks to everyone on this, It looks like either a solid train of one type or just a few of another type mixed in will be the most realistic answer. I'm buying the bulk as the cheap Athearn RTR range and then if I can find more detailed ones, or superdetail a few Athearn ones they can sit up the front behind the locos where they are more noticeable. Going for a reasonable impression overall.

Paul

 

 

[dave1905]

Many thanks to everyone on this, It looks like either a solid train of one type or just a few of another type mixed in will be the most realistic answer. I'm buying the bulk as the cheap Athearn RTR range and then if I can find more detailed ones, or superdetail a few Athearn ones they can sit up the front behind the locos where they are more noticeable. Going for a reasonable impression overall.

Paul

If its a rotary set (that is rotary dumped), the colored/rotary end has to go against the lead engines and all the colored/rotary ends have to be pointing the same way. If its a bottom dump set (no gons) then the rotary ends (if equipped) can go either way. If you are modeling a pre-1990's set (with a caboose) then a rotary set will have one double ended rotary car somewhere in train with the rotary ends on the other cars pointing away from the double rotary car.

 

If you look at an aerial photo of N Platte, NE, the UP yard there has a large coal train yard on the north side, with a relatively large spare car yard that has its own balloon track to turn rotary cars so the ends face the proper way. Since all the empty trains will be going west from N Platte, they turn all rotary cars so the rotary end is on the west end of the car. Filler cars are only added to empty trains.