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Re: [CBQ] Rubber line/riveted tanks was Friction Bearings

To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Rubber line/riveted tanks was Friction Bearings
From: "LZadnichek@aol.com [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 14:08:24 -0400
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October 15, 2015
 
Leo - Besides tanks, Pinto Island Metals also received gons, boxes, camp cars and flats for scrapping. Gons the yard kept for itself and used them until they broke their backs from all the constant loading and unloading. At the bitter end, the completely worn out gons would be sway backed, full of dirt and with their sides bulging far outwards. By that time, the gons had bad trucks and they were dragged up and down the yard trackage with one or more wheel sets jammed.    
 
Boxes and camp cars were scrapped. Since they were all wood lined with wood floors, such cars were lifted off their trucks by the yard rail cranes and stacked two high. Then the night shift would soak the interiors of the bottom cars with diesel fuel and set them on fire to burn out the wood. The heat would set the upper cars on fire as well. You could see the "glow" at night from a mile away, the darkness, of course, hiding the cloud of wood smoke. A day later when the burnt out cars cooled off, they were cut-up. Any unburned wood (such as flooring that has been soaked in salt over the years) was crunched-up in the stationary shear. 
 
Flats (the longer the better) were "valuable" and set aside for resale to property owners who wanted an inexpensive bridge over creek beds or swamps. There are vast expanses of timber property to the north of Mobile. Logging companies loved the flat car bodies as they were just about indestructible and could be dragged with a bull dozer from creek bed to creek bed as logging roads were opened and closed into the tracts of timber. Many of those flat car bodies are still being used to this day.
 
I also remember the yard scrapping one steam engine tender, two ship yard rail steam cranes, a couple of wood cabooses, plus the prior mentioned Jim Crow branch line MOW coach and the two high hood ALCO diesel switchers. Pinto Island Metals was mainly a ship wrecking and auto shredding yard. The railroad scrap operation was a side line, although at times an important source of tonnage. It was very different from what it would be today with all the restrictions and regulations you mention. Best Regards - Louis          
 
In a message dated 10/14/2015 8:18:39 A.M. Central Daylight Time, CBQ@yahoogroups.com writes:


Louis,

Thanks. I'm chuckling a little bit....... All of those optional car sales and uses you mention are pretty much forbidden today and have been for some time. As you said earlier "taken the fun out of car scrapping". Going back at least 25 or so years all the retired car sale contracts at my former employer had strong language about reselling for any other use. It also specified no culverts.
Why, because they seemed to always come back to haunt after decades. The stories I can tell about cars found out in the weeds at abandoned plants,etc are pretty extensive.

Today I'm on the other side of the table and it's very rare that a car owner sells cars for dismantling w/o contractual language banning all the fun,more profitable end uses.

The one fun part of my old job was donating old cars to museums and for hazmat training purposes.

Leo Phillipp


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On Oct 12, 2015, at 1:51 PM, LZadnichek@aol.com [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

October 12, 2015
 
Leo - I regret taking nearly a week to answer back, but I'll make it up to you with the attached image. Some years ago, I posted my memories of part-owning and operating a 45-ton Baldwin logging 2-6-2 switch engine at Pinto Island Metals Company in Mobile, AL, during the mid-1970s. The attached image shows ex-Alger Sullivan Lumber Co. (Escambia Railroad) No. 100 being used in May 1976 as a portable boiler to "steam" tank cars full of a mix of Bunker C fuel oil and water (slops, as we called it) that had been pumped out of the double bottom tanks of scrapped Liberty Ships. During winter months, the oil would congeal into a tar like substance and the tank cars would have to be steam heated to thin the slops to the point where they could be pumped out into a waiting tank truck. The slops were then either sold to a local paper company to burn in their boilers or to land owners to spread on their dirt roads to keep the dust down (perfectly legal some 40 years ago). For tank cars without steam coils, the yard had fabricated one out of pipe that stuck down into the car from its opening on top. The tank car in front was a conventional GATX car sold to Pinto Island Metals for scrap and the one in back was rubber lined (I forget what company had sold it to the yard). The scrap yard had at any one time about 20 such cars to store slops in. When the cars were eventually pumped out, then they would be switched back to the sidings at the ship wrecking haul out ways to be loaded with more slops. This went on for some years until Pinto Island Metals ran out of ships to scrap and the yard closed. Eventually, the yard site was remediated and capped with a layer of spent blasting sand. from a ship yard. Today, a steel import terminal sits atop the site on a huge concrete pad.
 
Getting back to your question on how we scrapped tank cars, here is what I recollect some 40 years later. As I said earlier, we didn't want rubber lined cars and only accepted them at no value. But, since they still showed-up at the front gate (there were many major chemical plants and paper mills in the Mobile area that used such tank cars), rubber lined cars usually ended-up being used for slop storage. Or, we sold the tanks to industries for storing liquids and scrapped the frame and trucks. When more such cars arrived than could be used for slops, the tanks were filled with water to the brim. Then, a skilled burner would cut against the water and burn out large holes in each end to ventilate the tanks. Following, railroad ties, drift wood, trash, whatever was placed in the tanks and set on fire to burn as much as possible of the rubber lining out of the tank. When the tanks cooled down, then they would be cut-up. Hand torches fed by underground gas lines were used to cut scrap steel into panels that would be fed by magnet cranes into a large hydraulic stationary shear that would further reduce the scrap to sellable size. This was long before tracked hydraulic cutters as you commonly see moving around in scrap yards today. Pinto Island Metals exported almost all of their prepared scrap overseas and we had a long pier out into the river where ships would tie-up to be loaded with a gantry crane. Scrap in that era was sold to Mexico, Turkey and Europe.
 
As for conventional non-lined tank cars, in the rare event when cars arrived that had been steam cleaned, we first had a marine chemist "sniff" the tanks for hazardous fumes. If the tanks were free of fumes and the chemist certified them as being safe to cut, then burners would cut them up. If the chemist found fumes, then they were filled to the brim with water and had their ends cut out first. Then, ventilated, they would be cut-up. The yard also occasionally sold cleaned tanks to industries and they brought a premium price. Property owners additionally purchased other cars with their ends cut out to use as road culverts. In rare events, some tanks cars with a little bit of life still left in them were sold to Mobile area industries to be used in non-interchange business within their plants. Some of those cars are, believe it or not, still in existence. One small area private tank car line also would be in the market for "small" clean tanks cars that could still be interchanged for use in transporting naval stores. As for what happened to all the untold thousands of gallons of water that drained out of the tank cars that were cut up, well it all went onto the ground and it made for a muddy mess at times to walk around in the scrap yard. Smoke, dust, mud and noise, that was life in a scrap yard in those long gone days. Best Regards - Louis              
 
In a message dated 10/6/2015 9:04:41 A.M. Central Daylight Time, CBQ@yahoogroups.com writes:
Louis,

Here's the Pielet story as related to me by a former employee. They had an operation at Joliet that supplied scrap to USS nearby. After the AAR banned riveted tanks from interchange service
(I believe it was very early 1970s) they started flowing into the yard in large numbers. The torch cutters could not keep up. One employee had been a demolitions man during the war. So he volunteered to speed up the processing. He was sure he could put just the right amount of dynamite in a tank to blow out the rivets and then the cutters could work on the plates on the ground.

Well..... He not only managed to blow out the rivets but he also sent them flying all over the adjacent neighborhood into buildings and houses !

As a side story, the Q/BN kept the 181000 series 16,000 gallon riveted tanks in service beyond the AAR deadline as they were kept online in fuel service. One night were were pulling a string of them out of Standard Oils pipeline terminal at Rochelle. I noticed one of them leaking at a rivet. We were told to set it back in. It sat there for a couple days leaking away.

Rubber linings:

Removing rubber linings from tank cars is expensive but necessary as usually about 10-12 years is the maximum life span. A few go longer,but very few. In recent decades removal is done by water blasting or a specialized form of scraping it off the tank shell. Back in the day it was accomplished much simpler.

The rubber linings need periodic inspections to insure they are still viable. At my former job shops started sending me lining and tank inspection reports with cars that had sagging top center tanks. So I would talk with the inspectors and ask if there was impact damage at the strikers as usually a buckled tank was caused by excessive coupling force. But in some cases they advised there was no striker or end of car indications of overspeed coupling. So what's causing the top center of the tank shells to sag ?

That's when I learned that,like your oil and rubber lined scrapping method, at least some pre EPA
shops had an easy way to remove a lining. Near dusk an employee would climb up the car and drop a few oil soaked journal pads into the car. Start them on fire and go home. Next morning the cars rubber lining had been "Removed" and car was ready for a relining. Years later the heat damage to the tank shell would appear as a sagging tank shell that required a major and expensive tank shell insert.

Just as a point of clarification to readers who aren't familiar with today's rail car scrapping requirements. Today and for a long time all cars must be cleaned. Most scrap yards will not accept a car w/o a certified cleaning certificate. While torching still goes on, most cars are sheared by mobile or stationary shears. Some are even cut in large sections and sent through an automobile shredder. All scrap yards are heavily monitored by state and federal EPAs and must meet intensive air and water runoff requirements. As Louis mentioned they took all the fun out of car cutting. Even the occasional wood floor from a box car must be removed and land filled,not burned. All the various insulation types in tank cars must be removed and disposed.

As to rubber linings they are not burned out but generally come into a scrap yard already removed.
If not one method I have been told about is to keep a steady spray of water on a tank car end(called the head) while a torch man goes around it cutting it off. Then laborers are sent into the open car with what look like ice scrapers to peel the lining off. By the way only a very minor percent of the tank car fleet is rubber lined.

Leo

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Posted by: qutlx1@aol.com
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<Alger100PIMetalsMobileALMay1976.jpg>


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Posted by: LZadnichek@aol.com



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