Louis,
Your observation about "cubing"out before weighting out clearly shows your scrap background.
Scrap yards are always struggling with this issue. Today we have one advantage that you didn't. Hundreds,if not thousands,of the first generation,western steel coal cars have been converted to Scrap service. These can be loaded with busheling,turnings,tinplate,etc. to try and make weight. On mill gons,as you know there is an art,to layering the load for weight.
On the other side, the relatively new AAR rule that open tops loads cannot be above the top chord probably decreased each scrap load by 10% or more. This rule is strictly being enforced. Also "bowed" cars are routinely bad ordered for transloading.
I'll promise not to get into the scrap lingo of twitch,sorba,#1'#2, HM,p&s, meatballs,etc,etc,etc if you do.
Leo
November 3, 2015
Hol - Finally working my way chronologically down saved Emails from
last week, so have now arrived at your excellent images of C&S
steam power being scrapped at the 7th Street Yard in Denver. This was a real, as
we would say in the Deep South, "shade tree" operation. Absolutely no doubt
it was a make work situation for rip track laborers when they didn't have
anything more productive to do at the time.
A couple of images caught my eye. Like Pete says, lots of asbestos boiler
lagging was exposed. In those days, asbestos was not considered dangerous and it
was laying around on the ground or blowing in the wind
at any scrap yard or location where insulated boilers and piping
were being cut-up.
Another image shows that the C&S was saving cut boiler flues
for later use as fence posts, railings or pipe. You can see that flues were
being cut free at the front and back of the boiler and then rolled
down two angled flues onto a flat car. This was not at all unusual as in
my scrap yard days we did more-or-less the same with ship boilers that the
burners first split in two. There were always active buyers for the cut flues
and I suspect they found a myriad of uses afterwards.
The images that really "got" me were the ones of the locomotive
"chunks" dumped into the gondola. The steel mill had to been buying
the cut-up locomotives as "Unprepared No. 1," or, as we termed it, "Torch
Material." There is relatively little weight loaded into the gon as it
would "cube out" with the big chunks long before reaching its maximum
tonnage. Very wasteful.... But, since the C&S was absorbing the
transportation cost to the mill and the labor cost was probably exceeding the
value of the scrap, it really didn't matter. Still, I cringe to this day
whenever I see a car (or river hopper barge for that much) not loaded to
its full capacity.
I suppose the inefficiency and cost of cutting-up their own steam power
lead the C&S to bidding out the remaining locomotives and subsequently
shipping them all the way south to Houston, TX, where Commercial Metals
finished the job. Do you have any images of that final funeral train on the
C&S or FW&D in route to Houston? I imagine the mechanical
and operating departments of both railroads breathed a BIG sign
of relief when the last tender disappeared behind the gates to
the scrap yard. Many thanks for sharing these images. Best Regards - Louis
Louis Zadnichek II
Fairhope, AL
Lots of asbestos boiler lagging exposed...Couldn't do it
that way today.
Pete
-----Original
Message----- From: Hol Wagner holpennywagner@msn.com [CBQ]
< CBQ@yahoogroups.com> To: CB&Q Group
< cbq@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Mon, Oct 26, 2015 4:31 pm Subject:
[CBQ] Scrapping C&S Steam Power [9 Attachments]
[Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner
included below]
Here are the first of my photos of C&S steam power being scrapped at
Seventh Street yard in Denver in 1960-61. Four locomotives were cut up
there during the period from fall 1960 through summer 1961. During that
same period, all other C&S steam except 638 and 641 was also disposed of,
with several engines sold and cut up in a Cheyenne scrapyard and the others
sold and shipped south to Commercial Metals in Houston. In fact, one of
the several big shipments headed south from Seventh Street on Jan. 29, 1961,
the same day I photographed the 602 being cut up in another part of the
yard.
Of the four cut up in Denver, the last Pacific on the entire Burlington
system roster was the first. The 374 had been stored on the same track
on which it and the others were cut up since 1956, first as passenger
protection power and then simply until rip track personnel could get around to
scrapping it. Once it was certain it would not run again, the
bell, whistle, number plate and headlight were removed for sale or
donation (as they were from other retired steam power), and I ended up buying
the 374's headlight for $10.40. I also bought the 602's plain cast iron
number plate with numbers painted on the flat surface of the plate. This
was a C&S casting used on a number of locomotives whose brass number
plates had been sacrificed to WWI scrap drives. I'm including a view of
374 in storage; sister engine 372 was similarly held at Trinidad as passenger
protection power until it was clear it would never be used, and it was
scrapped by company forces in Trinidad.
Second to be cut up in Denver was the 602, and its scrapping began as
soon as 374 was completed, in December 1960, and was finished by the end of
January. This work, obviously, was done at a leisurely pace as time
permitted rip track employees to do the work. The locomotives were cut
into pieces that could be picked up by a locomotive crane on the adjacent
track and loaded into gons for shipment south the CF&I at Pueblo.
Cabs were generally removed in one piece, and the 620's cab was sold to the
Black Hills Central at Hill City, S.D., for use in creating a mock-up of a
locomotive cab that would let visitors see was it was like to operate a steam
locomotive. But I don't believe the project was ever completed, as I
never saw a trace of the 620's cab on the BHC in several visits; I only have
my photo of it loaded on a flatcar in Denver for delivery to South
Dakota.
The 620, after losing its cab in February 1961, sat untouched through the
rest of the winter until conditions improved for this outdoor work, and then
its scrapping was actively undertaken and completed in July. But before
the 620 was cut up, the 902 was done, starting in the early spring of 1961 and
being completed in June.
It was indeed sad to watch these locomotives, which had served the
railroad for so long, being reduced to pieces of scrap metal.
Hol
__._,_.___
Posted by: qutlx1@aol.com
![]()
__,_._,___
|