November 5, 2015
Leo - SAAB has a steel mill north of Mobile that receives scrap by rail car
off the NS. In my occasional drives over to the Alabama Port Authority on
business, I pass the NS yards and there are usually some number of David Joseph
ex-steel coal cars that have been converted to scrap service. They are loaded
with busheling, turnings, tinplate and other "light" scrap as you stated. Where
ever the scrap is coming from, there's an "art" to loading the scrap into
the car with a hydraulic grab or dropping a magnet on it to compress the load
for maximum tonnage without bowing-out the sides. During my scrap yard
days, we did very little rail loading in favor of shipping by standard or jumbo
river hopper barges for sale to a steel mill (usually Nucor in
Arkansas on the Mississippi River). We'd routinely load 2,000 gt or better of
plate and structural scrap into a barge on a single sale. Pretty much the same
for shredded autos. Lighter grades of course yielded less weights, but it sure
beat loading a long string of gons for rail shipment. There was also an
"art" to loading barges without having them break in two from incorrectly placed
tonnage. I stayed on the ferrous side of the business, so had few dealings
with non-ferrous residue such as Zorba, meatballs, etc. That's a
different side of the scrap industry. I will say this, we had little
problem in providing "low copper" steel to our mill customers as the
majority of our ferrous scrap dated back to the World War Two or Korean War eras
and had originally been cast from steel made largely from virgin iron
ore. Today, recycled scrap has so many trace elements in it that it's an
increasing challenge for electric furnace mills to provide high quality steel to
auto makers and other precision manufacturers. Trust me, those retired C&S
steam locomotives that Hol photographed all made GOOD quality scrap in
comparison to what's available today! Enjoy talking scrap, but guess we
need to include the Q in the conversation one way or the other.... Best Regards
- Louis
Louis Zadnichek II
Fairhope, AL
In a message dated 11/3/2015 6:29:29 P.M. Central Standard Time,
CBQ@yahoogroups.com writes:
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
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Posted by: LZadnichek@aol.com
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