In the early 1950's, the Park Service was building a new entrance road into the Grand Canyon National Park as well as the State of Arizona rebuilding the current AZ 64 from near Williams to the

Al A factor that kept specialized cars on home rails was the fixed per diem rates of that era, which meant that an expensive car earned no more than an old, cheap car when it went offline. And

Tim, what you wrote is true, but don't misquote Shawn. He said "70 ton cement hopper", which is not the same thing as writing "70 ton covered hopper". People who have been looking at these things for

Mike Aufderheide wrote: Mike, It happened all the time with open top hoppers - ergo, so few eastern hoppers going over Sherman Hill compared to eastern boxcars. Meanwhile, I don't believe MONON's

Thanks Tim. That's one. As my daughter would say, "Name five".

Michael Weiss wrote: Mike, If you had a map of all the cement plants in the US, you might be able to judge which plants were competitive and which plants were not for specific geographic areas of

timboconnor@... wrote: Tim, Seven of B&M's #5500-5519 series of ACF 1,958cf covered hoppers were sold to Revere Sugar in Jan-Feb 1956, and another six were sold to Revere in 1958. Tim

Beckert, Shawn wrote: Shawn, "70-Ton" is not a good descriptive adjective for a covered hopper particularly in the 1950's. Of the 46,952 covered hoppers owned or leased by Class I RR's in the US on

Several threads lately have come to related conclusions, namely that the movements of specialized cars were much more predictable than those of general-service boxcars. Whether the specialized cars

I thought it was the water of crystallization (H2O) that was driven off by the kiln. No? Pat Wider anyone have a rule of thumb for economic distance cement (and other low value bulk commodities) may

Additives for gasoline? I don't think so! :-) I wonder if they contained detergent used to clean the pipes? (Only half in jest. They must have needed to scrub them out from time to time.)

Schuyler If you're going to use it on the club (West Virginia/Virginia) then a Frisco cement hopper would be an oddity. Gypsum, or bauxite, silica sand, or some additive for a refinery would be good.

Sorry, guys, I hit "send" before I'd finished my post. I meant to write that I have a photo of UTLX 46007, an identical car in the 46000-46062 series. Given the tank size, I don't know any easy way

These were very early (ca. 1918) UTL X-3s and were 8,000 gal. cars, so neither the Tichy nor P2K 10K tanks will work. According to the 1952 UTL "Classification of Equipment" book, UTLX 19656 was in

Richard Hendrickson wrote: This must be photo day for me. I've just uploaded five photos of UP 183206 taken at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris CA in March 1989. The photos are in folder UP

With all the discussion on coveed hoppers of cement and where they owuld go, does anyone have a rule of thumb for economic distance cement (and other low value bulk commodities) may have been shipped?

Ah, even better, thanks Sam. SGL

Thanks, Tim, I'll go with cement unless somebody can justify sugar. Were there sugar refineries on the Frisco (the spelling of which I will correct in the header . . . )? SGL

The introduction of auto racks raised that Wow! Tony can foresee the future! SGL

I'm far from a expert on covered hopper loads, but here's my 3 cents worth. In the upper Midwest cement was shipped to plant customers in home road hopper cars. A customer on the RI would get an RI