On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 12:50 PM, Hudson Leighton wrote:

https://www.shorpy.com/node/25590

What a great photograph. The clarity of the 8 x 10 glass plate negative is remarkable. A lot of interesting details. Can't make out the name on float barges, but appears to be 12 letters - Pennsylvania?  All the way on right - two tugs towing at least three sailing ships. New York require this as ships under sail were difficult to control in the harbor traffic.  

As usual, you should be able to get a higher resolution scan of this photo from the Library of Congress site.
I've not tried with this one, but the information needed to find it should be in the Shorpy description:
"Williamsburg Bridge and East River waterfront."

Tom E.

J, et al,

Actually, there were three Stillwell Oyster Cars that were built. Car A, Car B, and Car C. Cars B and C were involved in a train wreck enroute to the railroad from the builder and were completely destroyed and never replaced. Car A survived and was used for a short time, however, was discontinued because the loading and unloading process and the inability to keep the oysters fresh by changing out the water in the brine tanks brought about its demise. There are great pictures of Car A, however B and C may not exist. I've post up pictures of Car A for everyone. I am having the top vents and decals made for all three cars. Cars were painted dark blue, which is very rare for the era, as blue pigment paints were not readily available and the pigments didn't last under the effects of the sun. Letting is either white or silver.

Levi

The NP Ry. records list these as ACF cars.

-Hudson

Thanks for the link. I was able to download the instructions. Not good at navigating websites...
CW Propst

On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 01:14 PM, Riverboy wrote:

So ballast hopper were purpose built for such service? I always thought they were rebuilt by the railroad or someone from standard hoppers.

Just catching up... Someone has finally hung a name on these, they are Hart Selective ballast cars, marketed by the Rodgers Ballast Car Co. In the photo of NP 85020 you can just barely see the cast iron patent plat to the left of the capacity data. The 70 ton cars, and the shorter 50 ton cars that came before them, were essentially the standard railroad ballast car from the thirties through the sixties. The diagram Jim Dick posted shows the advantage of the design; a nice easily controlled flow of ballast placed just where needed without burying the track to the rail heads. These cars were a direct descendant of the Hart Selective gondola, common before WWI.

The rebuilt cars came later. The general move to 100 ton capacity freight cars in the seventies left the railroads with about a gazillion surplus 70 ton cement hoppers. Morrison Knudsen of Boise, Idaho developed and marketed an outlet gate that easily converted these cars to ballast service, and these conversions quickly became the standard ballast car of the late twentieth century, which is, of course, far in the future as far as this list is concerned.

Dennis Storzek

Here is a photo of GN’s 1953 built ACF Hart ballast hoppers being used in sugar beet loading.

http://digitalhorizonsonline.org/digital/collection/shemorry/id/8906/rec/21

Regards, 
Bob Heninger
Minot, ND

There's an article on this type of car in RPC #3.

I quote: "...they could also be used to jaul coal, sugar beets, ore, gravel....The cars were oversized for the purpose of hauling ballast..."

It's been my belief that these type cars owned by a number of the western roads were bought to be dual purpose.  Or perhaps "multipurpose".



Ed

Edward Sutorik

Of the NP, the cars were purpose bought, for both coal and ballast use.

       Per a recent anthracite string on another io group, I mentioned on the Northern Pacific that coal came very strong out of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, so much so that into the early 1960s it was the number one commodity of traffic in or out of the ports on at least the NP. This traffic added quite well to the NP’s bottom line and with the Milwaukee Railroad running on trackage rights made both the tonnage and number of trains running on this section of track considerable.

A 1951 financial report stated this part of the NP as “indispensable” due to the traffic hauled and again, lists the traffic as “quite substantial”.

Prior to 1951 the NP President had commissioned a report in 1930 that was updated in 1939 (attachment) then added to again up to the mid 1950’s on cars best suited for this coal trade (next two attachments).  In the report is the admonishment that the needs of coal traffic from the Twin Ports to the Twin Cities were paramount to open top car purchasing decisions. That report and from the later additions is where the last attached image was found. It was a sales brochure demonstrating how this car could be unloaded.                                                                                         Jim Dick -St. Paul 

Hi Tod,

No such thing as being an old fool.  I've been in the hobby for over 60 years, and every day I learn something new.  That's one of the delightful things that keeps me in the hobby.

Todd Sullivan

And, just to muddy the waters, some railroads built or purchased hoppers with longitudinal doors for coal and coke service. This tended to be early in the 20th century when facilities to unload were less sophisticated and a hopper that dumped away from or beside the rails could be desirable. It should come as no surprise that these coal hoppers often had a second life as ballast hoppers. An excellent example are the PRR’s GP and GPA classes of hopper. I know that the B&O also had a class of side dumping coal hopper.