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  • Garbage gondola unloading

  • Discussion related to New York, Susquehanna & Western operations past and present. Also includes some discussion related to Deleware Otsego owned and operated shortlines. Official web site can be found here: NYSW.COM.
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Garbage gondola unloading

Discussion related to New York, Susquehanna & Western operations past and present. Also includes some discussion related to Deleware Otsego owned and operated shortlines. Official web site can be found here: NYSW.COM.

Moderators: GOLDEN-ARM, NJ Vike

  by n01jd1
 
Sir Ray wrote:
GOLDEN-ARM wrote:Yeah, and those aren't gondolas, either...................
Say What?
Aren't those 'Bathtub' gondola, originally used for coal/mineral hauling.
And even if they were woodchip cars originally, they'd still meet the definition of Gondola, wouldn't they?

Anyway, from this site: http://www.wastebyrail.com/successstories.asp
The small picture in the left border gives us one vote for backhoe unloading (backhoe next to gondola, not straddling it like in some installations).
This may mean a Bobcat is loaded in to finish unloading (or, even suckier, some guys with shovels - 'paging Mike Rowe, Mr Mike Rowe...').
They probably use illegal aliens who are paid around minimum wage to load and unload this stuff and for that money, illegals will do just about anything. They could care less that its a dirty job. No matter how bad the job and how little they are paid. The life they have here in America beats the life they had "In their country".

  by GOLDEN-ARM
 
n01jd1 wrote:
Sir Ray wrote:
GOLDEN-ARM wrote:Yeah, and those aren't gondolas, either...................
Say What?
Aren't those 'Bathtub' gondola, originally used for coal/mineral hauling.
And even if they were woodchip cars originally, they'd still meet the definition of Gondola, wouldn't they?

Anyway, from this site: http://www.wastebyrail.com/successstories.asp
The small picture in the left border gives us one vote for backhoe unloading (backhoe next to gondola, not straddling it like in some installations).
This may mean a Bobcat is loaded in to finish unloading (or, even suckier, some guys with shovels - 'paging Mike Rowe, Mr Mike Rowe...').

Look at the picture, in the very link you posted. There are gons, in the picture, not hoppers. Gons carry sludge, and contaminated soil, etc,(usually damp, or wet, therefore, heavy. Garbage is usually "dry", therefore, lighter) and are "tarped", to prevent the contamination from blowing away. The garbage cars, are hoppers, or converted boxcars. CoalPorters, CoalTainers, etc., of the "bathtub" variety, are hoppers. Traditionally, high-sided open top cars, are hoppers. Low sided, open top cars, are gons. Hoppers used to have operating doors on the bottom, for discharging product, but seem to be optional now. :wink:

".

  by Sir Ray
 
GOLDEN-ARM wrote: Look at the picture, in the very link you posted. There are gons, in the picture, not hoppers. Gons carry sludge, and contaminated soil, etc,(usually damp, or wet, therefore, heavy. Garbage is usually "dry", therefore, lighter) and are "tarped", to prevent the contamination from blowing away. The garbage cars, are hoppers, or converted boxcars. CoalPorters, CoalTainers, etc., of the "bathtub" variety, are hoppers. Traditionally, high-sided open top cars, are hoppers. Low sided, open top cars, are gons. Hoppers used to have operating doors on the bottom, for discharging product, but seem to be optional now. :wink:
Again, say what, say what, say what? Am I arguing with a yardmaster here (with or without mice in his pocket)?

OK, first the AAR classifies all hopper cars as being self-clearing (which generally doesn't require illegal immigrants with shovels, but does require doors in the bottom), as seen here:
http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=208 (cited 2002 ORE Register)

Gondolas generally have fixed bottoms (no doors in the floor), as you can see in the listing linked above, but some classes do have doors (apparently hinged from the center sill - I always thought these were mainly used for MOW purposes). Oddly, the GW classification seems to apply to double stack intermodal cars. But anyway, high side, low side, whatever if it has an open top, fixed sides, and fixed bottoms, like the ones in the accident photo linked on the first page seem to do, then it's a Gon.
Also note, the manufacturer TrinityRail calls its coal car with bottom hoppers a 'Hopper Car', and it's fixed bottom coal car a 'Rotary Gondola', while Freightcar America has this to say:
The AeroFlo™ BethGon Coalporter® is a member of the Coalporter line of lightweight, high capacity coal cars. ...
FreightCar America's double twin tub floor design adds up to 21 tons of capacity over conventional steel gondola cars
Kinda why they named it Bethgon and not BethHop.
Even better, here's the FreightCar America product page for woodchips and municipal waste http://www.johnstownamerica.com/product ... odchip.htm - they call it a gondola, even with the half round bottom tub extensions (which don't have doors). On the same page, they also offer a woodchip hopper, which has - hopper doors! :P Diagrams are included for both for your reading pleasure.

So, to sum up - hoppers have...bottom hoppers, and gondolas don't.

If, in the picture, those were really rebuilt Hoppers NOT sporting a G classification, then of course I will stand corrected - but I'm thinking they are classed as gondolas (well, were - some are probably classed as scrap metal by now)

  by GOLDEN-ARM
 
That answered my question!! Thanks. I was going to post, for a response, the real technical differences, between them. You nailed it. Thanks. They do dump those high sided "gons", in a rotary type dumper. The car is clamped, and rolled onto it's side, where it is then scraped out, of whatever doesn't slide out. Some places dump them from the ends. If you look, a large portion actually have the entire end of the car hinged, to swing open, from the bottom. Have never seen a high sided car "dug-out, with a bucket type machine, while in a vertical position. Lot's of those high sided cars have braces, that connect the car sides, to keep them from "blowing out', which makes emptying them, by scooping them out, almost impossible. I have seen backhoes, and track vehicles, climb into gons, and unload them, while crawling from car to car, over the fixed ends. We ran stone trains, on the Timber Rock, that loaded, and unloaded, every day, like that. A crawler climbed the side of the first car, up a ramp, and entered the car, and unloaded the stone, as it crawled out of one car, and into the next. (a track-hoe machine) I saw garbage cars (really, just building materials, from worksites, like sheetrock, and the like) rolled into a dumper, rotated to slightly past horizontal and then scooped out. The cars didn't ever go all the way over, and the machine wasn't designed, like a coal dumper, that rolls almost 180 degrees, to dump. Some roll all the way over, in a slow, and continuous circle, to empty them. Depends on how much money you wanna spend, and how many cars you need to dump, in an alloted amount of time. :-D

  by Sir Ray
 
GOLDEN-ARM wrote:I saw garbage cars (really, just building materials, from worksites, like sheetrock, and the like)
That one little line of yours ("just building materials") opens up an entirely new line of thought - called C[onstruction]&D[emolition] debris/waste/recycling whatever, these transfer operations are generally easier for railroads to get approval for than straight M[unicipal] S[olid] W[aste], as C&D waste is generally thought of as non-smell and non-vector [insect and rodent] producing, which it generally is - the NIMBY canards in this case: dust [OK, so enclose the transfer station] and asbestos [which must be handled separately in any case, with special haz-mat procedures - of course, the average home-owner, finding any asbestos insulation or tile or whatnot, will most likely just dump it in a black garbage bag, set it on the curb, and that's about that].
MSW, of course, really brings on the NIMBY howls and whinging, because in fact it does tend to smell (even if properly handled - it is partially de-composing organic matter after all) and can harbor vectors (since insects and rodents love the rotting organic matter mentioned above).
There is a third major category of waste shipment by rail, not mentioned too much, but it's there: Sewage Sludge (yep, human toilet waste, among other things) - used as fertilizer for crops, shipped mostly in sealed 20' foot containers. The battle here is over the pathogens and heavy metals found concentrated in the sludge (which tend to make it a bit dicey for crop fertilizers to begin with).

  by GOLDEN-ARM
 
I mentioned "sludge", in my report about gons, with tarps. They stink, any time of year, leak various types of "fluids", which also stink at any time of year, and, in the case of the Conrail train that derailed in Pa., about a dozen years ago, if the "sludge" came from a predominantly Italian area, thousands of tomato plants will suddenly sprout forth, from the ground after the first good rain, around the derailment site................... :P (dont worry, it's not human waste, it's only "sludge"........ :( )

  by Sir Ray
 
GOLDEN-ARM wrote:I mentioned "sludge", in my report about gons, with tarps. They stink, any time of year, leak various types of "fluids", which also stink at any time of year, and, in the case of the Conrail train that derailed in Pa., about a dozen years ago, if the "sludge" came from a predominantly Italian area, thousands of tomato plants will suddenly sprout forth, from the ground after the first good rain, around the derailment site................... :P (dont worry, it's not human waste, it's only "sludge"........ :( )
Ah yes, you in fact did mention it. However, everything I read (which is not comprehensive by any means) indicates that sewage sludge is transported mostly by sealed intermodal container (Note: contanimated dirt/soil, e.g. chromium-laced dirt from a former foundry facility, does seem to travel mostly by gondola, under tarps, exactly as you said). Not sure if these containers have solid roofs, or covered tarp roofs (hard to get good images of these trains - usually images are taken from afar), and I am really not too sure of the unloading process (one guess is as good as another).
I'm also calling you out on the tomato plant seeds from Italian neighborhood sludge, cause even in the 1990s the little old italian granma home cooking the tomato sauce was a historical stereotype - everyone I knew (Italian or not) got their tomato sauce from the supermarket, premade in cans or jars (even the chunky style was steralized).
OTOH, salads were made with real tomatoes (kinda had to), which do have seeds, so maybe the source of the sludge was an area with lots of vegans and healthly eaters :P

  by GOLDEN-ARM
 
Call me out, on anything you want. We carried sludge, aka "human waste", in brand new, Conrail Quality gons, and another gon, possibly Herzog(?) with the same, tight fitting tarps, out of Oak Island. I don't know where they were loaded at, but many a tarped gon, came through there, and headed west. Little old lady stories? Never heard one. A train did derail in Pennsy, with the loaded sludge gons spilling their contents, into a neighborhood, and into the backyards, of local residents. as reported on the nightly news, there was in fact, an "explosion" of tomato plants, growing in the derailment site area. The gons had very tight fitting tarps, and were in a captive type service, running from the northeast, to somewhere in Ohio, or Indianna. (can't recall which state, was actually accepting, the "gift" of human sludge)

  by Sir Ray
 
I'm not calling you out on the Gondolas, 'cause I certainly can believe ConRail (and other roads) ultilized them w/ tarps covering the load (why, when there were plenty of 20' containers that could be fitted with liners and made to haul the waste even back in the 1990s, I don't know). I am just mentioning that images of sludge hauling trains seem rare enough on the web (Not like the railroads like to publize this sort of service to the public, of course), and what I have seen is containerized sludge handling (same as incinerator ash haulage, which I did see first hand on Long Island (Garden City Secondary) during the early 1990s).
The 'old lady' callout was on the 'Italian neighborhood sludge growing tomatoes' story, since the tomato seeds in store brought pasta sauce and tomato sauce are entire removed, or (if chunky sauce) sterilized by the factory processing - nothing growing there. OTOH, tomato seeds from tomatoes used in salads, on sandwiches, or other fresh tomato usage will survive internal 'homo sapian' processing, and may very well survive to grow into plants after a sludge spill (which supplies it's own fertilizer).
Time for Trains or Railpace or Railroad & Railfan to step up and write an article about 'Modern Rail Trash & Waste Handling' discussing the types of containers/cars used, and loading and unloading methods for each type of waste (C&D; MSW; Sludge; and misc like ash).
I don't have the info nor the photos, so I can't do it.

  by GOLDEN-ARM
 
I grew up in an Italian neighborhood. no self respecting Italian, is buying store bought sauce, to make gravy. That's just sick. You gotta have fresh tomatoes, garlic, basil and onions, salt and sugar to start a good homemade gravy. Come on, even my half Irish butt, knows that much.................. :P If you were some type of cretin, you could add stewed tomatoes, and crushed tomatoes, from a can. Both contain whole tomatoes, seeds and all. If you were a real cretin, that is............. :P Conrail didn't run sludge trains. They carried sludge cars, in freight trains. (OIPI comes to mind) I saw them, and carried them myself, to Harrisburg in blocks of 6 to maybe as many as 15 cars. They were heavy, and smelly cars. I don't recall seeing a sludge filled container, there, or anywhere else. I know they do it, but I haven't done it, or witnessed it, firsthand. I have seen garbage, in containers, and even flyash, but not sludge. Some places burn sludge, and ship whats left, for burial, in the mid-west. who would have thought, wet sludge would incinerate? Not me, that's for sure. But, apparently, it really does. You can find the details of the sludge derailment, with a little time spent searching, at www.dogpile.com Regards :wink:
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