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  • Capacity markings

  • General discussion about locomotives, rolling stock, and equipment
General discussion about locomotives, rolling stock, and equipment

Moderator: John_Perkowski

 #419048  by KC8WJG
 
It used to be that most freight cars had three basic pieces of data below the car number:

CAPY (Capacity)

LD LMT (Load Limit)

LT WT (Light or Tare weight)

Within the last 20 or so years the CAPY markings have been disappearing from older freight cars. Older cars still in revenue service have them painted out, or have the whole block of data totally re-stencilled.

We received an older circa 1972 SSW covered hopper the other day and one of our trainees asked me what CAPY meant, and if it was the same as the load limit.

Basically it is, correct?

Many that I have seen are either identical to the load limit or only differ by a matter of a few pounds or tons.

Was this brought about because of an FRA/AAR mandate? Was there an accident in which a car may have been overloaded and caused an accident, or did they just come to the realization that that piece of data is uncessary and/or redundant?

 #419093  by Gerry6309
 
Is it possible that it was confused with a RR reporting marl, thus the change?