Intermountain has just announced production of the ACF 2 Bay Centerflow Hopper assembled in six road numbers in both HO and N scale. There are several pictures of the prototype on Mike Condren's website. Here is a link to more specific information on the release. http://www.pwrs.ca/view_product.php?ProductID=178663 (HO specific) The stock #'s are: HO 46508 ($32.95 MSRP) N 66508 ($22.95 MSRP) The pre-order cut-off date for these is August 31st. If you want them to be produced, I highly suggest pre-ordering them because if Intermountain doesn't get enough pre-orders, they won't make them. I would also welcome feedback as to where any of you saw these cars used and for what commodity. As more and more of us are getting into operating, information like this becomes invaluable. Thanks,
I always saw them in Sand Springs at the Ball glass plant when I was a kid. Never knew what they were loaded with. I always thought it was sand though.
A glass factory would use soda ash, too. See Meteor910's post #4 in http://www.frisco.org/vb/showthread.php?t=4270.
George is 100% correct, as usual. To make glass, a cheap, pure, strong alkalai (soda ash - sodium carbonate) is combined with glass sand (silicon dioxide) at high temperature. A mixture of sodium silicates is formed, which cools to glass. Several other additives can also be added for various properties. So, shipments of glass sand in the Frisco LO need to be supplemented with soda ash shipments from Wyoming or the northeast in off-line LO's. Ken
Just to add to Ken's post, feldspar was also a typical ingredient in glasses (not sure what type), which usually came from sources on the CLinchfield RR in North Carolina, therefore the occasional Clinchfield covered hopper in Frisco trains from the southeast. Most of the Union Pacific, private road FMC Chemical and Stauffer covered hoppers being interchanged with the UP in Kansas City carried soda ash. Therefore another accurate car type to operate. Most of this traffic was headed back to the southeast on the Frisco. Nick
Nick - Good point. Feldspar is a generic name for a family of largely aluminum silicates, along with sodium, potassium, calcium, barium, etc. It is added to the glass mix for hardness, clarity, strength and other properties. Other soda ash producers (and location) who had a large fleet of LO's in addition to FMC (Wy) and Rhone-Poulenc (ex Stauffer, Wy) are: Allied (NY), General (Wy), North American (Ca), Solvay (ex Tenneco, Wy), and Texas Gulf (Wy). Ken
Ken, When you mention Allied, would that be Allied Chemical?, that is one I did miss as a big one from WY, perhaps their HQ was in NY, but I don't think much soda ash came from there in the seventies. Nick
Nick - Yes, Allied Chemical. They made synthetic soda ash in New York state for many years - as opposed to the natural trona that is mined out in Wyoming and California by the others. Allied shut down about 20 years ago - couldn't compete with the trona boys out in Green River, Wy. But, Allied was a major supplier of soda ash to the eastern half of the US during the Frisco years. Ken
Ken, Thanks for the clarification, there was and still is a lot of Hydro-electricity in the Niagara region, so it makes sense to make synthetic soda ash. I believe in the Louisana petro belt there was some synthetic soda ash made as well. I have a copy of an ICG ACF 3560 covered hopper having ash to be delivered to a customer in Illinois. Interesting how freight charges for soda ash was that sensitive to allow synthetic ash to be made in NY. A great raw material for many industrial purposes. Nick
I don't know the economics today, but while I was active in the industry (until 1998), the FOB price of trona (natural soda ash) from Wyoming was about equal to the rail freight to get it to the midwest. As an example - the soda ash price might be $85/ton FOB Green River, WY, plus rail freight for the UPRR of $85/ton. We bought a lot of soda ash. Ken
They would have been showing up here in Muskogee as well- at least one active glass plant on the north side of town, served by Frisco.
As these cars are approaching being released, does anyone have any first hand (or otherwise) knowledge of them being used for anything but glass sand? I am wondering if they would have hauled cement by the 1980 time frame? Thanks in advance!
Bob - My long-time employer, Monsanto Company, had a fleet of these cars in service in the late 1940's until they were replaced in the 1960's/1970's. We shipped bulk inorganic chemicals in them - sodium phosphates and dry powder detergents ( we made "all") to be specific. The fleet was based in the Detroit area (Trenton, MI plant) and we shipped to customers in Chicago, St Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, New Jersey, New York, Indiana, Texas, etc. I doubt if our cars got on the Frisco all that often - maybe on a Texas run or two. GTW & NYC served the plant. See the pic. BTW, Bowser does make this car in three different MONX numbers. I built all three - two are still running here; I used the third as part of a retirement gift for a good friend who worked at Trenton for many years. Bowser did a better job decorating these MONX cars than they did on their SLSF's. They are quite nice (the black SLSF's are not as good at the Intermountains, but they are available in two additional gray schemes). These cars were used widely for shipping many bulk materials - medium to mildly heavy density. Not so good for light density, fluffy stuff. This was one of the very first standard bulk hopper car designs - very similar cars were built by ACF and Pullman-Standard, in both open and closed side configurations. You are right - many of the Frisco's cars were used in glass sand service for O-I. The SLSf also used them for their own locomotive sand needs, plus I assume for general "LO" duties. Ken
Ken: We my be referring to a different car. The one that I am asking about is the modern ACF two-bay hopper pictured on the top of page 100 in Molo's book and referenced in the earlier link on my post in this thread and is the 2970 cu. ft. 78500 series built in 1975 to haul mainly silica sand. Also, an interesting sidebar to this story about the production of this model is that I first asked the owner of Intermountaion to produce it in a RTR (they produced a kit version years ago) about 5 years ago or more at the Oklahoma City Train Show. He had an 8 1/2" X 11" notepad in his hands and was writing down suggestions from people as they talked to him in the booth. When I suggested it to him he acted like it would be a natural and gave me the impression that he would get right on it. Now after about 5 years of waiting it has finally become a reality. The moral of this story is that it never hurts to ask or suggest things and we all should never give up or worse yet bash manufacturers if we don't get what we want as rapidly as we would like to!
Bob - Sorry! I wasn't paying attention (not unusual!). I know IRC is also releasing a new batch of ACF 2-bays now in both open and closed side versions and just jumped on it as the car you were talking about. These cars were used for glass sand frequently on the Frisco. But, it gave me a chance to talk about the Monsanto covered hopper fleet! The car you are talking about was Frisco's only example of an ACF Center Flow in their fleet. As a modern 2-bay, it would have been used mainly for medium to heavy density materials - cement, glass sand, etc. The phosphates I talked about could also have been hauled in a Center Flow, but it would have been in a 3-bay as these materials are relatively light in density. Ken
Trying to reach Ken- meteor910. I am wondering if you have any info/pictures of Monsanto covered hoppers of the early 1950's? Any info appreciated Thanks, Jim
Jim - The only MONX LO I can offer is MONX 1500, as pictured above in this thread on 5/19/11. This was an ACF 2-bay LO built in the late 1940's (1947 I believe) for phosphate service out of Trenton, Michigan (Detroit area) for product shipment to bulk customers. They ran through the 1950's until the 1960's, when they were replaced by larger LO's which were leased, rather than owned. We used both P-S and ACF cars, including some Airslides and specialty pressure differential cars. It proved to be much more economical over time to lease the cars rather than own them, thus avoiding the high initial capital outlay, and some of the maintenance cost, while enjoying the economy of scale resulting from being part of a large leased fleet. My favorite has always been the ACF Centerflow. We used a bunch of them. Ken
Jim - With rare exceptions, the leased cars had no company graphics on them. Usually they were simply GACX, ACFX, etc cars, with possibly a lease notice statement on them if it was a long term lease. A few of the specialty tank cars had some simple graphics, but I don't recall any covered hoppers with graphics. Of course, it was a big company, and I was in only one division for all of my 35 yr career. Ken