Hans-Joerg Mueller said:Of course they are. Would you expect anything less? They are 1:1 scale. :DSteve Featherkile said:Yeah, sure you do! Are at least those rivets to a precise scale?
I have a sack of rivets to hand to people like that to keep them busy.
Jon,
I believe even the unit trains are assembled from different cuts of cars coming from different loading locations. But I have to check that out next time I’m on the Eastside of the Rockies. Getting a 130 -150 car train filled at one spot would mean a substantial silo complex.
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
Jon, I believe even the unit trains are assembled from different cuts of cars coming from different loading locations. But I have to check that out next time I’m on the Eastside of the Rockies. Getting a 130 -150 car train filled at one spot would mean a substantial silo complex.
I know on the BNSF the shuttle trains (110 cars) are loaded and unloaded in complete sets. The loading facilities load the shuttle trains I think somewhere in the 8-12 hour range, and the unloading places in the 8-10 hour range for 110 cars. Now that said the smaller elevators can’t handle 110 cars worth of grain so I would suspect that they would only load a 55 car train (half shuttle). The RR provides a discount for bulk shipments. And I think I recall hearing someone say that the grain once it was loaded in the railcar had a finite lifetime because of moisture? Thus the incentive for the RR company to get the grain to the dock to be unloaded? Maybe that was just a rumor? Now if you want to really warp your mind on the amount of grain that goes into a ship, think about this. The average train is 110 cars (~14,000-15,000 tons loaded) and it takes from 10-12 full trains to fill one ship. I asked on of the longshoreman at the Port of Tacoma when I was spotting up a train for him. And he told me the elevator I was at had the capacity to hold enough grain for 4 ships… 
According to the BNSF site TEMCO has a holding capacity of 3,000,000 bu. Bushel Units? Anyone know how much a bushel of grain weights, or what the volume is? http://www.bnsf.com/customers/grain-facilities/shuttles/ United Harvest Elevator in Kalama, WA holds 6,400,000 bu of grain! We didn’t deliver very often to this one, not sure if it was because of the holding capacity or the crappy track arrangement? 
http://www.bnsf.com/customers/grain-facilities/elevators/bin1/ele1491.html Just up the tracks at Peavy Grain (Kalama Exports) they can hold 400 cars, and have 2 big loops of tracks for unloading. 
(http://www.bnsf.com/customers/grain-facilities/elevators/bin2/pix1492.jpg)
From what I know,minus rivet counting. Rock Island car is a Pullman-Standard 4750 cubic foot car from the 1970’s. KCS car could be Trinity,can’t remember capacity.
BN car could be either 4600(1970’s) or 4650 (1960’s) built by ACF industries. ACF also built 5250 Cubic foot 4 bay cars in the 1960’s(GN for example had 250 of these in grain service,but had more 4650CF cars).ACF was the original Center flow car.P-S also built 4740CF cars in the 1960’s of which GN was an owner of many( their 1967 order
for 600 cars were divided into 2 groups,first group of 150 cars had 6 round roof hatches for powder chemical service,remainder of order had trough hatch for grain service).
GN/BN and SOO were my study subjects for modeling 1960’s and 70’s railroading before I decided to exit that era of interest in favor of narrow gauge modeling (2 foot gauge SR&RL and 3 foot gauge D&RGW) in 1:24th scale.
Have a good one.
Bill (GET ME OUT OF) Iowa
Jon Radder said:Had an autorack come through Carlyle on the O&M/B&O/CSX line and it had the entire side covered with the word RODEO. It was very distinctive and quite a project. Easily read from over a mile away.Hans-Joerg Mueller said:I wonder if the graffiti artists ever paint long murals on unit trains. They would probably stay together as a group for a pretty long time. I'll have to pay attention more in teh videos :)
Lots of grain unit trains on the CP, what really sets them apart is the graffiti. No time to figure out which cars is what if you can check out all the graffiti. ;) :)
A prototype for everything
Don’t know were the pictures went but Ive updated the thread pictures.
