Time
Marches On! The railroads asked for a new design that was faster to
unload, and didn' t
require as much shaking of the car, and FMC responded. When the Southern
Pacific came calling to suppliment and replace their gigantic fleet
of diagonal braced wood sheathed cars, FMC developed the roll over
version of the woodchip car. This car was to be unloaded in a new
universal rotary unloader that eliminated the tilting lift track,
and required far less time to unload the cars. It was almost automated!
The car still was built for capacity, and also built with bracing
that keep the huge expanse of steel sheet from buckling. It became
a billboard for the forest products industry. Both Gunderson an d
FMC built this style of car which has straight sides and therefore
a uniform rib depth. These cars have solid ends and can only be emptied
by rotary dumper, vacuum, or clamshell. They are used by a number
of railroads and private owners from British Columbia to the forests
of Georgia and northern Florida and is a particular favorite of the
former Southern Pacific (many of which would be transferred to Golden
West in the 80's and 90's.) Santa Fe took a slightly different route
with their supplier, Paccar. They specified a double sheathed car
that appeared to be smooth on the outside. This car had a similar
dimension to the FMC outside braced car, but was slightly heavier.
It seems the ATSF engineering department was w orried
about all that metal buckling under heavy use. These cars roam the
system to this day, and Golden West, BN, Apache, Chatahoochie Industrial,
Georgia Pacific and many others have these or extremely similar cars.
|
|