Western Railroad Discussion > 'NEW' MP coal cars?

Well not really, but it seems like at least 1 whole train of MP coal cars has been reworked with new experimental wheel sets and new MP patch jobs. Saw this train go east by my window today. It was a solid train of them, all with new wheel sets. Any ideas?

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A couple more.

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Thats interesting... I wonder if the Maximum tonnage for the car also changed???

Possibly new Chinese made wheels?

I read an article about them that they were getting 60% more service out of these new Chinese wheels and that American railroads were looking pretty hard at them.

Just an FYI, the average cost to change ONE wheel (no truck, just a wheel) is $10K by the time it's all said and done.

I couldn't read the load limits on any of the illustrated cars, but I'd venture that capacity has indeed been increased. One of the cars is shown as having a railroad class of H-110-44, which suggests that the trucks can handle a 286K gross rail load. Originally these cars had a 263K GRL. Note, too, that the cars have had their height increased by a few inches, giving them over 200 more cubic feet of load volume. This was done to a lot of cars last year, but the test trucks are a new development.

I know the blue roller bearing caps have nothing to do with these "test wheels" probably, but seeing the pics made me curious why we're seeing so many more roller bearing caps in the blue color?

I think these are old cars rebuilt and made taller to hold more.

The "blue" bearing cap is standard for brand-new Brenco bearings. Brand-new Timken bearings have "black" caps with an "orange" ring behind the cap.

Weights showed LD LMT 222,700 with LT WT 63,300.

sp8192 Wrote:
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> Weights showed LD LMT 222,700 with LT WT 63,300.

I see the car block number has 111 as the second digit, so yes, these bad boys can now carry 111 tons compared to what, probably 100 tons when built.

This has been asked before in other threads...but, since close examination of these cars is in order...why do "they" stencil the car number on the truck of the car?

What purpose does that serve...I know they do it on other cars as well.

Thanks for your always kind and generous response.

Car number stenciled on trucks: in a derailment, things come apart. If you want to get all the parts back together with the car they belong to, they have to be numbered. It it is a mess and you have found a truck that is in your opinion the culprit of the wreck, it can be traced back to the owner of the car.
And there are inventory reasons too.

sd60m Wrote:
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> Well...hopefully, it is more for the "inventory"
> purposes than the derailments...as it seems that
> would indicate not a lot of confidence in they
> entire system...almost betting on a
> derailment...if you have to stencil every truck.

What's the big deal? The railroads don't want tank cars to leak, either, but that hasn't stopped the application of car numbers to the tops of tank cars so that if there is an accident, there's a better chance of identifying what's in a rolled-over tank car....

There's no big deal...unless you make one out of question. It's no different than commenting on the colors of the roller bearing caps, etc, etc.

Regarding stenciling on trucks and car sides, railroad owned equipment is a lot easier to control. Most tank cars are privately controlled. That being said, look for some drastic changes to tank cars in the years ahead. Much of this is driven by the railroads, using the AAR to influence tank car design and construction.

I don't think those are experimental, those are new 36" wheels with new bearing caps.