Nostalgia & History > Railroads in the Dawn of the Atomic Age

As a follow-up to yesterday's questions about transporting "Jumbo" by rail, I wonder how much
railroad management and local train crews knew about rail movements to:
Oak Ridge TN by the L&N
Trinity Site NM by the Santa Fe
Hanford WA by the Milwaukee Road--just now reading about this government site in detail

Anyone know more?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/20 12:16 by PVSfan.

I can't answer about other railroads, but Union Pacific handled (and still handles) a number of highly-radioactive spent nuclear fuel shipments from naval shipyards each year to the Idaho National Labs near Scoville, ID.  After trying to move those heavy shipments in regular train service, as DOE at the time demanded, UP required special trains.  Those vertical casks in their special cars moved in disturbing ways in regular train service.  

Didn't Rio Grande haul uranium out of Farmington NM in steel drums?

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PVSfan Wrote: > ...  Anyone know more? ...

I would assume the crews involved were only told the bare minimum of what they needed to know to get their trains over their respective crew districts. But with the amount of security that was surely present, or at the very least 'discernible', the average railroader could put 2 + 2 together and know something very special was afoot...

Lance/199

Now you know what you have. In the 1940-1950's you may not. CSX also handles nuclear waste to the Savannah River Site outside of Augusta, Ga. My meeting them, they were special trains, with a road foreman on them.

I don't know about the L&N which entered the Oak Ridge site from the east. The Southern serviced the west end of the site from a small station at Blair, TN which was a few miles west of Oliver Springs on the Southern's Knoxville to Oakdale line. Loads were set off in a small yard by the mainline and were retrieved by a crew that took them onto the site. All on site trackage was government owned, but the crew was a Southern crew accompanied by a security guard. They used ALCO diesels purchased by the government but lettered Southern Railway. My mother worked in the small station at Blair and she had no idea what was going on other than it was war related. 

You have to understand that 99.99% of the material that was carried in the Oak Ridge was building material and components used to build the equipment that produced the enriched uranium 235 material. All of this only created a small amount of material over a period of several months from late 44 to 45. The finished product was shipped out a few ounces at a time in a flask that looked like a thermos bottle carried by armed. couriers. The common question by the locals was that what was all of that material was being carried in but nobody ever saw anything being carried out. 

My father got a job in the motor pool as a mechanic. All of his friends would ask him "what are they building in there?" His response was that he knew there was a carpentry shop that made outhouses for placement along the miles of guard trails that encircled the site and that was all he knew for sure was being built there! 

My father met my mother while sharing in a carpool when they were working at Oak Ridge. I like to think I am one of the unique products of the atomic age :-)!
Charlie

> My father met my mother while sharing in a carpool
> when they were working at Oak Ridge. I like to
> think I am one of the unique products of the
> atomic age :-)!
> Charlie

Great story. Thanks for sharing.

One question I have is did Oak Ridge get most of its huge (I assume) electricity requirements from hydro at TVA dams, or was a lot of coal burned, too.

The Clinton Engineering Works consumed 250-300 MW, most of which went into the calutrons. The onsite power plant had a capacity of 238 MW. Photo at https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/22177. Coal arrived by both railroad and river barge. TVA's Norris Dam 20 miles away was the other primary source of power.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/20 10:26 by ctillnc.

ctillnc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Clinton Engineering Works consumed 250-300 MW,
> most of which went into the calutrons. The onsite
> power plant had a capacity of 238 MW. Photo at
> https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/22177. C
> oal arrived by both railroad and river
> barge. TVA's Norris Dam 20 miles away was the
> other primary source of power.

Thanks for that good information. So it looks like Oak Ridge burned a lot of coal.

A very large part of the enormous amount of material brought in by the L&N was for the city of Oak Ridge itself in addition to two complexes, X-10 and Y-12.  There were large warehouses built to handle the supplies for the city.  Southern brought in supplies through Blair for K-25 as mentioned above.  The city's population grew to about 75,000 during the war from almost nothing, as the entire area bought by the government was rural.  Some of the people who had 30 days notice to move out had had to move from the Norris Dam reservoir less than ten years previously when their land was purchased.  I grew up in Oak Ridge, but after the war.  I remember the L&N local coming in with a RS-3 every day with usually only a few cars by then.

TVA's electricity availability was one of the reasons for choosing to build this part of the Manhattan project here, in addition to Las Alamos and Hanford.  TVA had hydro power and also built coal-fired plants.  Inside the city of Oak Ridge itself was a large coal-fired steam plant built to heat many of the office and residential buildings in the central area.  L&N brought coal in for this as well as home heating.  The house I grew up in had a coal-fired hot air furnace into the 1950.

As mentioned General Groves headed a war time project that was mind boggling and speedily done.  Unfortunately the aftermath is a continuing massive cleanup from radiation and other pollution on the plant sites.  I believe the cost is into the billions for this.

Thanks for all the replies in this thread.  They have brought back many memories.

Jim

As a rowing coach, I have visited OAK RIDGE many times during National Championship regatta trips.  I highly recommend a visit to the museum in town, which explains the history of the area, and Y-12 / K-25 very well.

K-25 was mind boggling, the sheer size and construction of it, and all to proudce a rather miniscule amount of material.  But, it had to be done, and thru sheer effort and overwhelming amounts of money and manpower, it got done..  Mind boggling.  

A funny footnote to all of this is that the managers of the plants that separated the enriched uranium found out that women were better at running the machines than the engineers who monitored them.  Each bank of extractors / separaters (and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, if not thousands...) had a large electrical cabinet that a person sat in front of during their entire shift.  Dials and guages covered the face of the cabinet.  If the machine wasn't extracting enough, the women apparently just adjusted the dials to make sure the machine did its job.  On the other hand, the male engineers who initially oversaw the machines and dials would want to shut things down and figure out "'why isn't the machine working right?"  They'd want to diagnose and fix it, when the gain would have been small.  The women just kept adjusting the dials instead, getting their required output until the machine needed repair or replacing.  Once this behavior difference was noted, women were predominantly hired to run the machines, and production goals were met!  It's kind of funny, and was mentioned at the museum.

Also, my uncle worked as nuclear engineer at Hanford, and he loved it.  However, the mess they're cleaning up there now is horrendous.  Workers have been exposed to many substances that have left them disabled in some cases.  I've read extensively about it.  I hope they get the glassification plant up and running so they can use it to permanently isolate the waste.  That entire area has dumped (in the past) and now leaks radiation into the mightly Columbia river, which is a drinking source of water for millions, not to mention a huge salmon run river....



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/20 11:58 by coach.

Another reason for the location was geography. The area has a series of ridges running north to south. Each plant (K-25, X-10, & Y-12) was placed in a different valley with the idea if something happened and there was a massive radiation leak at one plant, the ridge lines would protect the other plants. My first memories of the site were from the late 50s which was well after the fences were taken down around the City of Oak Ridge. We would drive through there on our way to visit relatives that lived in Harriman. The highway would come up to the gate to the plant and turn right to go to the town. I remember the gate was still flanked by blockhouses that I assume would have had machine gun emplacements during the war. Most of the city residential ares were made up of the modular houses put up during the war. There are several books out about the building of OakRidge and what they accomplished in such a short period of time is amazing.

Charlie

Los Alamos lab had a similar growth trajectory. It had been a boys residential school, and grew rapidly into a secure military research facility.

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Going back to who hauls what, Pan AM Railways hauls spent nuclear rods from the Portsmouth, NH naval yard. They are in secure casks on special cars with a caboose complete with security. 

Fun fact-Portsmouth, NH naval shipyard is actually on the Maine side of the river. 

The few times I was aware of a special movement, the train crew was hand picked, military reservists or former military. 

Eng.Shadetree