Railroaders' Nostalgia > Wednesday at Work: Boxcar Seawall on the GSL

JLY reported quite a bit of detail about the placement of boxcars along the fill as rip-rap, here are some photos (above). The density of the lake water is about 70 lbs per cubic foot (sea water is about 64) making rocks and anything else more buoyant than anywhere else in marine engineering experience. The idea was that something really big set at the water line would resist the waves yet not overload the weak lakebed bottom. JLY and others mention this as first occurring in the 1980s, but I have photos of the first two cycles from my 1972-73 assignment at Ogden.
For some time spur tracks near Little Mountain had been full of “dismantle” box cars. There was at least one instance of theft: thieves knew how to place a small jack under the journal box and get the weight off of the brass bearing to steal it for scrap sales. The first time this was discovered the cars were moved a ways until the friction told the crew things were amiss. (So a lot of cars went into the lake with almost new replacement bearings.) Railroads have been fighting theft and crooked scrap dealers for decades if not a century.
The first set of about 50 retired 40 and 50-foot boxcars was grabbed by the Lakeside work train and moved out to near Midlake to meet a large crew with a crane (first photo) to tip them off the rails (after the car department disconnected the brake rigging). Then an end loader shoved them off the side of the fill, like any other rock. The trucks were lifted into the open door as added scrap metal weight and the remaining space within the door area was filled with rock. The flaws in this approach was soon evident: as the cars sat perched on the irregular armorstone they rocked and moved in the waves and the body was only partly full of rock: taking a wave broadside against the roof would move it. After a “normal” storm of waves from the north they were broken and displaced. I remember watching some of these cars being assaulted by medium sized waves and they made a creaking sound as the metal bent back and forth, obviously the waves would eventually break them apart. (second and third photos).
Not long after this experiment, the plan changed: we didn’t need the crane as the end loaders could easily tip over an empty car. Before the cars were placed, a bench was cut out at the waterline to give them a stable foundation. We sometimes cut openings (depending on the door size and spacing) in the top side of the car near the ends so that the entire body could be filled with rock. This resulted in a much more stable breakwater or seawall. Erosion still happened because wave would run up between the ends or over the top, and drag rock and ballast back into the lake, but it was a big improvement.

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Do I understand properly that the worst wave action was on the North side of the fill? I would have expected it to be the South side as there is a longer reach for waves to form. Jeff Pape

Yes, the worst wave damage was from the north. I think this had to do with prevailing winds plus the more dense water (higher salt content, by a large factor). Wave damage from the south did occur and eventually a lot of the fill was set up with boxcars on both sides.

A strong southerly storm system would be rare in the Salt Lake area unless its tropical moisture from a hurricane

While we're on the subject of boxcars being used as retaining walls, can someone, in a nutshell, explain the story behind all those "Golden West Service" boxcars that appeared on Espee in the later, and last, years?

Were all of the cars that were dumped in the Great Salt Lake in the traditional S.P. livery? I assume this was before the "Golden West Service" phenomena appeared on the scene?

Golden West Service cars came about after the SP-DRGW merger, along about 1991 or so. SP lacked the money to fix up their own railcars, so they worked out a deal where Greenbrier would fix up the cars and lease them back to the SP for a period of 10 years or so, they would then revert back to SP ownership.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

kinda surprised to find a website for them:
http://www.goldenwestservice.com/

I recall during the early 1980s, I think, that SP stored\prepared boxcars for the GSL seawall in Tracy. They were stored on either the siding or yard lead that came close to crossing under I-205 just east of town. The boxcars had good sized sections of the roof at each end removed.

I saw them more than once as my grandparents lived up near Chico, CA and we would always take 580 to 205 to 5 to get there from the mid-peninsula. The cars seemed to be different sets for every trip north.

Mike Leland