Railroaders' Nostalgia > Dumping dirt on the SP

In April 1996, SP was finishing up a new overpass (Exposition Blvd) at Swanston CA (between Roseville and Sacramento).

SP 2539 arrives from Elvas after using the wye to turn its train to dump its last rip rap car. I guess the cars weren't ordered correctly for the dump site.

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From previous experience with trying to dump the SP's tired air dumps, if they tried to dump the three cars pictured on the same side, and only two of them dumped, they had to turn the train to get the last car to dump where they wanted from the one side that still worked.
 
The chances of getting the SP to take an air dump in the heavy repair shop to repair a bad air dump cylinder were slim and none.  As long as the air dumps came in empty,  they were sent out for reloading.  Fortunately we had a wye at Surf.
G.

ExSPCondr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> From previous experience with trying to dump the
> SP's tired air dumps, if they tried to dump the
> three cars pictured on the same side, and only two
> of them dumped, they had to turn the train to get
> the last car to dump where they wanted from the
> one side that still worked.
>  
> The chances of getting the SP to take an air dump
> in the heavy repair shop to repair a bad air dump
> cylinder were slim and none.  As long as the air
> dumps came in empty,  they were sent out for
> reloading.  Fortunately we had a wye at Surf.
> G.

CSX is none to keen on maintaining MOW cars of any kind...with luck you might get new brake shoes once in a blue moon!

Ref  Engineerinvirginia remark about CSXT changing brakeshoes on MOW equipment, seem to remember the only time the piston travel was adjusted when the new shoes decreased the travel!

Steve



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/21 15:49 by ln844south.

Once in Savannah, a car inspector was doing a 100 mile on a loaded rail train. He looked at the first 4 or 5 cars, bad ordered every car,they couldn't be uncoupled anyway. The had to get enough brake shoes for every wheel, and enough brake heads for about half of the cars. 

I must have help dump about a 1,000 of these when working work trains on the Great Salt Fill.  Actually 1,000 would be an way under estimate.  We would dump about 70 in the morning then shove back to the quarry where the cars were refilled then we would do a afternoon run and dump the train again.  We did this 5 day a week for years.  At first the cars were mostly the old Westerns, later they got slowly replaced by newer Defco's. There is no way the compressors on the engins, usually two GP9s, could fill the big dump reservoirs on the cars.  To fill the dump line we had a  big air compressor on a flat car.   During the floods in the mid 1980s the MOW guys were dumping 100rds a day from 2 work trains.  

I used to catch these cars every once in a while. I worked with a conductor, Phil Palmeri. Phil hired out as a car man in San Francisco and worked on the commute fleet. He later transferred to train service. One day we were at Taylor Yard he walked over to the C yard shanty and made a fitting that would work on the cars. He had a glad hand for the main reservoir and found A nipple. He then found a glad hand for a car and screwed them together. We took the train out to Lang ,on the Saugus line, coupled the main reservoir to the m.r. on the engine and the other end to the dump air line. Worked great !

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