Eastern Railroad Discussion > Double Stack question

In order to lock the top container to the bottom container there are 4 pins. I assume that they are placed on top of the bottom container after it is loaded on a well car (and of course before the top container is loaded). Who places the pins? Does the person use a high lift truck? Who makes sure the pins have been rotated in order to lock before the train is ready to roll? All of this must be undone during the unloading. Does the person have a truck to carry a load of pins? I assume they weigh a pound or two apiece. I never see a container traveling on the highway with a pin sticking out the top.
Ed

It's not a pin, it's a square looking device that fits in to the holes on the top/bottom of the container and has a lever that locks the device into place.
The ramps I've switched have a intermodal person working alongside the lift operator, after the bottom container is placed in the well the guy (he stands on the rail car) puts the locks into place and then moves on to the next well following the lift. Either another lift will follow behind the first one and put the double stacks on, or the first lift will do it once he finishes the bottom.
The locks are a couple pounds, and usually are left in storage bins built into the well cars. The bins are labeled IBC Storage or something like that.

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/17 17:20 by jointauthority.

They are called "Inter Box Connectors" and are placed by a human who stands at the ends of the containers. On a stack car tall people can reach this height. There is about a four inch lever that is rotated about 1/4 turn to lock them together. The early ones I knew were quite heavy, about 10 pounds. Hopefully new designs are lighter. On stack trains it is not much of an issue. But on container ships I wonder myself how they do it as cons are often stacked six or more high on the big ships. I know the upper ones are lashed to the ship deck below by cables and turnbuckles. If a ship has cell guides no IBC's are needed. But you would be surprised to see how much ships, even big ones, roll and pitch in heavy seas. There are videos on You Tube. Marine containers have to be built much stronger than domestic 53ft cons which often have a stencil on their side 'do not stack over three high'. I hope some on here will add more than I know, especially on the marine side.

During preparation of loaded Intermodal trains, are heavier containers put into the wells, while the lighter ones are sat on top?

Matthew

That would be good logic; and a lot of planning by trained folks goes into the loading. Each well has its weight capacity stenciled on it side. Often on stack trains you will see only a one box in a well. This for several reasons. First, moat trains have blocks of cars for certain destinations. There may not have been enuf cons to fill all wells. Then best one to leave empty is the middle well or wells because fewer axles to support the weight. Second, it may be due to the weight of the cons. Again, place the stacked ones or heavier ones in the end wells. Then the route may be single stack only, like the local one here. So four things determine The arrangement of cons in well cars; 1 Clearances, 2. weight, 3. destination, 4 Availability of traffic, which goes back to 1,2, and 3.

While 'programming' the train, ie, deciding and 'placing' containers on the cars in the computer, any attempt to put a heavier container on top of a lighter weight container will be blocked by the program. I know there's some 'tolerance' in that a 100 pound difference won't be flagged. I'm guessing that up to 2000 pounds too heavy on top is about the limit the computer will allow.

Unfortunately, the intermodal programs depend on the shipper-defined weight, as the shipper has long been responsible for entering in all the billing info before the container arrives at the gate. Usually, the weight is accurate, but not always. Nor does it indicate if it's nose heavy, for example. Some truckers will get their load weighed at a scale if they think it's overloaded or improperly loaded.

In my days at CSX Intermodal, we sometimes had to send drivers with their loads to the 'penalty box' to wait for the shipper to get the container (or trailer) info entered on the CSX computer, and then transferred to 'our' computers. The same is true for private-owner 'repos', empties going somewhere. No billing, no entry. However, I and some of my co-workers would cut big-time shippers like Schneider and UPS some slack and allowed them to drop their loads as we knew the billing would come through 99.99% of the time in 5-10 minutes. Fortunately, most of the time, it was only a 5-10 minute delay before 'our' computer had the billing and we'd let the trucker out of the penalty box and park his load.

Then, once the train (or just a track, or even only a block) is 'fully programmed', it gets printed out and given to the yard jockeys to locate the containers and spot them for loading as shown. Once loaded, the clerk has to verify that everything is loaded where it should be before 'releasing' the track/block for an outbound train.

edit: as far as not every bucket double stacked, JLinDE above is nearly correct. Some of the reasons for empty buckets include the need to get the empty buckets to some other ramp. Other reasons include insufficient number of loads for the positions in that block (destination) of cars, or 40' or 48' buckets and 53' containers to go in them. There's also some car-loading rules that must be followed when leaving empty buckets in a car. I do know that the end buckets need to be filled, but what happens in the middle on a 3- or 5-banger I don't know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/17 19:28 by BRAtkinson.

Google "Twist Locks" and you will know everything about connecting containers.

BMH

I was doing a quick look the see if I could find any photographs of an IBC. I did find this one I'm showing here.

But I did find that they were talking about this same thing a few years ago on Trainorders.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,867925


Ron



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/17 23:38 by Ron.

---