. Railway mechanical engineer . t. It is now nearly 30 years since the first steelcars were built, and there has been a considerable differencein their durability. This has been found to vary accordingto the manner in which they have been maintained, the part many thousands of steel gondola and hopper cars only 14 and16 years old which have the sheets and underframes soweakened by corrosion and service that they do not justifythe application of new material for general repairs, and manyof these cars are now being destroyed on account of the bodieshaving reached their limit of life. This is abo
. Railway mechanical engineer . t. It is now nearly 30 years since the first steelcars were built, and there has been a considerable differencein their durability. This has been found to vary accordingto the manner in which they have been maintained, the part many thousands of steel gondola and hopper cars only 14 and16 years old which have the sheets and underframes soweakened by corrosion and service that they do not justifythe application of new material for general repairs, and manyof these cars are now being destroyed on account of the bodieshaving reached their limit of life. This is about one-half thelife which was originally expected from steel cars, and it isdisappointing. It naturally follows that those roads whichhave calculated the depreciation of steel freight cars at threeper cent, and now find many of them worn out at the ageof 14 to 16 years, must charge quite a large amount to oper-ating expenses when they have to be scrapped. If we assumethe average life of a steel gondola car which cost $1,000, as. Fig. 1—Steel Hopper Car 20 Years Old; 80,000 lb. Capacity; Light Weight. lb. of the country in which they have been mostly used, andsomewhat with the character of the lading. However, thelife of steel freight cars is much less than was expected. So far as the writer has been able to learn, the oldest steelfreight car now in service belongs to the Bessemer & LakeErie. It was built in 1896, twenty years ago. The frameof this car was made of structural steel shapes, and it weighednearly 42,000 lb., about 4,000 or 5,000 lb. more than manycars of the same capacity which were built later. Fig. 1,from a photograph taken in 1915, shows that the design ofthis car compares very favorably with the latest methods ofconstruction, and also indicates that it has been very wellmaintained. The record of repairs shows that it has beenkept well painted, this being the usual practice of the Besse-mer & Lake Erie. Some of the doors and hoppers requirednew sheets af
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectrailroadengineering
