Your pipe loads are too neat!


kenw

5th Generation Texian
...as shown in today's photo of a westbound UP out of Houston. I have been seeing a lot of these lately (this was about 10-12 loads) and what struck me was the uneven length of the pipes. These are for pipeline construction, and very few are actually the same length.

And before you ask, no, the other end is not longer to compensate. They're just all over the map on length. Longer ones tend to be on the bottom at least altho even that isn't a sure thing.

Modeling this would be fairly easy: a paper or thin metal tube spiral wrapped with a pale green tape. 15 of them loaded on a 86-90' flat with a few vertical supports and some banding and separators between the lower 3 (the top layer self-locates in the 3rd), viola, a pipe load.

New life for those old 86' Athearn flats.

Altho for most of us they'll look better in a yard or siding rather than traversing any layout's curves....
 
I guess some loads can be even and neat, attaching one I took locally two years ago as a pipeline was being built through our area.
 
was trucking across I 80 a few months back. I think I was in Nebraska or Wyoming. there was a large aera just a 1/2 mile off the free way that had a 3-5 track yard. The aera around the yard had nothing but green pipes stacked and stored ready to load onto the long TTX railway cars. It was all stacked along the tracks so that a crane could easly drive up and load from the stacks .
 
I wonder if the cars with the pipe ends non-aligned are actually custom ordered with varying lengths. Or, perhaps the load has shifted over time due to vibrations? Just guessing.

-Crandell
 
The pipes look like they are all different lengths in the first photo. Look closely, the pipes that you can see on the bottom layer are longer than the ones above them on both ends.
 
Piping comes in all shapes and sizes...and my guess is that they are ordered in different lengths, per the customer. I also would agree that no loads should be 'truly neat' unless you are hauling shipping containers and or presized lumber (2x4s).....just my .02
 
The flatbed cars look like typical super long flatbeds that a truck can drive on. Piggy-back? Then they've added some simple looking bunks made of wood and possibly metal. Then the bottom outside pipe seems to be strapped to the car, with a row of bunks for the next row of pipes. The next row is only strapped to the bottom row. The only pipes that are actually strapped to the car are the bottom pipes. They're also arranged, with the bunks, in a square formation rather than triangular until you get to the very top where they just rest on the row before, pyramid style.

That is a very cool load. I've always liked unusual flatbed loads, and have wanted to build a train full of them for my club's layout. Maybe someday :D
________
Lovely Wendie99
 
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Not for nothing when were those pic's taken?? There is a large 100+ mile long water supply line being done here they started it 6 months ago and those pipes look like the ones their using here locally! might make for an interesting load/industry idea. Have a construction sight getting materials directly from the RR.
 
Chris the original pics were taken in Sept 2010 but were headed west from Houston.
 
Per Kens original shot showing the second car in close-up it would be my guess that the pipes are probably all the same length just not loaded so evenly somehow. the third car seems to show that they were stacked more evenly as in Bob's shot too!

Possibly the engineer changed the spotting of the car after the first five pipes were loaded as the rest seem to be stacked a bit more evenly. I'm fairly sure there was no reason to have them even near perfectly loaded.


Now from a modeling standpoint these pipes appear to be wrapped with a very heavy material which looks like composition shingle material of some type. In fact it almost appears as thick as the pipe wall thickness? That really isn't shown in the shots though.

Plastic Soda Straws and electrical tape should give an approximate look and add a bit of weight too.
 
was trucking across I 80 a few months back. I think I was in Nebraska or Wyoming. there was a large aera just a 1/2 mile off the free way that had a 3-5 track yard. The aera around the yard had nothing but green pipes stacked and stored ready to load onto the long TTX railway cars. It was all stacked along the tracks so that a crane could easly drive up and load from the stacks .

There is a huge Natural gas pipeling being built. They were staging pipes in and around empire NV. The pipeline, the 'Ruby Pipeline' is going from Wyoming to Oregon, 42" pipe, that looked like it on those loads. 680 miles of pipe. you can see the staging from space. It is incredible.

http://http://www.rubypipeline.com/docs/RubyOverviewMap.pdf
 
That's a hell of a pipe.

My ranch is nearby some current construction. The company built a temporary town for workers, holds 700 men. A real boon to the local economy out there.
 



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