Jones and Laughlin tank car

I do not know anything about the use of the J and L tank car in Pittsburgh, but it would be interesting to learn more about it. Sulphuric acid was used in processing sheet, it might have been used for that.

As for the Helium cars, I think they did get around. Dirigibles were used on both coasts and I think they were built in Ohio.  Helium was also used in some rocket launches from Florida and maybe California.  It could also have been used in submarine missile  launches. 

There was one car used in Oakland, CA for many years. It may have been at a welding gas distributor,  I always assumed it arrived loaded and was used as storage until more was needed, when it was sent back for a refill.  All the cars ran into the 40/50 year age limit and I believed were scrapped. The cars were heavy and the one in Oakland had plain bearings up to the end. They needed to be modernized or replaced. 

Thanks, David, for the information on the Helium cars. Yes, some of the Navy Dirigibles were built in Akron by Goodyear-Zeppelin (a pre WW2 joint venture -- the German Zeppelin company used Duralumin in the frames; not sure about the Akron machines). The Nazis took over the independent Zeppelin company largely for reasons of propaganda and national prestige: Count Zeppelin had been revered in Germany well before the Nazi era. And in the 1930s, Zeppelins were seen as the natural inheritors of transatlantic passenger traffic, until Juan Trippe of Pan Am succeeded with his flying-boat Clippers. 

The J&L tank car was used to transport coal tar.   There were only a dozen or two built specially for J&L in I think the 1920s, and the largest tank cars built at that time.  Coal tar was a by-product of manufacturing metallurgical coke.  J&L had coke plants at most of their steel mills, as well as associated by-products plants.  Coal tar was a primary by-product of the coke making process, as was usually processed into secondary, more valuable products at the plant, like benzenes, toluene, pyridine , etc.   While J&L had a plant in Cleveland, and probably elsewhere, I believe these cars were used in their Pittsburgh area steel mills- one at Aliquippa and the other in Pittsburgh proper.  Each plant had their own by-products plants, but, it would probably be plausible that if one was temporarily down, the coal tar could be moved to the other plant via these tank cars.  However, the primary purpose of these cars was to move coal tar intra plant, from the coke works, to open hearth steel making furnaces that had been converted to burn this coal tar.   J&L also had their own rail-marine operation, floating railroad cars between plants on the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers.  Presumably they could have been moved that way also.   They eventually ditched the tank cars for 60,000 gallon barges.   The bottom line is it would be a stretch for this car to be far from Pittsburgh, but hey, it’s a cool car, so make up a reason.   Some of these cars became permanent storage tanks within the mill after they were no longer needed.  

An interesting factoid - the income from the secondary coal tar by products, paid for the coal, and the operation of the coke works, making the metallurgical coke free for the steel mill.  This is why almost every integrated steel mill had their own coke works.  

It seems to me that your railroad acquired that tank car from J&L as they were selling it in favor of barge service. And it hasn't yet been to the paint shop. 

(Thats the way I see it, anyways   )

Thank you, J. Musser, for this very interesting information about the J&L cars and the economics of coke production and its byproducts.

And Penn-Pacific, I can see it that way, too. D&RGW Management (that's me!) got a good deal on some of the obsolete J&L cars and now they are earning a little revenue before they go to the Burnham shops (Denver) for paint. A good story ....

I have one Mathieson dry-ice car from Rich Yoder, which is a real eye-catcher in a train of standard box cars. I think a few unusual cars are nice to have, but the majority should be plain-vanilla to reflect reality and to raise awareness of the atypical ones. Another slightly unusual car in my fleet is a Santa Fe panel-side boxcar that has been increased in height by additions to its sides and ends (this was built from an All Nation kit of this particular class). 

@B Smith posted:

I like the unusual outline of the Jones and Laughlin tank car offered by Sunset (and others in the past), but I suspect that they seldom traveled very far from the J&L works near Pittsburg, so would be out of place on the Rio Grande in Utah (for example). I'll run one if I want to (it's my RR, after all) -- but was just wondering if anyone knows about how they were used.

Another unusual car is the helium tank car that Pecos River brought in (with stacked cylinders for helium gas). West Texas was the only source for helium when the Navy started using it for their dirigibles (and the U.S. refused to sell helium to the Nazi-controlled Zeppelin company, which is why the Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen when it exploded in New Jersey). I doubt that these helium cars traveled around the country -- they would have gone straight from Texas to the Navy's dirigible bases on the west and east coasts. Does anyone know more about how they were routed?

The J&L car was in captive in-plant service.  Some of the oddball cars retained their K brakes well into the era when they were banned from interchange service.

The PRB helium car is a later design.  Along with the USN using them for airships there were also helium cars used to transport helium for the AEC for helium cooled piles (reactors).    Again a limited use with very limited routing. 

Great article here from the Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society:

https://sfrhms.org/wp-content/...1/ahm_helium_car.pdf

Now I am sorry I didn't save my correspondence with Carl Phillips.  He saw those cars in action.

I have a string of five Lobaugh J&L cars, and I bet Carl had as many.  Carl left us last year.

I was under the impression that the coal tar products were sold for use to make asphalt, road tar, and possibly plastics.      Burning the coal tar in the open hearth would not generate as much income.

If the cars were only used in In-plant service why do they have full FRA markings and letterings?    Typically cars used only in plant, had barely discernable numbers (dirty) and no other markings.    They did not need them if they never the left the property.    The numbers were probably only  used by the accountants once a year for inventory.

Not trying to stomp on anyone else's post , but the J&L thing has been beaten about several times. A clip from an earlier thread:

Those cars (coal tar) were never used in inter-exchange service. They only traveled 14 miles between the Aliquippa and Pittsburgh plants, so that is the only place you would have seen them. That info from a gent that worked there, per one of the issues of the late "O Scale News". Name was Carl Phillips as I best recall. Interesting thing about the silver color. Mr. Phillips mentioned above never saw anything but black....because of the heat, any paint that was there didn't last long.

He also mentioned there were only about 10  of them.

So if prototypical correctness is NOT a concern, go for it!

Simon

PS: PRRJim,     I can't answer your question regarding the numbers. The information from Mr. Phillips came from an article written by him in an issue of "O Scale News 48/ft".

Simon

Thank you all for the information about the J&L cars (and the Helium cars). Given the popularity if the J&L cars over the years, I should have guessed that the subject had been already thoroughly explored in this forum. My interest in the Helium cars was piqued by a book I finished recently called "Empires of the Sky," which covers the history of both the Zeppelin Company and Pan Am Airways, which were in competition for the transatlantic trade for a short time prior to the Hindenburg disaster.

I worked around steel mills for about half my career 20+ years, and lived near them for about half my life.   I actually had a summer job in the engineering dept at the J&L south side works.     My Dad and Brother worked at the Aliquippa works.   I worked for Armco Steel when I graduated.

I never saw any of the tank cars in my wonderings.    At South Side, I didn't get out much as a clerk but I did a few times.     At Armco I eventually ended up at Corporate and visited many of the plants including Houston, KC, Middletown, Butler, Marion, Sand Springs, Ashland, Ambridge, Baltimore and Zanesville.     I also visited Algoma Steel and Bethlehem steel near Chicago.

However all the in-plant cars were dark dirty grey or rust colored.    they had no markings as mentioned above except for a number in some cases.    Hot metal cars had steel numbers welded to the sides because of the heat.   If they ever had markings of any sort, the dirty environment soon obliterated them.    

So how and why do we see the J&L cars with full FRA markings?    Is it modelers license?

PRRJim - you are right, they did use tar for road products, etc, and some plants, including maybe J&L did sell this, however, the real money was in the light oil and other chemical products, from the secondary refining of the coal tar.  J&L burned straight coal tar in their open hearths after converting them, which was the immediate product from cooling the off-gas from the coke ovens.   Tar for sale to asphalt or roofing plants would be from further separation in stills etc.   This would add some processing costs, so it might not have been better financially to sell the tar and buy fuel oil for the open hearths.  Open hearths burn a lot of fuel converting iron from the blast furnaces into steel.   The coal tar fuel was basically free.   The two plants were about 15 miles apart, so cars had to be interchange ok, for movement on the P&LE between them.  It probably didn’t happen a lot, but I’m sure it did at times.   By the 40s or 50s they were using a barge to move the coal tar.   Even within the Pittsburgh south side plant - the J&L Coke plant was on one side of the Monongahela, past their blast furnaces, and their open hearths were on the opposite side of the river.    The cars would be moved by J&L’s Monongahela Connecting Railroad using bridges across the river (they had a separate bridge for moving molten iron cars).    Like someone said - someone in Utah bought the car and it hasn’t been repainted yet.  

PRRJim - by your time at the plant, the OHs might have been just using straight fuel oil.  Prior to the 1950s, most open hearth furnaces were fired by gas producers, a common piece of industrial technology, and source of industrial gas for factories,  that disappeared after WWII mostly.  Gas producers could use almost any sort of crappy hydrocarbon as raw material, and I think J&L might have just decided to throw in coal tar, instead of coal.  Eventually gas producers became less economical to operate and they were abandoned, and the burners in the furnaces changed out for fuel oil.   

@prrjim posted:

 

So how and why do we see the J&L cars with full FRA markings?    Is it modelers license?

I sure don't know, but it wouldn't be the first piece of Science Fiction passed on by a model vendor. There was some discussion about builder pictures of one of them painted silver. That was explained away by reason of the idea that "builders" samples were done in silver to better show the detail of the car. I've seen the pictures in question, and the car did appear to be silver (they were black and white shots) but I don't recall if the car had any lettering on it. They might have been in that OSN artticle. This discussion probably has more mileage than the actual cars. 

Simon

Simon, they were used between Pittsburgh and Aliquippa on the PL&E, so would have needed to be marked.   I looked at some of my reference material.   17 built in 1920s by GATX near Sharon,PA.   In 1968 there were 13 cars still listed for J&L - 10 for in plant use age and 3 for interchange service between Pittsburgh and Aliquippa.   1976, only four still listed and used as storage tanks at Pittsburgh.    One of these cars was destroyed in a PL&E wreck, date unknown.