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Bill Haithcoat

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In a contemporary post on "Old Equipment in St. Louis" the matter of construction came up a time or two. It refers to old Amtrak equipment built in the pre-Amtrak era.

I have checked with "Streamliner Cars" in 3 volumns by W. David Randall, 1981. He quotes "Railway Age" 1939 defining a lightweight car as one in which new structural materials and new methods of fabrication were used to lessen the weight.

It lists 1. stainless steel, 2. aluminum alloy, 3.Low Alloy High Tensile Steel(LAHT),4. LAHT with stainless steel sheething. Paraphrasing it notes that the all stainless steel and the LAHT cars(without sheething) were successes in terms of lasting qualities and the others were not.

This is one of the points I was trying to make on the other post but not know how to express it.

The article notes that moisture collected between the sheething and the steel side, thus causing it to rust. Then it says the aluminium cars created an electrolysis to take place with the steel frame. It says this prematurly weakened the structure of the car.

Finally, it states that Cor-Ten steel ws used primarily by Pullman Standard after World War 11.
 
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Aluminum can work if you do it right. The early Comet cars are all aluminum and have been pretty successful. LAHT steel is only durable so long as it is painted, and kept painted. It weakens over time, more so then stainless steel. Negligence in frequent painting (I couldn't be talking about Amtrak, could I? Nah.)

I have never seen a Pullman car made out of Cor-Ten steel. St. Louis Car experimented with them on the IC, and Bombardier built a second order of such cars for IC in 1979, but these were unsuccessful and rusted much quicker then any other kind. Cor-Ten steel is meant to be unpainted so perhaps ICs insistence on painting them was part of the problem.

As far as I recall, and according to my Amtrak equipment book, Pullman built their cars out of relatively high-alloy Carbon Steel.
 
Never heard of Cor-Ten so I looked it up.

From U.S. Steel

Consistent with United States Steel Corporation's ("USS") policy over the last two decades, USS reiterates and reminds that COR-TEN® steel sheet products should not be sold when the intended use is for an architectural application, such as roofing and siding. USS has consistently maintained this position because of the risk of corrosion from factors beyond the control of the COR-TEN® steel licensee (e.g. improper design, fabrication, erection and/or maintenance).
Reasons

* The tight oxide skin of COR-TEN® Steel reforms after abrasion from snow, ice, sand, dirt and hail.

* Acid rain also causes the skin to reform.

* As the skin reforms the product actually becomes thinner and eventually will be perforated.
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Cor-Ten is the US Steel brand name for steels that conform to ASTM A242, A588, or A606. They are classified as "corrosion resistant" which is not to say corrosion proof. They can be painted, and this will not increase their tendency to rust. The way these steels work is that they do rust, but the rust does not flake off, so that after rusting to a very shallow depth, the rusting stops.

HOWEVER ! ! ! If these steels are exposed to salt water or sulfate water, as in from the runoof from salted roads or from the mist from rotten egg smelling hot springs, they will rust the same as ordinary steel. So what do they use on the roads in Illinois to melt the snow? SALT. Consequently the salt water spray from on the roads will rust out the stuff just as fast as if it were A36 or some other steel that has no rust resistivity.

As to aluminum for passenger cars? Should not happen. Too brittle. Also, when welded the welds tend to "unzip" on impact so they come apart in a collision. Also, much high coefficient of thermal expansion than steel, so you get extra stresses in the body if you have a steel frame. (This high coefficient of thermal expansion was the source of the disasters from aluminum house wiring. Caused the connections to get loose, reducing the area of contact, resulting in hot spots.)
 
So why were all the Comets up to the Comet IVs aluminum?

And the Bombardier Bi-Levels, wich are also Aluminum
 
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George Harris said:
Cor-Ten is the US Steel brand name for steels that conform to ASTM A242, A588, or A606. They are classified as "corrosion resistant" which is not to say corrosion proof. They can be painted, and this will not increase their tendency to rust. The way these steels work is that they do rust, but the rust does not flake off, so that after rusting to a very shallow depth, the rusting stops.
HOWEVER ! ! ! If these steels are exposed to salt water or sulfate water, as in from the runoof from salted roads or from the mist from rotten egg smelling hot springs, they will rust the same as ordinary steel. So what do they use on the roads in Illinois to melt the snow? SALT. Consequently the salt water spray from on the roads will rust out the stuff just as fast as if it were A36 or some other steel that has no rust resistivity.

As to aluminum for passenger cars? Should not happen. Too brittle. Also, when welded the welds tend to "unzip" on impact so they come apart in a collision. Also, much high coefficient of thermal expansion than steel, so you get extra stresses in the body if you have a steel frame. (This high coefficient of thermal expansion was the source of the disasters from aluminum house wiring. Caused the connections to get loose, reducing the area of contact, resulting in hot spots.)
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Aluminum can be used as a structural material and can be welded successfully. The key is correct alloy selection and proper weld design. A 747 is a pretty good example of an aluminum transportation vehicle. Some electric transmission towers are all aluminum. Many electric substations use aluminum equipment stands. There was even an aluminum highway overpass constructed in the 1958 in Iowa. The biggest negative with using aluminum alloys structurally is not proper application but cost. Aluminum today is just too expensive for uses where weight reduction is not an major economic consideration. With aircraft, weight rules. With rail cars, much less so.

Self-weathering steel is a great product in the proper application and a terrible one in the wrong application. Proper use requires detailing to prevent moisture retention and eliminating faying surfaces that can trap moisture and pack-out. Steel utility or high level lighting poles are examples of great uses for self-weathering steel. A car frame or body would be a very bad one.

US Steel's warning about using weathering (Cor-Ten) steel for building siding is kind of funny. The US Steel Building in downtown Pittsburgh is clad in Cor-Ten steel. When built in 1970 it was meant to be a showcase for their new product. Unfortunately, new weathering steel bleeds as it weathers, and it did indeed bleed orange-brown corrosion runoff over the sidewalks surrounding the building. Not exactly what USS had in mind. So now they do not recommend doing what they did themselves in 1970. We live and learn.

By the way, add A871 to your list of self-weathering steels. That's the one I use.
 
Okay, I remember smooth sided lightweight cars, and corrugated lightweight cars. I prefer the smooth side, looks much better painted. Why did they start with the corrugation?
 
That was Budd's thing. Its a combination of aerodynamics (This is why even smooth-sided cars of modern manufacture have corrugation on their roofs), better hiding the weld joins, and distracting the eye from how much stainless steel ripples. Look at smooth sided cars of modern manufacture, such as Comet V cars, to see what I am referring to.

The Budd cars were considered more attractive, especially silver ones. Pullman started adding that to the sides of some of their cars to make them visually competitive with Budd's products, and to allow their products to integrate visually with Budd's products on some trains. It was a bad mistake. Carbon steel welded to corrugated stainless steel = perfect storm of rust trap. It is why Amtrak removed corregation from most Pullman cars, and why Pullman cars so equipped did not last very long at all in Amtrak service.

It makes them look faster, sleeker, more modern, and newer. Atleast from the design perspective of the time. Its sort of Art Deco-ish.
 
Green Maned Lion said:
Hence my saying "Bi-Levels" and not "Multi-levels".
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Indeed!

You know, I do find it curious that the so called bi-levels and the multi-levels both have three levels and yet one of them is called bi-level and the other multi-level. Someone at Bombardier must have difficulty counting or something like that. Or perhaps NJ Transit wanted to emphasize that theirs is one better than the bi-levels? The only true bi-levels are the Superliners and Surfliners and cars of that ilk, which have exactly two levels.

Of course all this has nothing to with Lightweight streamlined cars - well I suppose the bi-levels are actually lighter than the multi-levels and do look a tad bit more streamlined at least to the casual observer.
 
Now, this may be overly picky on my part, but interior contents play a factor in all this too. There has been a big switch to using plastic and other lightweight materials on the inside rather than steel that was used in the past. The interesting thing will come when there's a major wreck of some sort involving one of these types of cars (namely a Viewliner). I'm guessing all that plastic will come crumbling down like a deck of frickin cards...
 
battalion51 said:
Now, this may be overly picky on my part, but interior contents play a factor in all this too. There has been a big switch to using plastic and other lightweight materials on the inside rather than steel that was used in the past. The interesting thing will come when there's a major wreck of some sort involving one of these types of cars (namely a Viewliner). I'm guessing all that plastic will come crumbling down like a deck of frickin cards...
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WELCOME BACK111 Are you still in school?
 
battalion51 said:
Now, this may be overly picky on my part, but interior contents play a factor in all this too. There has been a big switch to using plastic and other lightweight materials on the inside rather than steel that was used in the past.
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If what is happening in the aircraft industry is any indication, even for body skin use of carbon fibre material might pick up, at least for the non buff-strength related parts. Of course the cost of fabricating carbon fibre material will have to become competitive with stainless steel or aluminum before that comes to pass.
 
Bill Haithcoat said:
battalion51 said:
Now, this may be overly picky on my part, but interior contents play a factor in all this too. There has been a big switch to using plastic and other lightweight materials on the inside rather than steel that was used in the past. The interesting thing will come when there's a major wreck of some sort involving one of these types of cars (namely a Viewliner). I'm guessing all that plastic will come crumbling down like a deck of frickin cards...
Click to expand...
WELCOME BACK111 Are you still in school?
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Yup, still pluggin along looking for that magical piece of paper. What appeared like it would be a relatively sane semester, ended up, well nuts. I started a new job which gives me a lot of down time (yay for the front desk) so hopefully I can get on here some more.
 
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