Saturday, 17 May 2025

When a tank car is not a tank car.


By Keith MacCauley 

The freight car shown in the above photo is not a tank car. It is actually a specialized two compartment covered hopper used to transport a specialized salt. Explanation is as follows.

The payload is loaded as a slurry with the liquid drained prior to transport. If the liquid remained, the car would have classified as a tank car. At destination an internal sparger system is used to introduce water to offload the commodity again as a slurry using bottom outlet valves. Between 1982 and 2000 Procor Oakville built some thirty-four salt slurry cars for Dow Chemical and BC Chemical.

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