Well said!

Thank you very much!

@@djstrains Your welcome.

Thank you so much 😀 New video in an hour!

Thanks for the info

I used to switch for SGS petrochemical, we have nothing but petrochem/polyethylene plants here in Houston.

Im editing one for tomorrow!! ITS GREAT!!

I appreciate that!

Thanks again!

See a lot of them here in s.e. Louisiana

Very cool!

They work flawlessly

Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad it was helpful!

Glad it was helpful!

Glad you enjoyed it

Thank you very much!

I appreciate that!

Thanks Joe!

Fantastic You seem very smart, not trying to tackle a basement empire and instead starting small, logical and practical. Keep industry close to mainline and no try to fill up plywood with track. I thank you! And wish you the best.

Again thanks for an informative vid. Waiting on my first order of Hoppers.

It really is a cool place. You know whats crazy, is that the original B&O line through McKeesport to Versaillies has tons of industries but NO ONE TOOK PHOTOS!!!! Christy park and all that industry and no great pics!

Thank you very much! I sincerely appreciate that because I do spend a lot of time filming and editing.

Thank you very much!

Yeah, its like every time you watch it, you pick up something new. I feel the drone helps show people all the details they may miss from the ground.

@@djstrains Yes, you inspired me to get a drone and add a Part 107 license to my list of FAA licenses.

There has always been something so neat about that EL paint scheme!

I passed through there once. I remember the grain elevators had a short line working them I think? Not sure. Also remember someone told me a story of how the town got its name. A backwards "Dine" sign. I don't know he was just making it up. But he told it so good. He was an older man. Lol

At one point the Rock Island serviced one exclusively and shared service with the Frisco at another elevator. Another major elevator was serviced by both the Frisco and the Santa Fe (Enid had all three, Rock Island, Frisco, and Santa Fe railroads, running main lines through town). All three lines also serviced the various oil refineries that used to be in town too.

I think I remember Farmrail locomotives there too?? I really can't remember if it was there for sure

Yes, expect to see more in future videos!

I appreciate that

We are in the dark as RR employees, as to what percentage is up and running. But there are hundreds of new hoppers there.

I am hoping to get NCIR soon. Do you know if they run on weekends?

@@djstrains I am not exactly sure bud but I’ll ask someone

Nothing really interesting actually. It's just what you'd expect. Noisy and monotonous, lol. I will keep an eye out for the opportunity though.

Appreciate that!!!

look for ideas here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gb6EoLNlr7fKqac.html

Very cool!

Yes Sir I think so too

Glad you enjoyed it

Greasers. Right before the curve (other direction) to reduce friction and wear on rail.

BARRY!!!! Thank you! Extremely appreciated! Have a great weekend!

McKees Rocks, not McKeesport. Yeah, we are on one side and NS on the other. The staging yard was originally planned to be in New Castle for CSX, but they changed it to McKees Rocks when the intermodal yard failed.

actually I don't know since I didn't go down that far.

@@djstrains Fair enough. Thanks for responding to my comment. Much appreciated.

Good call!

HAHA!!!

Yes, it is a "buffer car"

@@djstrains Thank you for the reply!

Sometimes it's sand and sometimes it's "pebbles". IF there is an incident theoretically the sand in the covered hoppers 'could' be used an an absorbent.

Yes. It’s a customer that I personally service with CSX when working the local

@@djstrains I drive by the plant everyday

I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME!!!!! LOL!!!

Yes, and I have testimonials from people I have helped. Please reach out through the patreon site and I can help you immensely

Wait! What?! I used to go NC to CLE on the old Q640/641 through Medina. Is this CSX or W&LE yard?

@@djstrains I only see W&LE trains on the west side of Medina. I assume the rail yard is owned by the plastics company itself. The company is called Ravago.

I was out in Medina a few months ago ( love the Roots candle store) and was lucky to see a W&LE train go through the middle of town. Love that color scheme.

@@Edyth_Hedd Yes it is a very cool paint scheme! I get to see it a lot around here. Right next to the candle place is an old wheeling and lake erie depot building that has an antique shop in it. When you go in, immediately to the right is a section with lots of model train stuff!

@@timeflysintheshop Damn! I saw that store and didn't bother to go in. Next time!

Great point!

I did two already See PLAYLISTS. REVIEWS

@@djstrains Ah, ok...thanks. I should've thought about that...lol.

Its been a few years since I have seen the MP15 in my area. It was fun to run, but I dont miss it because it is the most cramped engine for crews.

In general you'll see those on short lines or large industries. Great units for switching.

@@djstrains I enjoyed running them myself when switching yards and industries. Never really felt cramped but I never took one over-the-road either

it runs so smooth!

2.5 hrs from my house. So what should I know? What would make a good video? Best days to film, etc?

@@djstrains the history and what cars they use, and the products. I'm also interested in Larry's truck and electric in McDonald's ohio. I'm trying to model something similar to it. I've seen ltxe engines on the csx line alot.

YOU ARE 100% CORRECT!!!!

Often unit grain trains start out with one ownership but over time as cars drop out and are added you get a mixed bag. Grain trains tend to be either railroad owned or private owned. So if CSXT is supplying an elevator with a grain train you'll see cars in the trained owned by CSXT (including the fallen flags of railroads they acquired). If the customer is supplying the train, it is usually made up of private marks (PTLX, GACX etc) that they lease cars from.

One of the most motivational things I have ever heard. Its comments like that, that make me excited to keep going and teaching.

That is Chelsea building products Verona, Pa. , and I think they use a pneumatic suction because on the rest of my footage is a green hose nearby.. Lots of trees, so hard to say for certain.

Plastics are usually sucked out by huge vacuums at the plants.

You dont need any experience to work for a railroad, because they want to train an open mind on how they want things done. Experience can work against you actually. class 1 railroads are horrible right now and thats why we are trying to strike. A smaller one may be a better fit, my friend.

Do they need a certified engineer to apply? If they will train you....that in itself could be a reason to take the job.

Reporting marks haven't changed much over the years. There is a 2 to 4 position alpha code representing the car owner and a 1 to 6 position number. This is the North American standard. That standard is not followed internationally.

@@cdavid8139 That is certainly true to today but if you go back far enough, things were much more fluid - standardization on so many features came about due to confusion prior to that but it took awhile for things to get bad enough that something had to be done. At first, the cars themselves were not interchanged. Loads had to be unloaded and reloaded into the new road's cars at each interchange point (although often loads were not shipped that far - the railroads performed the function of local trucking firms). Then railroads set up "fast freight lines" which were designed to facilitate movement across many roads. Another thing that arose was the "Official Railway Equipment Register" or ORER - a boon to future modelers in terms of getting historical info and many are available now on disc. They would spell out "the cars of this railroad are marked . . ." and give both the names and initials for the alpha code. But railroads at the time seemed to have hated standards applied to them by outside forces. For instance, Rutland freight cars were marked with "Rutland" as the alpha code on the side of the equipment and just "R" on the end reporting marks. I seem to recall their official marks were "RUT" which wasn't used on the cars themselves, only in the paperwork. I have also seen conductors' notebooks for the Rutland (by one William Shakespeare, a literal descendent of THAT guy) where "C" was used for New York Central, since so many passenger cars on the Rutland came off the Central. The term "reporting marks" were those by which the car ownership was designated for REPORTING purposes on paper and only slowly came to also mean the way the cars themselves were marked. There was the common practice of having the initials end in "X" if it was a private owner, not a railroad - such as Railway Express Agency being "REX." RR-owned cars were changed a per diem (daily rate of $1 or $2 per day in mid-20th century), like a library charging a small fee to facilitate return of a loaned-out book. On the rail system, at midnight, the fee went into effect based on where the car was at the time, and so all roughly 2 million cars had to be accounted for. Then the rr's offset each other's fees so that if railroad ABC had one of XYZ road's car on their line, and XYZ had one of ABC's cars, the fees balanced out. TWO MILLION cars! All of these was done in an age before computers and even before photocopies, only carbon paper, and resulted in a massive fleet of clerks hired to make the system work. (At its peak, the railroads employed directly or indirectly 1/6th of the entire nation's labor force.) Privately owned cars were charged a mileage rate. Another constant problem early on was the constant buying and selling of one railroad by another, both subsidiary lines and mergers so the ORER would have to list ALL the initials under their control, resulting in a long list of different letters for some roads. It also would take awhile for the car shops to getting around to relettering (and sometimes renumbering) the entire road's fleet, particularly since cars might be wandering around off line for quite awhile. Back in steam days, the ampersand (&) was used in reporting marks but later dropped so the D&H became the DH. One of the major things to consider was that in steam days, many decisions were made between individual roads and slowly grew to become a national standard, but NOT a government-imposed standard until later. Thus the roads were free to bypass the overall standards by agreeing among themselves on minor points. This ability to vary was slowly reduced in scope over the 20th century. (For instance, at different points, old mechanical systems like archbar trucks were outlawed in interchange but an individual road could run cars with these as much as they wanted. And they might allow certain equipment with archbars from a neighboring road to run on their line, either an actual agreement or just simply "looking the other way." The ARA/AAR (American Railway Association/Association of American Railroads was an industry-wide organization which did not have the clout of the federal government ICC/FRA. For anyone serious about their model railroading for a given era, getting ahold of an actual paper copy or digital ORER to see specifics.

@@johnnehrich9601 Anything I write or post basically reflects 1976 and onward. What happened before I entered the industry I really don't know so I bow to your wisdom and knowledge. A few comments on what I do know. In the US if a car ends in "X" it is indeed private and not railroad owned. Trailer Train is a 'sort of' exception here. The ORER (Yellow Bible) does list the car marks associated with the owning road. Picking up an old copy at a trade show can be fun to review. The ampersand may still be seen on the side of the car, but the cars are registered in the industry (UMLER) without the ampersand. So D&H may still be seen on a car, but the registration and reporting is DH. When I came along the per diem charges became per hour charges (the term per diem is still used). I have worked with yardmasters who still recalled the 'midnight interchange' where they were graded on having cars interchanged before midnight so the daily rate went to the receiving road. Over the years I have been involved in dozens of restencilling projects. Sometimes the effort takes years if the cars stay under the control of the owner. RIght now thousands of cars are being restencilled as they come out of storage and go back into service. Of course now, in addition to changing the car marks, you must change the AEI tags.

@@cdavid8139 And I have to admit the further forward from c. 1950, the less I know. I did hear a story that one time a shop was in the process of relettering cars, perhaps totally new lettering or perhaps restoring the same after a total repaint job. The crew worked their way down one side, sequentially numbering. Then they went on the other side and did the EXACT sequence, NOT a mirror image, meaning the cars got a different number on each side (except perhaps the middle car in the line.) Wonder how long it took for them to realize it. I also know some modelers purposely letter/number one side of their rolling different from the other (for a "linear-type" layout), so when the train is going the opposite way, they get the effect of a whole another batch of cars. The one thing re: the X was that Merchants Despatch was a private-owner company, but was a subsidiary of the New York Central system. Their reporting marks were "MDT," not "MDX" or "MDTX." (Probably a logical reason but I don't know all the facts.) Also, this system of reporting marks extended both north and south, meaning Canadian roads and Mexican roads were part of it. Never heard the ORER called the Yellow Bible, but boy, was it, at least for me. I started with a 1949 ORER and practically wore it to pieces. (Over time I got more years, including the really early ones on disc.)

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you asking about contamination? Some cars may stay assigned to a train (like grain trains) and just go back and forth from same industry to same customer over and over.

A lot of food products like flour, sugar and corn starch are loaded in special covered hoppers called pressure differential cars. Some even look somewhat like a tank car. It’s a covered hopper with a bunch of pipes connected to the outlets. They load them through the top hatched, which are sealed after loading to make an air tight covering. To unload them, an air line is hooked up to a special pipe off to the side, and air is then pumped in to help break up the caked areas and make for smoother unloading of the material; smoother and more complete unloading. These used to be shipped in “Air slide” covered hoppers made by General American Transportation Co. They’re pretty much replaced by pressure differentials, now, I think. They were unloaded the same way.

Most food grade cars are lined and are kept in specific food service by the railroads. For example a car that is assigned to flour service will only be used to carry flour. It won't be used for anything else.

They failed to get enough business for the intermodal and it shut down

@@djstrains That location would make a great soot for light mechanical work for locomotives and cars. Rather then sending them all the way down Cumberland. I can imagine it takes hrs by rail to get down there from mckeesport.

@@Dachamp2001 rail cars get light work done at mckeesport in Riverton yard.

A lot of what is done today with covered hoppers was done with box cars until the mid 50's. There would be clean box cars that would be used to ship grain. They would put plywood type bulkheads across the door and pour the grain over it into the box.

DJ Kool...

DJ Kool - Correct, but Beasties also had a more slow paced delivery but without the cough lol

@@djstrains I know, I was just pointing out that DJ Kool also used that line...in fact, made an entire song about it. I used to go crazy when that song came on in the club back in the day...

Man, my eyes are getting old.

PRODUCTION VALUE!!!! I love that movie!

Great questions, but I dont have those answers.

I wondered why my bread tastes funny sometimes.....

The railroad I worked for had a “clean out” track that was used to clean out their own covered hoppers; they were large 4427/4750/4780 cu. ft. cars (we called them jumbo covered hoppers) that were used for fertilizer, grain, animal feed, sand, soda ash, etc. Some were assigned to off line shippers that shipped over our line to interchange with our connecting lines (we called it overhead or interline bus- iness. Covered hopper waybills, when returning empty, we’re required to show the last commodity contained. We used empty phosphate fertilizer cars for grain loading. I suppose you could use grain cars for fertilizer loading. Obviously, you would most likely need to clean out a calcium carbide or sand car before loading animal feed or grain. Enjoy your videos!!!

I think it might vary as often food is washed, cleaned, etc. during the processing itself. But definitely YES if the type of commodity was being different than the previous load. In steam days, often empty box cars were sent to a part of the yard where they could be swept out.

@@TPW900GP35 EXCELLENT INFO

I have 2 videos about tank cars But recently I have been thinking about doing a general video about various cars. Would that be of interest to you?

repeat, Operator A is down

add 500 points for my awesome coupling and rough train handling sound effects, lol

Only 90,800 foamer points.

@djstrains Idk... That wouldn't qualify as "foamer points," i.e. railfanning footage. Idk... modeling railroading points? Prototypical abusing the equipment operating bonus points, lol?

@Michael Moses Here's what unlimited foamer points looks like lol kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rcuImLRypsjHdIE.html

Yes, but Amtrak runs on my CSX line from Connellsville to Braddock, and Amtrak is my main train on my layout, so......lol

@@djstrains Lucky you. Until a couple of days ago, we only had Pan Am Railways up where I am. That kills a lot of the desire to railfan.

Lets keep it PG, Lol, kidding, that was brilliant!

I too, don't like weathering, but over time models somehow weather themselves with dust and grit. And all rail cars were new at one time, so why rush to weather a new one? Doesn't sound practical in my estimation. Love that CSX is getting new traffic.

I'm the opposite. Nothing gets on my layout until it is weathered and dull coated

What do you mean?

Your 394 cars pans are to close to the wheels either cut the pan at a 45 degree angle and re weld it or remove the 394 car carrying coal.

It makes dumping coal a nightmare when the cars are at the coal pier 😂