Airslide question

[Puddington]

Did railways categorize Airside hoppers by their cargo? If an Airside carried flour this week could it/would it carry cement next week? It doesn't appear likely to me but I wondered if anyone knows how car assignment and re-assignments might work.

Many thanks in advance.

[Catt]

ost of the airslides that I am familiar with (I'm no expert these are just personal observations) were in dedicated service.If it hauled flour last week it will haul flour this week and the next,and so on.

[C855B]

Interesting... there is the AAR "XF" classification for food service boxcars, but covered hoppers of all shapes and sizes are "LO". Commodity assignment is probably broken down by number blocks in the owner registries. The centerflows that service our local cake mix factory are usually pretty generic-looking brown BNSF hoppers, although this week I was surprised to see the generic-of-all-generics, a FURX car.

[sirenwerks]

Makes sense given the qualities of the products these cars carried (light, dense) and their necessary aversion to water of both the products (which by nature would solidify), which would make regular cleaning, necessary for switching between industrial and food-grade products, a major PITA.

[davefoxx]

ost of the airslides that I am familiar with (I'm no expert these are just personal observations) were in dedicated service.If it hauled flour last week it will haul flour this week and the next,and so on.

I agree.  I may want chocolate in my peanut butter, but I sure don't want cement in my flour.

DFF

[bbussey]

Dedicated service I would think, particularly with so many of them owned/leased by private companies for shipping their own raw products.

[Blazeman]

Can't say for sure about airslides, but cars usually are dedicated/assigned to a shipper for service and given any slight modifications prior to being put into that service. But once in a while cars would be moved from one shipper to another with the understanding the cars aren't completely cleaned.

Made that arrangement with ATSF in the South Plains of W TX for covered hoppers to move sodium sulfate. Cars moved over from chicken feed work with caveat that there could be some heel of feed. I accepted because I had to fill a couple dozen quickly to get to Galveston to meet a ship.

Our people went to the loading station and happily cleaned out the cars since they would be able to take the feed with them back home to feed their stock.