In the photo of the stencil on the truck bolster,severe damage to the body bolster bottom plate due to an off center truck. If this car is to continue to operate the damage should be repaired before cracks radiate from the tears. Do you plan to repair this prior to painting?
That is why we need experienced industry people like you, Kirk. The car is now on Track 61 and perhaps you can snag one of our welders when you visit Wednesday, if that is the correct way to fix this.
Bob Kutella
I looked at that area again yesterday and could not figure out how that might happen. My thought now is that double shelf couplers were mandated on tank cars some years ago. Those are to prevent uncoupling in a derailment where an exposed coupler might ram the end of the tank on the next car and puncture it. So my theory now is that a string of tank cars with those locking couplers ran across rough track and bounced at some speed. The cars did not uncouple and the air hoses remained intact - the train kept moving. But enough vertical movement of the lead car lifted our car enough to dislodge the center bearing and the truck became free and rolled backwards with the flanges cutting into the bottom plate of the body bolster.
Bob Kutella
That identification may be helpful in an accident investigation, but on almost all our freight cars it is not apparent or was not maintained by the railroads. There is no consistent placement of any such numbering or any standard size of the letters.
Bob Kutella