January/February 1988
Old Tank Cars Get New Life as Culverts
Recycling moves out-of-service tanks from railways to waterways.
Most people expect Union Tank Car Company's rolling stock to be in perfect running order. But Dan Barrett is an exception. He welcomes cars with broken valves, damaged brake gears, or missing handrails. In fact, he wouldn't even care if the wheels were torn off.
That's because Barrett, president of Barrett Tankcar Company, in Reynolds, Indiana, gives the cars a second life as culverts. By cutting off the ends of the tanks and removing the manways and any other protrusions, he produces culverts that are stronger and lower in cost than conventional corrugated metal units.
Barrett, who took over the company in 1983, now sells more than 200 tank-cars-turned-culverts each year. His suppliers are scrap processors who buy retired tank cars from manufacturers such as Union Tank Car after the cars have seen up to 40 years of active service. Though he buys cars from several sources, he estimates that more than half of them carry UTLX reporting marks.
Barrett usually buys the cars with wheels and end frames already removed, then transports them to his work yard for conversion into culverts. "It's a pretty simple procedure," he notes. "We just cut off the ends of the tank so that water can flow through it. Then we cut off the manway and any top fittings and weld steel plates over the holes."
Road Construction Projects
His most frequent customers are government agencies that use culverts in road construction projects. The company has delivered hundreds of transformed tanks destined to become anything from county bridge ducts to. interstate highway spillways throughout six states in the Midwest. "County workers like the toughness of tank car culverts because they don't have to be handled, as carefully as corrugated. culverts, which can bend if they are dropped," Barrett says. "A job can be done very quickly, because a bulldozer can knock my culverts right into place."
Officials who must answer to taxpayers like the culverts' price as well. Depending on how far the product must be hauled to the job site, Barrett saves customers one-third to one-half of the price of corrugated culverts and, even more compared with a concrete conduit.
With a welding torch and a bit of ingenuity, Barrett has developed several other uses for his tank car shells. Once he stacked 12 of them vertically to serve as a mine shaft. He also installed elbows between several tanks to follow--and sometimes redirect--the course of a creek.
Irrigation Ditches
Farmers are another major customer group for Barrett. Besides selling culverts, the company installs adjustable gates on the ends ditches for irrigation. Another popular use is as storage tanks a, conversion that usually requires nothing more than installation of a stainless, steel valve coupler on the, end of the tank.
Barrett also buys scrap flatcars which are finding, new lives as bridges built by county highway departments and farmers. The flatcars require even less reconditioning; usually just steel plates welded over holes left when the couplers are removed.
Product demand has increased to the point where Barrett now keeps, about 30 tank cars in his work yard at all times. Says Barrett, "I'm glad the business is growing."