Happy Holidays.
Day Twelve, and I actually made it! Another successful Twelve Days of repaints shared. I hope everyone who downloads these enjoys them as much as I do.
Stay tuned as I hope to share a variety of other projects from this past year. Sadly, I had just transferred a year's worth of projects, resources and more to a portable external drive back in November when my dog startled me and caused me to drop the drive onto my office floor -- killing the drive. To date, I have been unable to get the data recovered. My local shop gave a good try but no success. I now have to decide if it is worth sending out to a company somewhere...sigh.
Meanwhile, still have the dog and I have been able to recover some of my work but talk about frustrating!
Anyway, on to Day Twelve:
==========================================================================================
Helium Rail Cars
kb_christmas_day_12.jpg
These pseudo-cars are my desire to have Helium cars to operate in my game. I decided that after waiting years in hopeful enthusiasm that someone might have created a true prototypical car without any appearing, I might as well create something 'approximating' the appearance of one of my favorite rail cars. These are the result.
BTW, should anyone be interested in building true Helium Cars, I have amassed a significant amount of material that should greatly aid in making these cars. Feel free to contact me.
BackgroundAfter an oil drilling operation in 1903 in Dexter, Kansas produced a gas geyser that would not burn, Kansas state geologist Erasmus Haworth collected samples of the escaping gas and took them back to the University of Kansas at Lawrence where, with the help of chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland, he discovered that the gas consisted of, by volume, 72% nitrogen, 15% methane (a combustible percentage only with sufficient oxygen), 1% hydrogen, and 12% an unidentifiable gas. With further analysis, Cady and McFarland discovered that 1.84% of the gas sample was helium. This showed that despite its overall rarity on Earth, helium was concentrated in large quantities under the American Great Plains, available for extraction as a byproduct of natural gas.
This enabled the United States to become the world's leading supplier of helium. Following a suggestion by Sir Richard Threlfall, the United States Navy sponsored three small experimental helium plants during World War I. The goal was to supply barrage balloons with the non-flammable, lighter-than-air gas. A total of 5,700 m3 (200,000 cu ft) of 92% helium was produced in the program even though less than a cubic meter of the gas had previously been obtained. Some of this gas was used in the world's first helium-filled airship, the U.S. Navy's C-class blimp C-7, which flew its maiden voyage from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 1921, nearly two years before the Navy's first rigid helium-filled airship, the Naval Aircraft Factory-built USS Shenandoah, flew in September 1923.
Although the extraction process using low-temperature gas liquefaction was not developed in time to be significant during World War I, production continued. Helium was primarily used as a lifting gas in lighter-than-air craft. During World War II, the demand increased for helium for lifting gas and for shielded arc welding. The helium mass spectrometer was also vital in the atomic bomb Manhattan Project.
The government of the United States set up the National Helium Reserve in 1925 at Amarillo, Texas, with the goal of supplying military airships in time of war and commercial airships in peacetime. Because of the Helium Act of 1925, which banned the export of scarce helium on which the US then had a production monopoly, together with the prohibitive cost of the gas, German Zeppelins were forced to use hydrogen as lifting gas, which would gain infamy in the Hindenburg disaster. The helium market after World War II was depressed but the reserve was expanded in the 1950s to ensure a supply of liquid helium as a coolant to create oxygen/hydrogen rocket fuel (among other uses) during the Space Race and Cold War. Helium use in the United States in 1965 was more than eight times the peak wartime consumption.
The Rail CarsHelium_prototypes.jpg
General American, American Car & Foundry, and Magor built approximately 200 helium cars between 1930 and 1962. The early cars were lettered for the U.S. Navy (with USNX reporting marks), then after 1955 for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (ATMX) and the Bureau of Mines and Land Management (MHAX).
The first 14 cars were built by General American Tank Car Co. (now General American Marks Co.) in 1930 featured 28 cylinders and two diagonal braces on the open-frame sides. The next group, built by GATX in 1942 and 1943, had the same 30 cylinders and four diagonal cross braces per side. In 1943 there were a total of 76 cars and all were marked USNX and painted Navy gray. This continued through WWII and up through June 1955 with a typical roster of 85 cars.
After July 1955 the fleet was parsed between the Bureau of Mines and the US Atomic Energy Commission. Some new cars were ordered and some were lettered ATMX for the A.E.C. The remainder of the fleet were re-lettered MHAX for the Bureau of Mines. At this time, we suggest that the color was changed from Navy gray to silver. By 1962, when the Navy flew its last airship, there were nearly 200 helium cars were in operation.
By the 1980s the cars were all lettered MHAX. They were then used for servicing NASA Titan rockets and the Space Shuttle up until the last shuttle flight in 2011. The NASA Railroad interchanged with Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, using the cars. The Air Force used helium to purge the lines of the Titan rockets that use liquid fuel. However, the helium arrived as a liquid. So, a plant at Kennedy Space converted it to a gas which was then loaded into these cars and hauled by the NASA Railroad to the Air Force interchange. NASA currently has 34 helium cars in its equipment inventory.
In 1996 the federal government privatized helium production and the cars were soon headed to scrap yards -- though a few survive in museum collections.
Recently, I discovered that a few of the cars were repurposed for use in the Space X engine test complex outside McGregor, Texas. Eight other cars were transferred to California and are on lease tro support the Space X Falcon 9 Launch Complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
SpaceX_Helium.jpg
Quite a long time for these cars to serve their purpose on American railroads.
Locations where one might spot the cars over the lenght of their use:
NASA, Cape Canaveral until 1963, ATSF/FEC
NASA, Cape Kennedy after 1963, ATSF/FEC
NASA/USAF, Vandenberg AFB, ATSF/SP
NASA, Langley, VA, ATSF/C&O
NASA, Bay St. Louis, MS (Stennis), ATSF/L&N
USAEC, Oak Ridge, TN, ATSF/SOU
USAEC, Batavia, IL (Fermi Lab), ATSF/CAE
USN, NAS Lakehurst, NJ, (1926-1962), ATSF/PRR
USN, NAS Weeksville, NC (1943-1957), ATSF/SOU
USN, NAS Moffett Field, CA (1943-1959), ATSF/SP
USN, NAS Tustin, CA (blimp base) during and after WWII
USAF, Rich, CA (Missle Test Center), ATSF
USAF, Muroc, CA (Edwards AFB) until 1953, ATSF
==========================================================================================
https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/yu0trmhamv0hekp/Helium_Cars.zip/fileNai Lye Hiruva Airea Amanar!KevinB
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
These are awesome cars & mean a lot to me. I bounced around through the Welding Supply Industry for many years. Through mergers and Aquisitions I worked for Linde, Air Liqude (Known in the days I worked for them as Liquid Air), Liquid Carbonic, NCG, and AGA. Your work is much appreciated. 
