Tank car#Torpedo cars

A ladle car is a special rail car that is intended for the transport of liquid pig iron. The name Pan derives from the container in which originally the pig iron was collected from the blast furnace, ladle cf. This was a shallow bowl, so the tap hole of the " high " furnace did not have to be unnecessarily high places.

Today's blast furnaces, however, have a lower level, can drive through the direct trains. The pig iron runs down here during tapping into the prepared pan car, which today take the form of pots or cigars (so-called torpedo cars, see the next section) have.

In the car the still liquid pig iron is transported for further processing in the foundry ( cast iron ) or to the converter (see steel production ).

Thus, the 1,400 ° C hot pig iron during transport not too cool and the cars are not damaged, the pans are double lined inside with firebrick. The cup-shaped pan cars are also covered with a lid.

For services outside the factory premises empty flat cars are often inserted as a spacer in the train, in order to avoid too high a wing loading on bridges between the ladle cars. On the factory premises bridges are structurally far partly avoided or designed sufficiently strong.

Torpedo cars

The torpedo car (also torpedo ladle car or hot metal mixer wagon called ) is a pan car, the pan ( the pig iron mixer) has a reminiscent of a torpedo shape: an elongated container having a round cross -section between two bogies. Of pig iron by means of a mixer can be established in the steel mill drive, which engages in the mechanics of the stationary vehicle, is rotated, in order to empty it. There are also torpedo car with its own rotary engine.

The cars have other than the container itself no frame between the bogies so that the container can be as large as possible. Torpedo cars are partly used for oversized clearance gauge only on sections of track within the steelworks, on which there is the pig iron transportation.

A typical torpedo cars summarizes 160-320 tons of molten iron; A train consists of four to six such cars. The high dynamic forces that are generated by a sloshing liquid level can destroy the foundations of the surrounding buildings.

Torpedo car close firmly and the iron can considerably longer hold liquid (up to 30 hours) than normal ladle cars.