Railway car

Claim 1

An open top gondola railway car comprising, a closed bottom, a pair of generally vertically extending end panels, a pair of generally vertically extending side panels, said bottom, said side panels and said end panels being connected together to form the open top gondola car, reinforcing means for reinforcing said side panels, said reinforcing means comprising a pair of side sills extending for the length of the car, one on each side thereof, and stiffener means operatively connected to the sills and extending vertically upwardly therefrom for stiffening the side panels, a pair of end stub center sills located one at each end of the car along the longitudinal center line thereof, and each end center sill supporting its respective end of the car, a pair of wheel assemblies located one at each end of the car, each end stub center sill resting on one of said wheel assemblies, said bottom including a bottom sheet connected along its longitudinal edges to the bottoms of the side panels, extending downwardly between the wheel assemblies, and being parabolic in shape, taken in a plane transverse to the longitudinal direction of the car, in both its unloaded and its loaded condition, said bottom sheet being free of external and internal reinforcement, thus permitting its parabolic shape to be stabilized by loads within the car which subject the bottom sheet only to tensile stresses in a modified hoop stress manner, and means for interconnecting said end stub center sills to said side sills for force transmission therebetween such that end compressive forces exerted on the ends of the gondola car on either end stub center sill in a longitudinal direction of the car are transmitted along the length of the car to the other end stub center sill substantially through said side sills, substantially bypassing said parabolic bottom sheet.