Product Description

General American Transportation Corporation (GATX / GATC) — Chicago IL, historically operating as General American Tank Car Corporation and later GATX Rail — was through the 20th century the largest lessor and one of the largest builders of railroad tank cars in North America. GATX built and leased tank cars for the chemical, petroleum, food, and other bulk-liquid industries.

Two significant tank-car categories required substantial thermal insulation:

  • Insulated tank cars carrying commodities that had to be protected from ambient temperature swings (chemicals, food-grade liquids, certain acids)
  • Heated tank cars carrying commodities that had to be maintained above ambient temperature via internal steam coils (asphalt, molten sulfur, heavy oils, tallow, corn syrup)

Insulation was applied to the outer tank shell beneath a sheet-metal jacket, and internal steam coils in heated cars were themselves insulated to preserve heat transfer to the lading.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that GATX/GATC insulated and heated tank cars were specified through the asbestos era with:

  • Asbestos block insulation (typically amosite and later calcium-silicate/asbestos hybrids) on outer tank shells
  • Asbestos blanket and pipe-covering insulation on internal steam-heating coils
  • Asbestos-cement plaster finish at insulation seams and around fittings
  • Asbestos-fiber sheet gaskets at manway covers, dome fittings, and bottom-outlet valves
  • Asbestos rope and packing at valve stems and safety-valve interfaces

Tank car repairmen, tank-car insulators, and railroad shop workers were allegedly exposed to respirable asbestos fibers when stripping and replacing tank-car insulation and jacketing during periodic shop rebuilds, and when scraping asbestos gasket material from manway and dome fittings.

General American Transportation Corporation has been named as a Manufacturer Defendant in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation.

Workers Exposed

  • Tank car repairmen at GATX and independent tank-car repair shops
  • Tank-car insulators applying and stripping shell and coil insulation
  • Railroad car shop workers servicing GATX-owned and GATX-leased fleets
  • Tank car cleaners entering insulated cars for internal cleaning
  • Chemical-plant tank-car maintenance workers at private-siding facilities