Before the war, when the USN operated helium filled airships, the helium gas was transported by rail in tank cars. Was the gas under pressure in these cars, if so, what pressure? If not under pressure, this means that the tank cars would weigh less when loaded than when running empty. Regards, Bill.
Bill, before and during the war years helium gas was generally transported in LONG, heavy, pressurized gas cylinders. These were loaded on special open-framed cars designed specifically for the purpose. Ambroid and other HO rolling stock manufacturers offered models of such cars in the past. As to weight difference between filled and empty gas cylinders, it was really negligible This recalls the old folklore story of the football filled with helium, rather than air, being able to carry further down field when thrown - it doesn't really work because of weight to lift ratios.
CNJ999
Typical PC nonsense spouted out by the idiot thus produced by the process. Helium does indeed weigh a certain amount by mole. The conundrum that you're experiencing is that it is highly compressible. A cubic foot of helium could really hurt your foot if you let it fall on you yet that same cubic foot would also be enough to float a balloon. The secret is how many moles are in the cubic foot of the container!
-- Yeppie, Bush is such an idiot that He usually outwits everybody else. How dumb!
Lighter? Non-compressed helium is lighter than air, but how would you get it in and out of a cylinder? If you tried to put it into a tank full of air you would end up with a mix of air and helium and then when unloading you would mix even more air with the degraded mix. To keep the helium 'pure' you would have to evacuate the tank first until you had a vacuum. Helium has weight so the filled tank would be heavier than the empty tank. Getting the load out again would be a very interesting operation!
I'd guess helium was and is shipped compressed.
Regards, Greg.P.
>And to think I fell for the story that the Navy had to put spare anchors on the top of the cars when full........;-) Paul in Fl.
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