Subject:
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Help identifying heavy freight flat car
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Mon, 5 Jun 2006 22:55:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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2228 times
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After some relatively exhaustive research, I've come up empty handed in trying
to identify a freight car I saw last week. It looked so neat that it made me
want to build it, but without a camera I only have my vague memory to work off
of.
I'm hoping that some of you train heads will be able to help me out.
It was sometime last week, the end of May, in Webster, Texas, just south of
Houston and north of Galveston.
A large diesel-electric engine was pulling (well, he was stationary at the time)
one and only one car on a single line. There are no rail yards to my knowledge
in the direct vicinity, so I don't really know what he was doing. The car was
what I would describe as a super heavy chassis, but I would not describe it as a
Schnabel.
It was a flat car, with a very depressed center, and was just about the length,
or maybe 1/3 again the length of the locomotive. I don't know what the load
was, but it was about as tall and wide as the locomotive and about half to 2/3rd
the locomotive's length. It looked like a large, light grey box with three or
so fan shrouds on the upper section. The load sat on a platform about half the
width of the entire car.
It must have been really heavy, too, because there were no cables or lips or
anything else that I could see to help secure the load to the car.
The car's upper sections were very high off the ground, half way up the load's
height, or 2/3rds up the height of the locomotive. At the very least there was
a good 6 feet of clearance between the bottom of the sections and the track.
These upper sections sat on what looked like curved span bolsters, around a 150
degree arc. The sections were flat on top and angled on the bottom, to make
room for the bolsters, and had flat sides where they faced the load.
The upper sections did not touch the load, which is why I don't think it was a
Schnabel, but I suppose it could have been one with a flatbed attached, instead
of the load itself.
I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the car was 8 axle, with 2 axle bogies on
either end of each bolster. It is possible, because my memory is so fuzzy on it
(I was driving 50mph, trying to see the car and not crash) that it was a 16
axle, with each 2 axle bogie attached to a small span bolster attached to the
arched span bolsters described earlier.
I hope that was descrptive enough. Anyone have any bright ideas? (or better yet
pictures!)
--Anthony
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