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Looks like plastic irrigation pipe/hose to me. We see a lot of it here in the Niagara Peninsula, and I’d guess there to be lots of it used in the B.C. interior, too.
Wayne
So, is that a repurposed auto rack? with the center deck removed? or is it something put together on a flat car for hauling the drain pipe?
Mike.
To me, it looks like a set of racks built to transport the pipe. The supports for an auto rack would be much heavier to support tons of vehicles
Could also be what we in the Midwest call field tile - except it’s now plastic instead of, umm, tile. In that case, it’s used for drainage. Both look the same for modeling purposes, as the difference is that drainage tile has small slots or other pirecings that let the water into it to be carried away.
Interesting repurposing of the autorack for this bulky, low mass commodity.
I tried to look up the car in CP’s roster, no luck. Only a couple of cars in the 550000 series, and they are auto racks.
So I guess this once was an auto rack, sides stripped off, and rebuilt to haul the drain tile.
You see alot of it on the road in semi trailers, repurposed the same way this flat car is.
Mike.
Have a plant here that makes plastic tiles and they ship out by truck but the pellets to make the tile comes in covered hoppers so that is a win win for both modes.
Yep, your right, the two places that I know of that make it get the pellets in railcars.
Mike.