Hello all!
I got out, and did some train watching/photography today. (If you were in Indiana it was a good day for it!) I went up to the Lafayette Indiana Amtrak Station (Not the platform, the pedestrian bridge.) and saw these flats come through on a westbound mixed freight. They seem to be some sort of frames for something or other. I’m not sure exactly what they are.
Can someone I.D. these for me?
Thanks so much!
Justin
They almost look like empties racks returning to the Windmill plant for a load of Hubs for the Blades. They have to ship the hub on a rack to prevent damage to the bearing on the inside edge of it. That could be what your seeing. I remember seeing something simalar on a truck hauling a hub near me last spring as they were building the wind farms.
…I certainly don’t know what they might be used for…They of course seem to be steel frames for a certain purpose.
Nice photo Justin…
Justin:
Excuse an old man with poor eyesight, but looking towards the boxcars and that direction.
The Box appears to be an excess heoight car (white paint on car top) A major use for thatkind of car is bulk delivery of automotive parts?
And it looks like in front of that might be enclosed autoracks forward of the excess height boxcar(s).
Could the steel racks be racks to carry partially assembled auto body assemblies( looks like provisions for forklifting on the sides of the bottoms of the racks?
Well, Those are my gusses![X-)]
those racks are what they use for car and truck frames. one on bottom and one on top. tied down and shipped
I remember when they used to ship the frames in racks in gons. Saw many of them passing through my old home town - although I forget whether they were headed north to the auto plants in Flint and Saginaw, or south from those same cities…
…I believe I’ve seen, in past decades…truck frames being shipped in low type gondolas and resting {packed}, sticking up at a slight angle.
They sure look like empty auto-frame cars. Nice to see something like that moving, instead of in storage. Each of those square things will sometime be on top of pairs of frames stacked 12 or 13 high.
Larry and Quentin, I wish I could say I remember those gondola loads of frames, but I don’t–not firsthand, anyway. I saw pictures of the frame gons, and know that the Pere Marquette especially had a goodly number of these cars, modified from ordinary gons and renumbered into a specific series for frame service. Meanwhile I was growing up at a location far removed from the routes normally used by any automobile or parts cars.
“…Larry and Quentin, I wish I could say I remember those gondola loads of frames, but I don’t–not firsthand, anyway. I saw pictures of the frame gons, and know that the Pere Marquette especially had a goodly number of these cars, modified from ordinary gons and renumbered into a specific series for frame service. Meanwhile I was growing up at a location far removed from the routes normally used by any automobile or parts cars…”
Carl;
I am afraid my age might be showing, but maybe this will help. Unitl the middle 1960’s most cars, and practically all trucks were built on seperate frame assemblies to which the bodies were attached. The the Car companies started using unitbody construction; where the bodies were assembled from stamped body parts( I know for the techies, this is an overly simplified verson- at the risk of being accused of telling the forum members how o build a watch, when asked what time is it- I’ll those guys do the searches and figure it out[:-,]).
Growing up in Memphis,Tn. we had a Fisher Body Co plant ( built bodies for GM) and a Ford Motor Assembly plant. It was not unusual to see railcars (gons or flats with frames contained therein) moving in trains about town. And it was in the 1960 when the frame movements seems to start disappearing( as GM closed out their Fisher Body Plants and Ford consolidated their operations).
About the only people still using ladder frames are the heavy and medium truck builders, and I think they pretty much form them on the truck assembly lines.
I edited my previous post with a link that actually shows the car.
It would make sense that I saw such cars on a regular basis - the line I lived near was a PM main before it was folded into the C&O.
nice picture Justin.looks like they are for auto or truck frames.
stay safe
joe
Larry,
Yes, those are indeed racks for hauling pickup truck frames. Tower Automotive in Plymouth, MI makes them and heaven knows where they are sent. Last I knew, they were building the for GM, Ford and Chrysler, but that was several years ago.
Now; if I may ask a question, I’,m wondering where you lived in Michigan. A lot of those frames were transported to Chevrolet in Flint. That leads me to believe you must have been near CSX’s Saginaw Subdivision, and north of Plymouth. I live in Waterford, but used to see trainloads of them moving north on the Saginaw and emptys heading south. With the demise of GM production in Michigan they are not seen there nearly as often. I have a contact on the Saginaw Sub, and the latest information is that there used to be sixteen trains a day on that line north of Plymouth. They are now down to only four manifests and one or two coal drags on a good day. That saddens me, and I’m rooting for my friend who has only a few more years to go before he can ‘hang it up and get his retirement from the RRB’.
Michigan’s manufacturing base has gone severely downhill in the past few years. We are also ‘out of the way’, and I don’t see things getting any better here for quite some time.
You are transplanted, but I think you were once a reasonably close neighbor.
Just a comment on Michigan: I think if I stay here long enough I may have the state all to myself.
Milford - the Saginaw sub runs right through the middle of the village. Nowhere near as busy as it used to be - over my last few visits I’ve only caught a couple of trains. Back in junior high school, when I walked the mile from my house on the south side to the school on the north side (up hill both ways), I can remember three trains passing through town each morning during the course of my 20 minute walk. There were four crossings in town then, which meant the horn was pretty much continuous.
Milford is about MP 70. There’s still a siding there, but I don’t think there’s anyone getting service on it any more.
Nice conversation about the auto-frame cars, but now I’m wondering. The cars I’m used to seeing have four stacks on them, and a pair of boxes on one end in which the spacers are stored on the empties (these spacers go between the individual frames in the stacks). I don’t see those boxes on these cars.
However, I got a shock once, after thinking that all auto-frame cars looked alike. We’d been used to seeing the frame cars go to GM, in Janesville, Wisconsin. All of a sudden, we got a couple of frame cars that didn’t belong here (I think they might have been for Dodge trucks or something), and they looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Speaking of strange frame cars, Penn Central used to have some flat cars with racks on them for carrying subcompact frames for Chrysler’s Belvidere Plant (they were building small cars in the 1970s). These were 85- or 89-foot flats, and carried at least two layers of frames. I can’t remember the details, just the cars themselves (green, naturally!).
Justin, if you see anything like this again, get a reporting mark and number if at all possible. By the way, if the reporting mark is FTTX, it’s definitely a frame car.
Norm, you could be right–I’ve been gone from Michigan for almost 40 years, but my name could have been Carl49417. My brother-in-law recently penned a short story based on a bumper sticker that’s been floating around: “Would the last person to leave Michigan please turn out the lights?”
Hello again all.
Thanks for the complements on the photo! I never would have guessed that these were the caps for the truck frames. I mean, they come through all the time, but I never made the connection. Thanks all.
Larry, and whom may wish to discuss it. That sure is an odd way to carry those frames. It must not be done that way anymore. At least around here. I know when those flats loaded down with those truck/bus frames (Bus frames come through here once in a while as well.) come through Lafayette Jct. (About 1 mile from this location) You should see them just rock and roll back and forth! I mean they are moving through there at maybe…55mph. Good lord! I mean they really move back and fourth! My mom has commented before “Oh dear… it looks as if they might flip the whole car over!”.
Thanks all!
Justin
? One rack on top, and one on bottom of the car and truck frames? Is it a whole stack of frames?
Yes, Norris–actually two stacks of 12 or 13 frames each, separated by spacers. When loaded, the cars are pretty tall–sometimes taller than normal auto racks.
Here’s are links to a couple of photos - not mine - of one 'under load, FTTX 604139 in East St. Louis in May 2006:
http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=1011
With the benefit of Carl’s tip, I searched that site for the ‘‘Reporting Marks’’ of ‘‘FTTX’’, and came up with a total of 16 photos. Most are similar, but a few are different.
I used to see these quite often in the Reading, Penn. area - there was a plant of the Dana Corp.'s Parrish Division there, which has been closed for like 10 years now. Also, on the Reading in Philadelphia - I presume from a Budd Co. plant at Hunting Park, but maybe not.
Well I made the regular and very human mistake I assumed you would know frames was stacked between the top and bottom. my screw up. just dont beat me masta
No, actually you assumed that I’m smarter than I really am. (Thank You![:)]). The reason I asked, is it appeared to me, that there was only one rack at each spot on the flatcar, not two. Is there two at each spot, a top and a bottom rack, and I’m just not seeing it right?
