At least in the few places I’ve seen, tanks are loaded circus-style, driven on from the ramp to the end of the string of flatcars. An M1 Abrams tank weighs close to 70 tons fueled and loaded; maybe someone else knows, but I don’t think the tracks would take kindly to having forklift forks jammed under them and slid out from under them. Besides, it would take a heck of a forklift to lift an Abrams.
During the buildup to Gulf War I, CSX shuttled two or three trainsets of flatcars from Ft. Stewart, GA to the state docks in Savannah (distance of about 30 miles from loading to unloading point), for days on end. Ft. Stewart was then the home of the 24th (Mechanized) Infantry Div., with quantities of tanks, trucks and other heavy equipment. I would have loved to have watched the loading/unloading operations, but didn’t have the chance. However, I did see USNS Bellatrix sailing down the Savannah River leaving for the Middle East. The city there is atop a bluff that is probably 20+ feet tall, and the side of the ship looked like a 3 or 4 story tall gray wall going past. Quite a sight!
It was cool to see the tractors with the backwards facing cabs (windshield faces the fifth wheel) so they could see as they were backing up. Still staying that straight for 4 or 5 car lengths had to be pretty hard.
Fortunately, when the “Proviso Piggyback Plaza” was a circus ramp, they had tracks for trailers loaded in either direction. Which side they used to load the trailers depended on how they had to face at their offloading point. This was eventually replaced with a Piggypacker operation, and later by Global 2, which has a number of cranes and handles containers.
One time I (who knew what was coming) asked a pinpuller which ramp he would spot a particular car at. He had a definite answer, based on the hitch at the east end of the car. But I was waiting for the look on his face when he saw the hitch facing the other way on the opposite end of the car! I wasn’t disappointed.
I’m not sure, b/c my familiarity with this type of device is FAR lower than the rest of you here, but I think something of this sort exists on the UP line a few miles W of Riverside, CA, just E of the I-15. There’s a small yard around there that has a small spur snaking out on the south side, with what looks (vaguely) like a ramp structure at the end of the spur. Any other CA railfanners out there, correct me if I’m wrong[:I]…
Watched a construction company unload earthmovers from conventional flats one day. They had some steel plates which they shuffled around with a forklift for bridging between flat cars. Drive-on / drive-off – very slowly as the earthmover is slightly wider than the flat car deck.
CP loads its Expressway circus style. The train runs between Montreal and Torontoand it does not require the trailers to be modified for Piggyback service (no reinforced kingpin) as there is no slack in the train, the only couplers are to the locomotives.