Will try to make this as non-controversial as possible.
Saw a pig train. Saw regular couplers. Saw flatcars put together as a unit - shared wheels. But then saw just drawbars with no couplers. Assume these are also a “unit”.
Any comments?
Jen
Multiple-unit cars come two ways:
Articulated cars share a common truck between units.
Stand-alone cars are connected by a drawbar between units, but each unit rides on its own trucks.
The flatcars are probably “long runners” - two 89’ flatcars connected with a drawbar and configured to carry three 53’ trailers. One trailer spans the connection between cars. Double-stack cars are also built with drawbars for higher load capacities than articulated cars have, especially for loading with two 53’ containers in each car.
The articulated flatcars were probably spine cars, designed to carry one trailer or container on each platform.
All of these are just variations on designs to efficiently carry containers and trailers. the “long runners” are generally recycled flatcars, in order to get more service life out of the cars.
i see those on CN trains all the time
they carry just the same way as a normal flat or well car does
Hi Jenny,
Were the flat cars regular flats, or well cars designed to carry containers?
Most container cars are permanently or semi-permamently connected with draw bars, in three or five car units. They count as one car in your consist, granted one long car.
ATSF had quite a few five unit well cars that shared a set of trucks between the middle cars, with a coupler at either end.
Either way, when the cars are connected by a drawbar instead of a coupler, all the cars connected are deemed as a single car.
So if you have 2 sets of five unit well cars, even though you have 10 wells, you only have two cars.
Yes, it can cause problems when talking to a dispatcher, you only have ten cars, but your train is thousands of feet longer than it should be.
Once you tell them what kind of cars, they understand.
So the answer to both of your questions is yes.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
One addition to what Ed said. The stack packs are one car for manifest purposes, but for air brake purposes they are more. Usually a 5-pack has two air brake valves, while a 3-pack has only one. This becomes important when you have to set out a bad order or when one of the valves fails.
LC
In these parts, they count platforms, not cars, to prevent confusion. A train with ten 5-packs has 50 cars as far as the RTC (dispatcher) is concerned. They often speak in terms of train length (in feet) and tonnage, since that gets right to the point of what sidings he’ll fit and how fast he’ll be getting over the road.
you are making it hard on a novice.
Maybe you should explain what I would see if I saw a “spine” car, a “well” car and a flat car - which I always thought I knew what it looked like.
These cars - only two of them - looked very flat to me - had only a drawbar between them. No couplers. Looked just like normal flatcars, otherwise. No air between them, no frills, no nothing - just what looked like two drawbars, somehow held together.
Jen
went out on Google - saw some well cars - none of these were well cars. They were all flat - not sure about spine or not. Which brings up another question - a well car and a gondola - is it the shape that makes these two different?
Jen
A well car is designed to carry containers; a gondola isn’t.
The well car is shaped vaguely like a gondola, except the well is between the trucks, riding just above the rail, whereas a gondola’s “well” is above the trucks. The well car is designed this way to keep the top of the load (two stacked containers) low to clear obstructions, and to keep the center of gravity low.
Question, if you took a trilevel auto rack, and removed the rack and enclouser, would that be close to what you saw?
UP recycled some old racks, ttx cars, into special flat cars for odd shaped cargo, turbines, generators, big heat condensers, things like that.
just a thought.
Ed
Ed - driver confirmed they were very flat and marked TTX.
Auto racks - aren’t they just a car by themselves? These looked like two cars that may not be separated - joined by the drawbar from each car and maybe a long pipe over the end of them - driver said maybe had a pin in each end of the pipe to hold it onto the drawbars themselves. Does this sound logical or is the heat getting to both of us?
Jen
No, it sounds like a pair of TTX flats modified to carry something long. The connection point for a coupler and a drawbar is the same, so hooking them up is no big deal.
We get them in here all the time, carrying big pipe, and oil field equipment.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Hi, Sis!
Sounds like you and your driver saw a TTX Long Runner car. Those are two of the old 89-foot piggyback cars joined together by a drawbar (and there would still have to be a brake pipe or hose of sorts between them). These cars are capable of handling three 53-foot trailers (if the cars were capable of being separated you’d only be able to put one 53-footer on each, and very little else). They may even say something about 57-foot trailers, which is supposed to be the next big step (haven’t encountered any of those, thank Goodness!). Anyway, the middle trailer rides over the drawbar/gap between the two units.
A well car for double-stacked containers has no solid bottom, so would make a very poor gondola. The intermodal wells that are capable of carrying trailers (with a hitch at the end of the well) have a solid bottom to accommodate the tires, but they wouldn’t be able to support a gondola-type load.
For you car-counters out there: for some reason, the spine cars come up on our lists as single cars (Jen, the spine cars are intermodal skeletons with three or five units usually, and wheels at the articulated connection…no double-stacking there), but the stack cars are shown as separate units, no matter how they’re connected.
It may also be interesting to note that the Florida East Coast, which has intermodal cars of almost every variety, has separated some of its three-unit drawbar-connected well cars, replaced drawbars with couplers, and given each of them its own number.
Carl
Gentlemen: I will have to print this off, go to a quiet place and study all this. I am now thoroughly confused and feel like I will see the white rabbit going down the track pulling a legos train!
I will have to get back to all of you in a saner moment. In the meantime, I will go take pictures and study this situation a little more.
This trying to learn what is going on at anywhere from 10-20 mph or whatever the speed limit is coming and going into and out of the yard - ain’t easy!
Mook
Mookie,
If you want to understand the North American Intermodal fleet, you might want to look at a couple of web sites that include pictures, mechanical specifications, deminsions, etc.
The first place place to look at would be TTX’s site, since they are the primary provider of intermodal railcars to the rail industry: http://www.ttx.com/ttxdb/searchcar.asp .
Next, I would look at Greenbrier’s site. Greenbrier pioneered the development of double-stack techonlogy with SP back in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s and curently builds more new double-stack cars than anyone else: http://www.gbrx.com/products/products_frame.html.
Also, Trinity Rail is the largest railcar builder in North America and has a full line of intermodal cars: http://www.trinityrail.com/products/index.html.
Other builders of intermodal cars are Johnstown America, http://www.johnstownamerica.com, and National Steel Car, http://www.steelcar.com.
Lastly, if you haven’t already, check out the Class I web sites. but they generally don’t include too many pictures of their cars.
Thanks *** - I did go to Google and looked at their images on different websites. Some of them were ok, but a lot were either so far away or so dark, I couldn’t really see them. I will go check out these new places over my lunch hour.
Jen
Jen
Look at it this way what you saw was 2 flats coupled together with a solid drawbar. no coupler. the other cars these guys are talking about is stack cars. same thing they just take 3 or five of them and permanatly couple these cars together. that is it as far as the cars go.
Now lets go one step farther. what we call stack is trailers ( containers) with no wheels these trailers go to a yard and is off loaded to a chassie to be hauld to destination. flat cars hold complete trailers. ( wheels and all) and are off loaded also the perpose of the containers are it may have come in on a ship from overseas or may be sent over seas. makes them stackable to save space. unless you really wanted to get in with both feet it dont matter wither it is a spine or a articulate car. they pull the same and do mostly the same thing. just the type of trailer they hold is differant.
SP pioneered double stacks & spine cars? I think not & it was Santa Fe who came out with an odd shaped (not square) double stack that sat on a spine car. It’s a shame one of those car containers didn’t make it to a museum after sitting in San Bernardino for years.
Somebody better get ready to explain to Mookie what an IBC is as well…(Hint: it’s not an itty-bitty-chinaman)
Santa Fe invented spine cars, but it was the SP/Greenbrier team that invented the doublestack revolution. In fact, Santa Fe for a while, after SP and UP had both addopted stacks, said they were going to stick with TOFC rather than stacks. Of course the economics of stacks eventually swayed them to change their position and also adopt stacks.
Gentlemen: To all who have tried to “straighten me out” - it’s a long line.
Anyway - I went home and we had our usual suppertime conversation - what I found on the forum. With a lot of hand waving, flapping and pointing (we look like a mime convention) we came to the same conclusion.
First, I know the difference between containers and trailers. That made this even more interesting. I remember thinking at the time - this particular pig train had FLAT cars - no wells, no restraints that were visable and they weren’t double stacks. Only one container high! So what kept the containers from sliding off? Weight?
The entire train consisted of 3 sets, 5 sets (I can count to 5) with shared wheels. AND a couple of these odd ones that looked exactly like regular FLAT cars only they shared ONE LONG Drawbar. Each had its own wheels. NO COUPLERS. I don’t know how they were attached and if they had an air line, it was hidden from view - it didn’t hang down like air hoses usually do.
Could it have been made that way - in sets of two - sharing a single drawbar or two long drawbars pinned together?
2 sets of eyes saw exactly this and since his are better than mine, I figure we got it right!
Mookie