I’ve never heard of doublestack well cars used for transporting anything else besides intermodal containers?
DTTX #727552, a 53’ well car, is carrying a single-stack container and a very unusual load on top of it.
This well car at one of Boeing’s plants appears to be hauling containers that appear to be about twice the height of usual containers.
Nothing unusual about the first picture other than there are five containers stacked. The top four are “Flat Rack” containers with the bulkheads folded down. With the end bulkheads folded up they can carry cargo that won’t fit through end doors, and they are capable of being top-lifted and supporting another container above.
If they can be connected to the lower container with IBCs, they’re fair game.
@ Eric: it won’t work…put one of these on the highway, and the Clinton Street viaduct will still win! Seriously, I’m wondering whether this is an adjustment Boeing made so it doesn’t require its own well cars in some instances.
Note the “reporting mark” on a couple of them - RDIU = Rail Decks Intermodal.
Here’s a link to a webpage that in turn has further links to several detail photos (none are mine) of them: http://www.matts-place.com/intermodal/part3/53foot.htm Scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page, and in the table under “53’ FLAT RACKS” you’ll see RDIU 510004 and RDIU 510010. Click on those and the links under “NOTES” to see most of the details. Here’s just one of a flat-rack in the ‘up’ position for those of you who want to “cut to the chase” right away:
http://www.matts-place.com/intermodal/part3/images/rdiu510004_view2.jpg
Note that these are manufactured by MANAC in Canada - see:
http://www.matts-place.com/intermodal/part3/images/rdiu510010_builders_plate.jpg
For something just as odd, in that same table click on the link just above the RDIU for "NS chassis racks: http://www.matts-place.com/intermodal/part3/images/ns_chassis_rack.jpg
And then this one for how a J.B. Hunt version looks when loaded:
http://www.matts-place.com/intermodal/part3/images/jbhu900025_side_view.jpg
- Paul North.
The Boeing loads are most probably a dedicated container load, possibly with some specific airfoils (maybe a horizontal stabilizer Tail(?) of one of their products, maybe wing parts. Driving by the Spirit Aero Plant’s backside area and you’ll see fuselages loaded,and their attendant O H cars ( for tail assembly parts(?). BNSF brings them down for set out from their Wichita Yard. I would suspect when Boeing gets their operation going in South Carolina (the one in the news recently for their Union Problems); Folks in the South East will start seeing the Boeing cars on trains over there. Seems most of the time the Boeing cars run right behind the head-end locomotives.
Hawker Beachcraft seems to use on road transport for their products (CFI pulls them over-length and sometimes over width) in the Wichita area.
The Boeing containers definitely could not go by truck. I figure all rail plant to plant or port to plant. The bridge over the rail line appears to be low. They may be in-plant only containers, perhaps to transport some assembly that needs support during the movement.
Cool - I spent a week at the hotel a few hundred feet to the WSW of that image, though didn’t venture over that part of Mukilteo.
- Erik