I worked at an airport during Christmas break from college. We had a big front end loader that was made by Fiat-Allis. Everybody just called that piece of equipment Fat Alice. It was big, heavy and could be difficult to work with. I was reminded of Fat Alice the other day.
I was reading a book the other day about a great big tank that the Germans were trying to develop during World War 2. One of the roadblocks was that the tank would weigh about 220 tons- 440,000#. It would be so heavy that it couldn’t be moved by rail. In addition to the bridges, it was said the weight would destroy all culverts and switches and tend to break the rails and ties. That seemed a little far fetched but maybe not by much.
When a heavy load is sent on one of the Schnabel rail cars, does someone do a preliminary check that the track and infrastructure are up to the task all the way to the destination? Isn’t that where there was a failure on some NASA parts in Alabama?
True outsized loads are exhaustively measured and plotted against all the clearance data that exists for the route of the load. Specific handling restrictions are issued for each load. On CSX clearance measurement vehicles operate over territories at least yearly, and more frequently if necessary to keep up with changes happening on territories.
I recall a number of years ago, a load was recieved through the Port of Baltimore and destined to a desination on the then Norfolk Western. To move the load both N&W and B&O assigned power and a 200 ton Wreck Crane and associated tool cars to bracket the load and be in position to rerail the car should it derail. The load was delivered to destination without incident.
(1) The engineering departments of the Class 1’s and a few of the 2’s, 3’s and 4’s have extensive records and computer routing programs to handle High/wide/heavies on the main tracks and major sidings. No BIG load goes anywhere without coordination between engineering, mechanical and operating forces and the consignee. The big wildcard will always be the industry track the load comes out of and any yard the load encounters. (Our guy in the swamp knitting sweaters for the gators right now has some stories.)
Certain bridges, while normally rated for 263K-286K-315K, can accomodate a heavier load under controlled circumstances. The tradeoff is the railroad may be shortening the service life of the bridge because of the excess flexure caused by the load. While the marketing and operating guys might want the load, the bridge engineer and the Chief Engineer may kill the deal. (seen a few of those rhubarbs)
(2) The Meridian & Bigbee rocket motor fail was ironically a bridge under rehab with an FRA Bridge inspector that was either there or just left. An awful lot of fuel was fed to the regulatory FRA 214 fire after that incident. Ironically, there are still shortlines dragging their feet on the bridge issue, either because they can’t afford it or they have zero expertise on staff and think they (operating bubbas mostly) know better. The regulatory compliance clock is about to hit zero, by the way.
Murphy my husband is saying your talking about the Maus tank and yes she was going to be a beast. Think 200 tons on land powered by a U-boat engine with 1500 HP a 128mm Main gun a 75 mm secondary gun flamethrower in the rear and several 20mm guns for close in defense. There is one of these monsters that does exsist it was captured at the factory by the Soviet Union and is at their tank museum. The British got another unfinished hull and their 32 pound gun could only dent the armor. The Russian 122mm the best gun they had could not penetrate it. How did the Russians get it home they Drove it home from Germany.
I’ve seen Schnable cars sitting at the rail yard in Duluth, MN. They look like a pretty interesting piece of engineering work. How do you think they price a move by a Schnable car? Would it be something like $2,000 freight plus $50,000 Fat Alice surcharge? Or would it just be one charge @ $52,000 thank you? Because these cars might not move a lot, are they typically railroad owned or third party owned?
Don’t know the complete answer. On CSX the charge for a Special Train is $25K + $105 per mile. I have no idea what the shipper/consignee has to pay for the lease of the schnable cars if they don’t own them. Railroads do not invest in schnable cars. I doubt that their lease comes cheap and they are on the hook from the time the car arrives at the loading location until the car has been released empty at the unloading location. I am certain that the shipper & consignee will also have to hire local rigging contractors to assist in loading and unloading the shipment, as well as setting it up at destination. I have no real idea of the freight charges for what is being moved, however, with high value, high weight and being oversized - it won’t be cheap.
Big ticket operation in all aspects of the movement from manufacturer to user.
I imagine when you’re moving a million dollar piece of equipment utilizing the only mode of transportation possible, there’s not much quibbling over the price anyway.
I would guess that the ‘Tule of Thumb’ for one of those moves, is probably a case:“, If you have to ask the price, You probably cannot afford it!..”
When the ‘decision’ is reached that you have one of those Oversized/Overdiamensional items to go from point A to Point B. The ‘Beancounters’ look at all the ways to do it, without ‘breaking it’. “Cheap” leaves the conversation, almost immediately. Reality then rides in on a magic carpet of ‘Dead Presidents’.[:-^]
Saw a “high and wide” go through Utica westbound last night - it was about three loaded cars and, as I recall, there were idler cars between them. They must have been wide - they weren’t very high.
A lot of steel plate gets shipped - the plates themselves are only 10’6" wide (the width of 40 or 50 box cars), however due to their length they must be handled on 89 foot flats. Being that long (or longer) the shipments create a Wide condition when they negotiate curves. CSX clearances designate that clearance cars must be handled within 5 cars of the engines. The clearance wire will designate locations (by milepost) where trains on adjacent tracks can pass with one train stopped and the other moving at 10 MPH. The clearance wire will also designate locations (by milepost) where the wide car cannot pass other equipment. There may be other restrictions as dictated by the physical characteristics of specific territories.
I know of a sitation a while back where such a shipment almost went out of a shortline onto the CSX main. A shortline engineer keyed the CSX crew in on it.
What struck us as unusual about this train was that those three cars (and idlers) made up the entire train.
Large Electric Utility transformers routinely us schnabel cars.
When Electric Power Utilities plan for new high voltage substations, one of the considerations they make is how big (both physical and capacity) a transformer to install. Big ones can be 300 to 500 MVA and 345,000 Volts. They determine the requirements, write specifications and then issue Requests for Proposals to manufacturers. When the bids come back they evaluate the price and also determine the shipping costs. Sometimes, the manufacturer is overseas and that can affect the shipping thus the price. Historically, Westinghouse, GE, Allis Chalmers were the major US suppliers, then Brown Bovari, Siemans, ASEA, Hitachi have competed and won bids.
After manufacture, the transformer has to be shipped to its destination. If made overseas it will arrive by ship to a dock and be offloaded to rail (or in some cases a barge).
Then they have to make special arrangements to get them from a railroad facility (or
Note that all of these outsize machines, in the age of airpower, shared a designator with the USN Landing Ship, Tank:
LARGE SLOW TARGET
You would think that the people who developed the Stuka should have known better. Of course Adolf, the self-proclaimed military genius, never thought the enemy might also have a few tricks up his sleeves.
And they bring their own Jeep Liberty service SUV with them.
