I enjoy spotting loaded flat cars. To me they’re a tie to the past when so much equipment traveled to customers via a lowly flat. Thought I’d share a photo of a TTHX flat with a brand new “CAT” onboard – this going to Cashman Equipment, Northern Nevada’s CAT dealer. Sorry for the bad angle, but the car was spotted by a telephone pole, couldn’t get a broad-side or a ¾ wedge from the uncoupled end.
Anyone else enjoy seeing equipment on flats?
SP9033
I remember when I was a kid-living by the CNW St Louis line-flats would go by with John Deere tractors, Caterpillar tractors, White tractors, but my favorites had to be the Manitowac cranes that would come by, sometimes on two or more flats, with booms detached. I will always remember the time I saw a military train go by the house with all the equipment on TTX flats. Once at Wood River, Il I saw a military train up close on the ICG, when the caboose carrying the soldier escorts passed I could see them just a few feet away. Machinery on flat cars is always neat to see.
Yes.
I also find tankcars that are loaded with ethanol to be humorously ironic.
ericsp,
Certainly laughed at that, thanks for the chuckle. Got your point!
SP9033
Great photo, thanks. I enjoy equipment on flatcars also. Also seeing welded rail trains.
some years back…we had a few trains come through with about 10 to 14 flat cars loaded up with john deer and i think it was case tractors…they where moving east to the docks…they where being shipped overseas to one of the eastern eruopean countrys or to the the russkies… all the warning and paperwork taped to the inside of the cabs was in that laugange i cant for the life of me remembe what they called it…
csx engineer
Dave,
I too, really enjoy spotting a welded rail train.
SP9033
Here in Reno, we just don’t see much of these movements. A flat car loaded with some piece of heavy equipment is a rare site. I only recently started taking an interest in this, don’t know why its taken so long.
SP9033
Many years ago recall seeing a UP train with an assortment of freights cars including some military equipment on a flatcar (Spadra, near Pomona, CA); you are right it is something that is rather rare these days.
…speaking of rare, is it my imagination, or are there fewer and fewer boxcars out there?
I still see them all the time, but not in the sheer quantities that they used to be in.
I can recall from the 1970’s seeing the Missouri Pacific McPherson branch local hauling empty flats to Hesston, KS for loading of large red colored farm equipment. This would make up a large shareof traffic non the local By the mid 1980’s, this traffic had left the rails and shifted to trucks.
No,I don’t think it’s your imagination;but don’t really think boxcars are dwindling,
it’s just that the containers are multiplying.[:D]
Every once in a while I will see a train composed entirely of flatcars hauling military equipment, both on UP and on BNSF.
Just a few days ago I saw a couple of flatcars hauling bulldozers. A couple of months ago, I saw flatcars and gondolas hauling equipment to an ethanol plant they are building not too far from here. Also, from time to time I will see heavy-duty, depressed center-flatcars hauling transformers and heavy-duty flatcar hauling heat exchangers.
If the Baltimore Air Coil and Evapco plants would ship by rail, I could see some more equipment traveling on flatcars.
I get to watch them load and unload military equipment on flatcars. They do it circus-style, often with a half dozen vehicles making their way across the same string of flats.