I was wondering what types of products/materials are shipped on 60’ bulkheads or 60’ flatcars. I know that Pulpwood and pipe are commonly seen on them but thats a bit boring for me. Any pictures would be great! Thanks alot for your time.
-Tom
tomnoy3, they also haul slab steel which can be modeled with a athearn boxcar weight.
Sorry i dont have any pictures of it.
Flatcars carry anything too long or big to fit into a box car. I-beams, buses, generators, boats, other railroad equipment, bulldozers…you name it. Bulkhead flats are generally restricted to things that the railroads don’t want shifting too much, like steel plate, but I have seen trucks loaded on bulkhead flats occasionally.
Go to the Fallen Flags website and spend a few hours digging through the photos there. There are a LOT of pictures with flat cars and odd loads.
After a derailment,i have seen wrecked cars hauled away on flats.Some machinery loads are covered with tarps.
Farm machinery.
If you have industrys look at them and you may be able to figure a load to go along with them. You could generators onto flatcar that could be moved to a factory on your layout. Better yet if you put a factory that makes cars you can send out car frames or a farm machine plant and ship out tractors and the like on the cars. It depends on the area your modelling and what industries you have already or can have.
One that would cause havoc on a model railroad is process equipment like cracking towers for refineries. Completely built at a plant they are mounted on multiple flat cars and shipped to the final destination for erection. Often flat cars are used as idlers when a load extends beyond another car. GE, Wetinghouse, Siemens, Brown, Bavari, ITE Circuit Breaker Co. ship(ed) large transformers and electrical equipment on flat cars. Really tall units need depressed center cars and really big units get Schnabel cars which is a tangent.
you can put car trucks and train wheels. i thinks thatvhte whells are atached to a piece of track that is attached to the car.
I have seen sheet rock (for house interior walls) unloaded off of Bulkhead flats at Milwaukee’s Butler Yard. I have seen utility poles on such flatcars as well.
Dave Nelson