May 21, 2008
Norfolk Southern Receives First Uni-Level Railcars for Large Motor
Vehicle Transport
NORFOLK, VA. – Norfolk Southern Corporation has put into service the
first of the new Uni-Level railcars supplied by TTX Company. Last
week,
Norfolk Southern loaded the first 13 of 55 Uni-Level cars received
from
TTX, officially launching the railroad’s Uni-Level service network.
The fully enclosed Uni-Level railcar is designed to provide economical
rail transportation of large motorized vehicles, including Class 5-8
trucks and recreational vehicles. Transporting these types of
vehicles
in a Uni-Level car helps ensure that the vehicles will arrive at their
distributors in factory-quality condition and will not require
re-work,
as is typically the case with over-the-road
transportation. Prototypes
of the Uni-Level railcar have been tested successfully in the
marketplace over the past three years.
Norfolk Southern’s Automotive Group and Modalgistics Supply Chain
Services will provide dock-to-dock shipment management to Uni-Level
users
through their Load Planning, Web-Based VIN Visibility, Optimized Mode
Selection, and Strategic Network Design services.
The initial Uni-Level service network will be concentrated on local NS
service lanes, with later expansion into Mexico, Canada, and the West
Coast.
For more information, please contact http://us.f534.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=unilevel@nscorp.com&YY=16579&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b.
Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE: NSC) is one of the nation’s
premier transportation companies. Its Norfolk S
These are interesting cars. I think I saw a couple of them in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago at Far West Conway, but they got by me too quickly (I was in the process of making a dash out of the house and they were going around the curve by the time I saw them).
However, while in Blue Island last week, I saw a block of eight to ten of these cars, coming off CN for one of the western connections via IHB.
These cars (in TTUX series 891001-891100) are shorter in length than your normal auto racks, 81-feet-something as opposed to 89-plus. The shorter length permits them to be a bit wider than a normal auto rack, making the larger vehicles easier to accommodate. The width may account for the other unusual feature, sides that slope inwrd toward the top, presumably to keep the top within the clearance plates. Sides are yellow, and the cars have the new TTX logo prominently displayed. The cars have decals suggesting that they were built by National Steel Car, but it turns out that only the racks (or perhaps we should say the covers) were built by NSC. The flat cars themselves were built by Kasgro last fall (the TTX classification of the cars starts with “K”, for Kasgro).
Are these units intended to transport loaded tractors trailers as a whole unit? If so this is BIG news…
Not really–they’re more for the transportation of new tractors (several can be accommodated saddleback-style in one car) or other things like SUVs, campers, school buses, fire engines, etc.
Hope I’m not dragging the conversation too OT:
What are those new freight cars that have holes like Swiss cheese instead of slits like closed venetian blinds? Is that what is at issue here? I saw some in Fostoria last weekend. - a.s.