…This evening at my favorite place here to people watch and have coffee and or ice cream…In McDonald’s parking lot…right next to the NS Frankton line.
This evening a local engine {4 axle}, unit took a complete train maybe 50 - 60 Rail Box, box cars west…Believe they were all empty. Just seemed a bit unusual to me…Don’t remember seeing a complete train of such consist lately…and being pulled by what I believe was a local engine / crew…
Wonder what this make up might have been all about…Possibly bad order cars headed to a pick up point to be taken for repair…or what…Don’t know…
Any ideas…
PS: I didn’t even see a “FRED” on the rear car…At least no red light and it was starting to be dark…Just a little light still in western sky.
They were probably going to have shackles put in them.
Now for the serious answers. Are there any places around there where they could store cars or any place that would use large quantities of cotton seed? Perhaps they were going into or out of storage. It seems like cotton seeds move in RBOX boxcars frequently. I remember an article in Trains a couple of years ago that they mention unit trains of mainly RBOX boxcars hauling cotton seeds (or was it bales of cotton?). There are feed mills and cotton seed oil companies that receive large quantities of cotton seeds in boxcars. It used to be almost exclusively RBOX, but BAEX (former SP and/or SSW class B-70-32) and WREX boxcars are showing up more and more.
Eric…This train was headed out of town…Not aware of any storage place near by on the line except the normal passing sidings as it is a single track line.
And this is not “the land of cotton”…just a bit too far north for that. Suppose cotton is and can be grown not too many hundreds of miles south from here but this area is corn and soybean country…lots of it.
…And Ed, the train was traveling very slow from what I’d term the normal I see trains run here…It is good welded rail and ballast {good track}, so that was not the issue. Estimate 25 miles per hour.
On the red flag…I simply don’t know. The train finally passed as we watched and then as soon as the traffic cleared we pulled out and our home is in the direction it was traveling so we headed that way and noticed no red light on the last car as we caught up to it paralleling it off a bit to one side heading west…but really it was getting too dark to say yes or no if it had a red flag on rear knuckle.
I simply have not seen a consist like this moving through before recently…and headed out of town. Engine was newly painted but believe it was a local unit…A high hood NS engine.
Sounds like someone gathered up a lot of equipment for a single shippment.
Could be bagged grain.
My guess, and that is all it is, a guess, is that a shipper has contracted with the local to provide a steady stream of boxes, so the local is gathering them up and staging them somewhere.
…And that would be my guess too Ed…Of couse I really don’t know all the options for what was happening but the cars did look serviceable. I’ll try to keep my eyes open to see if I can spot anymore operations similar…Generally this time of the year {and next several months}, that line really becomes loaded with covered hoppers but generally headed east loaded.
And as I’ve commented before they drop off long cuts of these cars and push them on the siding in the same area and then in a day or so they are gone…Why they put them on that siding {nothing is done to or with them there}, is a mystery to me.
Is there a railcar repair facility within your vicinity, say no more than a few hundred miles away? Out here in North Central Idaho we’re always getting a variety of “abnormal” (for this area) railcars being stored awaiting repairs at the Finley WA facility located a few hundred miles to the west. We’ve had spine cars in Orofino, well cars on sidings along the river (and we have no rail intermodal service in this area), and GATX tanker cars just sitting on these dead end branchlines, lines which are no more than logging and grain conduits, sitting for months on end.
Years ago, we had one of the local shortlines storing miles and miles of RailBox boxcars on a decrepit old line from Craigmont to Nez Perce. Only way the line’s owner could make any money. Then the ICC stepped in and told him to get rid of the cars and either operate the railroad or abandon it.
FM: No repair facility right here in Muncie but we’re just 60 miles or so from Indianapolis and Chicago being roughly 240 miles to the northwest…
Cars do not remain on the siding here for any length of time…The siding I’ve commented on previously will have a large cut of cars brought in and in a day or perhaps 2 they will be pulled out and gone…Some…{if not many}, of these cars are loaded too.