here are some of the strange freight cars i have come across recently.
first up is, what appears to be, an all aluminum Canadian Pacific autorack. looks kinda interesting. anyone know anything about them?
here are some strange hoppers i saw at the end of a UP train in Arizona. they look like regular covered hoppers with some type of corrugated cover added. anyone know what they haul?
and last, a SP bulkhead flat with kinda low bulkheads and a load of telephone poles.
The first one is one of the new aluminum vehicle carriers built by Johnstown America. Their name? AVC (clever, huh?). CP has 375 of them, and CN 200 (so far, no takers among the U.S.-headquartered railroads that I’m aware of).
I’ve seen covers similar to those on some gondolas (or maybe they were hoppers–can’t remember) used in coke service. Must be really powdery coke for those covers to be necessary.
That bulkhead flat car is an older car–actually built with bulkheads that height. Looks like the bulkheads have been rebuilt, though–at one time most of the SP’s bulkhead flats either had the bulkheads missing most of their timbers (only the frames were left), or had had them replaced with old boxcar doors (which surprisingly were just right dimensionally).
Petroleum coke or coal coke? I remember that when I drove by Tosco’s calcination plant between Richmond and Martinez (California) there were several covered hoppers there. I wonder if the covers could be to prevent contamination.
Those bulkheads of SP, CN also has them and are used mostly for the transport of coiled up wire. I don’t know if SP does it too though.
A couple of months ago I saw an entire long train of these down near the city of Pittburgh somewhere. Looked pretty neat, and almost blindingly shiny, and someone commented at the time that they were just coming out of Johnstown…
Nora, “blindingly shiny” is not one bit off the mark–I’m usually too close to the cars to have much of a reflection problem while I’m working, but the guys (or gals) in the lower towers have (politely and otherwise) made comments on the glare when these things come along. If aluminum coal cars are any indication, the glare will fade with age.
You’ve got to be careful when you ride those new aluminum racks.
CP put out a bulletin stating that if you ride the side ladders while the end doors are open, you can end up getting squished.
They sure are neat in person, I’ve seen a number of them now, all clean and new, they really look futuristic…I’m sure they’ll only be like that for a few more months. [:)]
I thought these were used for sugar beet transport from field to refiner (i.e. C&H Martinez)
All of the sugar beet hoppers I saw were open top. By the way, C&H gets sugar cane, I believe from Hawaii, they do not use sugar beets.
http://www.chsugar.com/Consumer/varieties.html
http://www.chsugar.com/Professional/Pages/Indus_400.htm
http://www.chsugar.com/Professional/Pages/Indus_420.htm
http://www.chsugar.com/Professional/Pages/Indus_410A.htm
The only remaining sugar beet refineries in California are the Imperial Holly plants at Mendota and Brawley.
Jeez, I see CP all the time and have yet to come across one of these aluminum auto racks! Perhaps they see more use in the States or Eastern Canada.
I believe I’ve seen pics of the same type of cars carrying dirty dirt from a cleanup project for an ex Kerr McGee site in West Chicago, IL. I think they took those to Utah, but I could be wrong.
Dave
Los Angeles, CA
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I do not see any placards on these partular cars. I would suspect that cars carrying dirty dirt would be placarded 3077.
Actually, the cars loaded in West Chicago are/were old UP bathtub gondolas outfitted with FRP covers. I don’t recall that they were placarded, but they could have been.
They’ve been all round the lowermainland, I’ve seen them in New Westminster and Coquitlam, Annacis Island gets a lot of Autos.
I have some recollection of FRA rules that dictate that an open load on a flat car cannot be coupled to a tank car unless there are bulkheads.
I have seen even lower bulkheads on flatcars that ship sheet steel.
Dave Nelson
Yes, those are the cars that were being loaded in West Chicago. They might still be, but I haven’t been out that way in a while.
Not sure what those hoppers are, but I just saw some too 
A lot of fines are generated in the process of cutting the Petroleum Coke out of the drums. Other refinery units around a coke unit always have a coating of coke dust on them. I’m not saying the cars are carrying coke, but the stuff is very dusty.
Ed
I’ve seen the coking unit at Shell’s (Equilon at the time) Bakersfield, CA refinery. I definately noticed the dust. It looked like the coking drums (delayed coking) were actually silver, however it was difficult to tell with all of that dust on them. The reason why I speculated that it might be to prevent contamination (presumably of calcined coke) is that they were loading the coke into open top hoppers at the refinery.
Dave,
The rule says you cant have a shiftable load next to a tankcar placarded hazardous, …
if you wanted to, you could put that flat car between two corn syrup tankcars, no problem.
As for bulkheads, if a load is above the ends of a gondola, or above the bulkhead on a flat, it is considered a shiftable load, be it pipe, rebar, steel sheet or plate…you get it.
That flat in the last photo qualifys as shiftable, no question!!!
Where I work, we would have to put a cover car, or a buffer car, between that load and the motors.
Ed[:D]