train on a truck

No, but I may have seen something similar once, at least reported in pictures. A Union Pacific FEF Northern (former # 833) was moved from a location in Ogden to another location nearby, and since (a) the engine is stuffed and no longer operable, and (b) there were no rails laid to the new home, moving it by truck was the only option. [angel]

Needless to say, it was some truck! [tup]

The City of Omaha recently moved a Big Boy and a Centenniel to a new location in one of the city’s parks. How they did that, I don’t know, but I doubt it was by rail, and without doubt no one picked either of them up and carried them there in their pocket! [(-D]

You’ll find quite a bit of info on that move right here.

The UP 833 move was from a park in Salt Lake City to Union Station in Ogden. Both locations are near rails, but the cost and problems to make UP833 roll on its own wheels for 25 miles were significant - thus it was trucked using a special external carrying frame.

dd

Too much clutter to find the Omaha material easily; however, I did find the photo of the 814.

This engine is a “little” northern, originally had one of the smaller tenders on 6-wheel Commonwealth trucks. Do you know when it was assigned a centipede?

P.S. My mother and grandparents lived in Marion. Is Quaker Oats still going strong? I heard U.P. tore up all the track through Marion.

Yep, Quaker still has the world’s largest cereal factory in downtown CR. UP, however, did not tear up the track in Marion- the new owner, CNIC, did, just last year.

A few weeks ago I saw a flatbed trailer in Columbia, SC on I-26 W (heading towards Greenville/Spartanburg). I was headed in the opposite direction & only caught a quick glimpse. It was carrying what looked like a container car. It didn’t have the trucks on it (but there was one pulling the trailer!!!). If I had to guess, I would say that it looked like a Maxi-stack. I only saw one truck (I’ve never seen anything like this before, either), so I’m guessing that it was a stand-alone car vs. an articulated car.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this (and in this area) or was my “train crazy” mind playing tricks on me? The only other thing that I could think of that it could have been is an overhead crane (like inside a factory). Not sure why a brand new railcar would be carried on a truck IF that’s what it was. Wouldn’t a railcar factory be located next to tracks?

Here in the UK it is more often than not that locomtives and frieght/passenger cars are taken by road to the repair shops, ditto with deliveries from the manufacturers to the rail road. Apparrently “it’s cheaper”.

Yes, car-repair usually is done off line, and as any model rail can tell you, RIP tracks and car sheds make excellent lineside industries because almost any kind of car can go there (they all break down sooner or later).

However, at least in the case of the locomotives discussed here, what happens is that, because the units sit for so long without being rolled around, the bearings freeze up, and then there is little choice but to move the car or engine by some other means.

Since both of the observed incidents here spoke of the cars being moved sans trucks, I would suspect such explains why the truck haul. Simply stated: It was the wheels that broke!

Bridge clearances may not be the only reason a boxcar would be on its side. Many years ago someone bought an old caboose and was having it trucked up route 495 in Ma. It was able to fit under the bridges (or at least the ones it had come to when I saw it) but the cupola hit several of the highway signs it was going under. The story I heard was that they took a chain saw to the cupola so it would stop hitting the signs. For years after you could still see the damage it did to the bottom of the signs. I do not remember if it had its trucks still on.

Jaime

in Australia the welding firms often use trucks to move new rollingstock to the railhead receiving area or the docks to ship by sea to the mining areas on the west coast. Quite often the port loading yard has 50-60 hopper waggons bound for hammesly iron.

Also the centenial and big boy are placed as a memorial on a hill in omaha to thank the early railroad pioneers. This has been a full 1hour episode on pay tv (foxtel) of the moving of the two locos and also a depot from another location. Ron James.

john Baker has pipped me at the post!

yes, in the UK, a lot of movement of rail vehicles is done by lorry (truck), allegedly as its cheaper. also, the fragmaentsation of the UK rail system has made it difficult to arrange movements that are out of the ordinary. Scap vehicles, repairs and so on go by road.

We have just had a rail crash in the north of England. Much of the clear-up is being done by road vehicles. A temporary road has been buit to the site. It used to be done much quicker with rail-mounted cranes.

The British rail situation is not a happy one.

Mind you, in France, a preservation society wanted to move a steam loco on a line with very few trains. The company owning the track said no, the gradient was too steep for it; problems could be caused, etc! So the society asked if a diesel could follow, “just in case”. No, that was not acceptable, either. So it’s travelling by road.

Madness! Don’t let a different company take over your tracks or you’ll have the same problems!

Eric Stuart