In May I went on a trip to nevada on the california zephyr, and going through utah I saw about 3-4 times a single UP engine pulling about 15 empty centerbeam cars. What is the purpose of these special centerbeam trains, and why in the middle of utah??
Perhaps there is a wallboard plant somewhere out there. Also, the cars may have been going to or coming out of storage.
Here in Michigan the CN has nearly all Center Partition Flatcar trains that are local deliveries and other longer trains that contain mostly new cars built by National Steel Car in Ontario.
Andrew
If you had more information about exactly where you were when you saw these trains and which way they were headed, I think we could give you much better answers. I can think of one specific location where you would be likely to see a train like you described but that is actually in Colorado, between Grand Junction and Dotsero, and would be the local heading to the gypsum wallboard plant at Gypsum, Colorado. But you would have only seen this once because that local runs no more frequent than daily.
In eastern Utah you might have seen a Denver-Roper Yard (Salt Lake City) manifest. These trains often carry empty centerbeams because they are speed restricted and it’s nice to keep them off high-density main lines.
There is a gypsum wallboard plant at Nephi, Utah, and conceviably you could have seen a local en route to that. Conceivably you could have seen a local working between Provo and Salt Lake City that just happened that day to have nothing but empty centerbeams collected from lumberyards and transloads, returning to Salt Lake City.
Other than that without more information I am helpless to be more specific.
RWM
This was about the time that UP had the slide in Oregon (See Tain Mag lead article). They have a steady load of lumber going from the Pacific Northwest to the LA area. My quess would be that the empties were going back to the Pacific Northwest.
Railwayman,
I know the train wasn’t in colorado, and I think the train was around a small town called Green River, in Utah. I can’t think of any other info on where it was, it was kind of in the middle of nowhere so I can’t really pinpoint where it was.[:-^]
You saw the same train 3-4 different times? Or 3-4 trains at 3-4 different locations that were alike?
RWM
What is a “centerbeam” Car? Is that like a lumber carrier?
Here is a link to photographs of 5263 Center-Beam Flatcars.
Thank You Ericsp.
That is what I pictured.
I just did not hear them refered to that way. I just heard them call “Lumber carrier”.
During the month of May how many days apart were the trains?
Were these old, scratched, rusty Gunderson, Thrall Car, and National Steel Car Center Beam Flat Cars?
Were these new, shiny Gunderson, Trinity, and National Steel Car Center Beam Flat Cars?
Andrew
With housing construction being way off - a lot of centerbeams are in or going into storage. I have seen a lot of different kinds of cars stored in Eastern Utah so I speculate that you were seeing either storage or retrievals of centerbeams.
dd