Saw an unusual train come thru town today. It was an eastbound general freight of about 85 cars; the unusual part was that the first 60 cars were almost all boxcars. There were almost no boxcars in the last 25 cars, they were the usual mix of tank cars, hoppers and a few bulkhead flats. It was just unusual to see that many boxcars in an almost-solid string.
Did you notice the reporting marks? Were there a lot of RBOX cars?
Wow; a train pulling 60 box cars. That is weird. Maybe it has something to do with extra terrestrials or Homeland Security.
Headed for storage somewhere.
John Timm
Somewhere in the Great Beyond “Boxcar Willie” is smiling.
Couldn’t see the reporting marks - my office is about 200 yards from the tracks. There were a good many RBOX cars, but didn’t count how many. The general freights thru here are almost completely made up of boxcars, hoppers, and tank cars. Those 3 types make up probably 90% of the cars in general freights thru here, except that eastbounds usually have 10 to 20 autoracks in them. There are almost never any autoracks in a westbound. Just interesting to watch the patterns that happen.
It’s not at all unusual to see KCS trains with that number of boxcars passing through Shreveport. The majority of these are loaded with paper (lots of newsprint rolls) from on line or inter-line paper mills. I can easily imagine such shipments through Tallahassee from the many paper mils located on or near the Gulf coast in northern Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.
Mark