Hello everybody,
I know I have seen at least 2 of thease kind of trains on the NEC of NS. Has anybody seen any others from different railroads? How long were they?
Thankyou.
Andrew
I can’t recall having seen this kind of train in the services I’ve watched… but then again, wasn’t looking specifically for it.
My experience has been that it’s much more difficult to get vans to run in well cars – tie-downs aren’t as good, no corner castings make it much more involved to get the vans in and out of the cars, etc. Presumably the advantage in the NEC is that there is no possible way the trailer can move outside plate limits even with substantial aerodynamic force from much higher speed trains on adjacent tracks. I wouldn’t think the idea would find great favor… except in emergencies… where that sort of safety consideration didn’t apply.
Will keep my eyes open here to see if I can find further examples. Presumably you’re interested in ANY van transported in a well car, not just solid trains of them, right?
Soild ones or close to it would be cool. I know some of the Z and P trains of BNSF have used all spine cars, but was interested in knowing if any railroad used a large or solid consist of well cars at one point in time.
I get a list of trains that I think might be some candidates.
Actually the list is small. The trains that I would think might have the solid consist would be UP train ZCSLT; BNSF train Z-CHCSTP and CSX train Q100 and Q109.
Keep in mind that spine cars and well cars traditionally did very different things.
The spine cars originally ‘took over’ from the full-deck cars, as I understood it, because of significantly lower tare weight (first we had ‘skeleton flats’) and also because it was possible to have a lower ride height on the trailers when loaded. This outweighed the relative inconvenience of needing specialized loader equipment.
No one ever accused a well car of being ‘low tare weight’! These are made to allow stacks to work. They do that very well (no pun intended) but most of the time are the ‘worst of both worlds’ for vans – higher tare weight and you can’t stack 'em.
Now, someplace I’d look for ‘solid van-in-well’ consists would be lanes where there is mismatched or unbalanced container traffic – stacks one way, but not much traffic the other way. If you were running a mini-bridge from Asia to Europe, for example, there wouldn’t be much reverse traffic, but you’d have to cycle the solid consists of stack trains. Naturally, if there were any containers at all, you’d prefer to load those first, which is one reason I would expect to see ‘mixed’ van and container traffic on just about any well train consist in actual traffic. (My own preference, not worth much by itself, would be to stack whatever containers I had toward the front of the train, which would free up the remaining slots for ‘unstackable’ vans – you could also, I presume, pair the nose of a 53’ van with a 20’ container within the available loadings of an articulated 40’ set, if necessary.)
It doesnt run any more but there used to be a busy CN train once a day each way fron Toronto to Chicago that used well cars for vans. It ended when the St Claire tunnel was expanded in the early 90’s. The old tunnel had tight clearances hence the well cars.
Doesn’t NS use these cars on the NEC for their low clearance.
I don’t know about solid well car trains but I see rather long blocks of them all the time out here (so cal).
The all-purpose well cars are relatively uncommon. There should be no more of a problem with tiedowns than there are on ordinary piggyback flat cars–the trailers have a hitch to which they’re tied, at the end of the well (they never seem to be horixontal within the well, but I guess all of those heights are dictated by clearances). CN is the only company on which I’ve seen such cars recently. I think FEC might have a few of these special flats, too.
Yes…I’ve seen the cars you’ve mentioned and with trailers in the well. CSX and NS use them quite alot, especially if the trailers are high cubes and the train must travel the Amtrak main north of Washington, DC. NS has also run some special TOFC trains on the Amtrak using these cars exclusively. These trains ran some months ago to test the feasiblity fo running some of their Atlanta to New Jersey trains using this equipment. The tests were covered by at least 4 railroad magazines, including Trains. In fact…some of the runs went right through Union Station in Washington, DC and were run with P40/P42’s leading. The railroads ferther west don’t have a need to place trailers in a well car, unless they are short of equipment. Here on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor main line, all-purpose well cars loaded with trailers are perferred by the dispatchers because it reduces the possiblity of a trailer coming in contact with the catenary and blowing(short circuiting) the system as with a conventional flat car. Some time soon, you’ll probably see more NS intermodal trains plying Amtrak’s mainline, since Amtrak may have to allow them to use it to make more revenue.
GLENN
A R E A L RAILROADER!!!
A R E A L AMTRAKER!!!