Schnabel cars in service in the USA (20-axles or greater)

While attending college in Pittsburgh in the early to mid-70's, I would frequently ride the train between my hometown of Lewistown, PA and Pittsburgh.  I remember seeing one or two Schnabel cars at the Westinghouse Electric plant site in Turtle Creek as we passed.  Doubtless these cars are long retired but, I often wondered just how much use Westinghouse was getting out of them since they always seemed to be setting there.

Curt

Interesting but “CEBX 801”?  It was built for Westinghouse Nuclear just a few years ago and in this article Kasgro called it “WECX 801”: Kasgro builds “World’s Largest Railroad Car” | Railway Age

Bill

     I am not sure witch # WECX car was dumped into the water in Florida. My father worked at Westinghouse as A coil winder and as A hook on for the cranes. He told me about the one generator that got to Florida and they built A dock out of earth into the water and laid A track for the Schnabel car. When the crane went to pick up the generator to put it on the ship the ground gave way and everything went into the water. They got everything cleaned up and sent the generator back to make sure everything was still straight and true. The generator was OK and was taken apart, cleaned out, reassembled and shipped back to Florida to be loaded onto the ship. That time they were successful in loading the generator onto the ship and they did not have any problems. Choo Choo Kenny

Hi Curt:

Those Schnabel cars WECX #101 & #102 that were used to deliver large generators from the Westinghouse plant formerly in East Pittsburgh (along the Turtle Creek but not in the borough of Turtle Creek) are indeed still in service as KWUX #101 and #102.  They are now owned by Siemens which purchased the Power Generation Business Unit from CBS (Westinghouse) in 1998 and today are primarily used to deliver new gas turbines from the Siemens Turbine and Generator plant in Charlotte, NC.  The Siemens power generation division formerly went by the name Kraftwerk-Union therefore the initials “KWU”.

Re why they seemed to be parked on the track so often, over the years the power generation market has seen many peaks and valleys.  I don’t recall what our maximum production was at East Pittsburgh but even when the market was strong (for example from 1969 through 1973) we only shipped about 12-15 large turbo generators a year.  There were also years when we shipped ZERO which led to the closing and consolidation of factories and mergers of companies which operate in the power generation business today.

Bill 

Bill:

Thank you for the update on those cars!  I am particularly amazed they are still in service.

Curt

I wonder if perhaps these may have been used to transport turbines to new Natural gas fired power plant being built by Panda Power in Wysox PA.

Tom:

From the data available to me it looks like there were a total of 4 Siemens gas turbines shipped to two different Panda power plant sites in northern PA in the last 6 months.  Each site has 2 gas turbines and one site is identified as the Liberty Project in Asylum Township, Bradford County.  Is that the site you are calling Wysox?  The other site is in Lycoming County.  Anyway, it’s very likely each GT was delivered using one of those Schnabel cars. 

Bill 

You're welcome and almost all of the generators that they delivered are still in service, too.

Bill 

Possibly the cars were used to transport these transformers from Newark to Pa.       

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