Just Wondering.
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I once saw an entire train of M1 Abrams tanks parked on the main in southern Wisconsin. I wish I had a camera with because it seems that that's a really rare sight.
About four years ago sitting in the South Shore Burnham Yards was a new bottle car or whatever those steel mill cars are called. Painted in USS blue with red and white graphics. I didn't have my camera and by the time my wife arrived it had been moved. John
When, as a teen, I was visiting my Grandparents in Kansas around 1965, we had to wait at a crossing as 120 flats passed by. They were all loaded with the same, exact, load of 60 ft. pipe sections, bundled and side staked. We heard on the local radio of the special train, said to be destined for a gas pipe line from Texas production fields to Virginia, to ensure a constant supply of natural gas for the eternal flame on JFK's grave.
Personally, when I worked as a stevedore on the docks in the Houston area, we always had "heavy lift" type loads come in on rail. A lot were columns, towers, etc. for construction of refineries in the West Indies region of the Caribbean. It was not unusual to have a tower over 200 ft. long pushed onto our trackage, and down to dockside when ready. The equipment would ride in bolsters that pivoted on the two supporting heavy flats, while there may be as many as four empty flats between and an empty flat leading, one empty flat trailing. Well, not always quite empty, as they sometimes did have loads of crates, fabricated steel, etc, to be shipped with the towers or process columns. When the time arrives, I do plan to model this on my layout with a "heavy" type industry. To off load from the railcars and prep for "roll on/roll off" loading onto the ships, we used Manitowoc 4100W, 4000W and 3900 lift cranes. It was very hard and interesting work, but enjoyed every bit of it and learned a lot as a young man. Witnessed many interesting loads on railcars, both inbound and outbound cargo.
Jesse
TCA
A helicopter crashed next to the mainline on the White Pass and Yukon Route. It had to be brought out by rail. A mangled helicopter under a tarp. Luckily no one was seriously hurt.
In July of 2014 I was near Seattle exiting a restaurant when I herd a train and looked to see 3 dirty, beat up 737 fuselages rolling by. They were recovered from the river after the derailment. They didn't look that bad. Seen show cars created from worse. But I would not want to ride in a plane after its body rolled down a mountain into a river.
I snapped this at Collier Yard in Petersburg Va in 1987:
I think it started snowing just after I took the photo.
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Ribbon Rail trains.
I remember a CSX freight train coming through Gaithersburg, MD many years ago, probably circa 1999/2000 time frame.
First flat car behind the engines had a center cab diesel switcher on it, perhaps a 44 ton switcher or similar. I seem to remember it being green, maybe a military locomotive. Directly behind that switcher on the flatcar, there were several airplane fuselages. Never saw anything like that come through here again.
Seeing a bunch of flat loaded with blades for wind powered generators is interesting. Those things are much longer than most people realize.
The special set of flatcars designed to carry only one 16" Naval gun for the Iowa Class U.S. Navy battleships.
US Army load .... 4 of one of the Rapid Emplaced Bridge systems, along with the HEMTT trucks that (I assumed) transport them. Central New Jersey.
When I was still living in northeastern PA, I would occasionally catch special movements of heat exchangers produced by the Air Products plant in Hanover Township, just outside of Wilkes-Barre.
These massive loads were transported on a string of heavy-duty flatcars supplied by the plant, and the consist always included an Air Products liveried extended-vision caboose.
The heat exchangers were usually headed for overseas destinations, and several railroads were involved in moving them from the plant to an east-coast port location for loading onto a cargo ship.
Unfortunately I never seemed to have a camera with me, and cell phone cameras didn't exist back then! As far as I know they still produce and ship them the same way today. When I get a chance I'll try to find and post some photos from the web.
Here's mine:
Rusty
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Santa's sleigh.
Kent in SD
I like the old steamer on a flat car, have seen turbine blades and the B&LE would move a large load out of the Cheswick nuclear plant years ago. The best I have seen was a "hospital train" of trailers that were involved in a derailment near Pittsburgh, They were headed to Conway, an engine at each end going very slow. Some trailers were pretty beat up-bent and loose panels flapping. Would make a good consist for a layout. I only have video of the train.
J Daddy posted:Ha! Nice.
I always like the small steam engines on a flat cars.... this would make a good model.
Menards.........are you listening? 
Notice the slight sag in the middle of the old ACL flatcar ?? Cool. I was videoing along the NS mainline between Homewood and the Ohio line and a train lod of Army vehicles coming home from the Iraq war came by. It would make a neat modeling project - the weathering, the battered and beat up look of the vehicles.
Payload? Sounds like a NASA or DOT term!
A couple of summers ago a friend of mine and I were railfanning in Nokesville Va. south of Manassas and observed a NS freight headed south. The first six flat cars had the trucks from locomotives and the next six flat cars had the locomotives mounted on them. The locos were widecabs and were painted green and yellow. A few days later, on youtube, I saw a video with the same type locos but was a different train that were headed to Brazil.
1970 in Queensland, I saw a beyer-garratt locomotive dead-in-train a few cars behind the diesel loco. I was slack-jawed. Unfortunately I was an inexperienced photographer at the time, I took the train pic from too far away, didn't actually see the garrett until after I took the photo and the train was passing me. It was an old Brownie camera and I couldn't take another pic on short notice. So it's there in my black-and-white photo but not really recognizable. Second photo from internet shows what has to be the same class of loco. Queensland railways were, and still are, 42" gauge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._Beyer-Garratt_class
The Queensland Beyer-Garratt class locomotive was a 4-8-2+2-8-4 steam locomotive of the Queensland Railways.
... Twenty two were written off in June 1968. #1009 was restored to service in 1993 but is not currently operating.
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Rusty Traque posted:Here's mine:
Rusty
Is that at the Illinois Railway Museum? I had heard they took possession of the Ingersoll-Rand demonstrator unit. I also heard the unit still runs.
