Actually shot this yesterday morning while catching the SP4449 waking up for her 'Cruisin" to Sherwood, Oregon. See Post: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=77959
Don't give my Wife any MORE ideas on where to plant flowers....!mg: Then again, maybe she would appreciate my hobby a little more....:angel:
I believe they are used in steel mills for moving molten metal from the smelter to another area to pour into pig molds.
It's called a Ladle Car, and was used to empty blast furnaces. A train of these cars was run on an elevated track next to the blast furnace. Each car was spotted under the furnace outlet spout and filled with molten steel until the furnace was emptied. The train was then moved a couple of hundred feet where each car's load was dumped into vertical molds. The load of a car would fill each mold exactly. It's possible that the molds were spaced so that the train could fill all molds without moving again, don't remember exactly. Someone marketed an HO model of a ladle car similar to the one in the photo back in the 50's.
Don't know what this is. Looks kind of like a Fairmont motor car trailer. From WWI era so don't know if they were using them back then or not.
There was a trailer similar to the one in your photo assigned to the Hoosick, NY area of the B&M's Fitchburg Division in the 40's and early 50's. IIRC, it looked like a factory-built unit, but I assume it also could have been home-built from wrecked and spare parts...?
where to begin 1.an old erie boxcar 2. aconrail work train caboose 3.a storage building ( at least i think its a storage building.......if you blow hard enough, it'll topple over) 4.out of service railroad crossing signals 5.rail that you wouldnt believe 6.dwarf signals 7.old 3 lighted triangular pattern signals 8.tracks covered in weeds (out of service) 9.an old school bus used to transport MOW crews to locations needed 10.ballast spreader machine 11.track lifter machine 12.enough ties and spikes to do your own miniature train layout in your yard 13. derails (on a seperate switch that hold 4 tank cars for an oil distribution facility not far from the rail yard) 14. hi-rail vehicles 15.i think an old crane but i could be wrong 16.we have an old erie-lackawanna train station that is in good condition from when the E/L used to run through where i live (elmira ny) that still stands 17. a building called the station inn that used to be a restaurant when E/L was running (still stands but it's not in service) there's more but i'm not near it and dont go to it much anymore.......if i did i would have to buy an old hotel just to make a layout depicting everything that used to be in elmira when the E/L and D&H used to run through........now its mostly freight from NS, CSX, CP, CN, BNSF, C&NW, A FEW CONRAIL ENGINES BUT WITH THE PATCH ON IT, have seen a few guilford terminal engines
I didn't find this in a yard but right on the main line about 4 feet off the tracks. An intermodal container mount pin/lockdown. These are used to lock the stacked containers together. The golf ball is for size comparison. The thing weighs about 8 to 10 pounds and would surely have done damage to anyone or anything it would have hit flying off a speeding intermodal train. Lucky it landed harmlessly. One of the many reasons why one can never be too careful watching trains and end up still being in harms way while doing so.
Found this boxcar (CSX?) being dismantled or modified in San Antonio today. Sort of unusual, I guess. Notice the derelict center cab at the far end of the GTW boxcar.
This is the old MoPac yard in Sugar Land. UP still uses it for building up trains for the Sugar Land local. There are usually two locomotives that live here. On weekends they shut them down and everyone goes home.