Western Railroad Discussion > (inverted) Flatcar Friday!

Spotted these flatcars on a prior drone mission; had enough signal range and battery remaining on the most recent mission to go back for a couple shots.
Location = Philomath, Oregon.
Could these 6 cars be leftovers from SP days?
 
wyatt
 

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Looks like these cars were dropped there a little more recently (and not all at the same time). Google Earth's capture from 2000 is a little grainy, but it doesn't appear any cars are there.The 2010 image shows the two furthest away from the pickup truck, and the other four show up in the photo from 2018.

I'm impressed they dragged these cars that far back - they're a ways away from the nearest rail spur/siding, and there's quite a bit of mill/industrial infrastruture between the tracks and where they dumped the cars.

pengra said: “Looks like these cars were dropped there a little more recently (and not all at the same time).”
 
Interesting.  Thanks for your observation. 
Yeah, they were probably trucked in; most of those buildings have been there for several decades.
 
wyatt
 

Those flatcars are in TTT Logging Co.'s yard at Philomath.  Most likely they're used as bridges when opening up new logging tracts,

MarionLinn Wrote:
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> Those flatcars are in TTT Logging Co.'s yard at Philomath.  Most likely they're used as bridges when opening up new logging tracts,

I suspect you're right about that, especially since pengra discovered they appeared in satellite photos at different times.

wyatt

I remember seeing those passing by on the Toledo train so they've been there more than four years.

wye-it Wrote:
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> pengra said: “Looks like these cars were dropped
> there a little more recently (and not all at the
> same time).”
>  
> Interesting.  Thanks for your observation. 
> Yeah, they were probably trucked in; most of those
> buildings have been there for several decades.
>  
> wyatt
>  

Wonder if Rick Franklin knows about these?  Going back through some historical imagery, those flatcars started showing up on the site around 2009. The wigwam burner just south of the cars is the only thing left of the original mill that dates back to the 40's or 50's. The area where the flatcars is was part of the mill pond into the 1980's, but northing left of the original mill except the burner by then. A couple of the cars are GSC flatcars that SP only had a few second-hand example of, more likely to be UP or BN cars, but many railroads had a bunch of them...just not SP.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR