Canadian Railroads > More Freight Cars with Many Wheels

Continuing the theme of heavy-duty flat cars, here are a couple scans I dredged up from the Halifax area.  Most special flatcars seem to be owned by TTX or Kasgro, but CN has (had?) a small fleet too.  675001 was parked at the team track in Bayers Lake in September, 1996 after delivering a transformer to Nova Scotia Power.  Although the Chester Sub ran right past NSPI's yard in Lakeside, there must have been some weight restriction than meant it had to be unloaded here, a mile or so short of its destination.  The car's journals have been converted to roller bearing, and I see that the name "Buckeye" is cast into the sideframe.  I neglected to get a photo of the build date on this, but I assume it predates roller bearings.

GTD

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A few years later, a Schnabel car arrived in Halifax to pick up a load.  As I recall, it was here for several months before the load (a heat exchanger, I believe) arrived on a ship and then became part of the car.  The letters ABB refer to ASEA Brown Boveri, the union of the Swedish "General Electric" and Brown Boveri another European electrical manufacturer.  The empty car was photographed at Ocean Terminals in April of 2001, and the loaded car in June of the same year.  It eventually went west in a special move with a single GP38-2 restricted to 25 mph.  I don't remember if there were any idler cars, but it was at night, so I don't have any pictures.

And responding to Fred's question about the 6-wheel trucks on the TTX flats, yes, these are also Buckeye trucks.

GTD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/20 14:08 by cn6218.

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675001 was back a few years later to pick up a load this time.  On March 4, 2002 the car had already been parked on the Chester Spur for a few days, but this time is was next to a vacant lot near mile 0.5.  An Irving crane did the transfer from the highway float, and the sun was out the next day for a picture of the load ready to go.  I'm not sure why the transfer was done here rather than the team track, unless there was an overhead restriction.  What was left of the Chester Spur had no bridges to have weight limits, although there was a lot of 85 lb. rail.  In the original scan I can see a piece of chain through one of the truck sideframes going underneath the rail as an extra brake.  The car was close to a steep grade down to the main line, and I'm sure nobody wanted to see it get away.

GTD

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They may have done it there because of no overhead restrictions and room for the truck to be able to turn around and get into position.
Stable ground is a big requirement too.

Another neat series, Geoff!
Fred