Eastern Railroad Discussion > Unusual EMPTY stack train

Westbound past Elkhart, IN webcam at 12:50pm EST, 2 NS units all empty tables, not one container.

Posted from iPhone

NS, etc may be gathering them to send west.  Several bare table trains of wells or trailer flats have gone west in recent days on BNSF.  Seen on the Fort Madison camera

I’ve seen a few headed east towards NY/NJ in recent weeks also!

Dan

Posted from iPhone

Repositioning moves....fairly common.

MGA2300 Wrote:
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> Westbound past Elkhart, IN webcam at 12:50pm EST,
> 2 NS units all empty tables, not one container.
>
> Posted from iPhone

Nothing unusual about it.  If the amount of containers/trailers being moved is not balanced, you're going to need to send empties one way or the other.  Sometimes they tack them to back of a regular intermodal, but sometimes a large enough quantity has amassed that a full train is necessary.  

Tehachapi-TJ Over & Out

I was told that, while appearing empty, these cars are actually carrying "sailboat fuel".

Posted from Android

Life at intermodal ramps is a constant constant state of 'juggling' to have sufficient cars, empty containers and chassis.  It's made more difficult with private owner chassis to match privately owned containers such as Schnieder and JB Hunt.  When a shortage somewhere happens, or when one is predicted (ie, 'peak season' Thanksgiving - Christmas), it's guaranteed there will be shortages and equipment moves to handle it.

       That joke on the FOrt Madison camera about sailboat fuel got REALLY OLD about a year and a half ago.

In Sandusky, we have two trains of wells and spine cars stored in the yard. The spine cars have been there for quite a lo g time where there is rust on the wheels. The other one was a recent 23Q that had the 8098 up front with 1036 trailing. The train is still there, power on the other hand-gone.

Michael Fair
Royal Oak, MI

A friend showed me a video of a huge "baretable" as these moves are often called. It was eastbound on the Conrail now NS Harrisburg Line going toward Philadelphia, through Bridgeport, PA. This was around 1995. Nothing to see here, move along...
Go

Playing Ping Pong.
Some yard may not have room. Send them to another yard and no room there either. So send someplace else.

Posted from iPhone

For a while, at least, NS was running 25W with empty wells and flats westbound across Ohio every Monday afternoon. Conrail had similarly run TV-11E baretables out of northern new Jersey every Sunday night to balance equipment.

After that boat lost 1900 cans, there's going to be a glut of wells in Long Beach for a while.