Model Railroading > Flat car Friday: Different kinds of TOFC

Well, we all know that TOFC stands for "trailer on flat car", the fancy name for piggyback traffic.

But lots of other things get loaded on flat cars, and some of them begin with "T".

1) and 2)  Tanks, for instance, get transported on flat cars.  1 is at Oneonta, NY circa 1977.  2 is at Yermo, CA a decade later.

3)  If I didn't have pictures of this load, seen at Helena MT in 1983, I would never believe it on a model RR.  These trees were headed west on a BN freight.  3 cars worth on this day, then saw another a day or so later.  No idea what that shipment was all about.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/17 05:18 by march_hare.

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#3, ToF: trees on flatcar.

Interesting to compare the two designs of Tanks 10 yrs apart.

Those live trees on a flat car get my vote for the most different load I have seen IN A LONG TIME. Proving once again that there's a prototype FOR EVERYTHING. GREAT PICS!!!

I once saw an 89-ft flat car with about a dozen tall palm trees loaded on it, similar to the trees in the picture. Someone told me that they were going to Palm Springs, CA.

gandydancer4 Wrote:
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> Those live trees on a flat car get my vote for the
> most different load I have seen IN A LONG TIME.
> Proving once again that there's a prototype FOR
> EVERYTHING. GREAT PICS!!!


I've never seen that before, wonder what the story is there.

Nathan

Back In the 1960's, SP was hauling a lot of olive trees from the Marysville are to the San Jose area, usually about 10 to a flat....I did not have enough sense to shot these loads.....

Picture #1 reminds me of when we loaded out M48A3's on flat cars at Fort Lewis, WA, and they were transported to Yakima Firing Center. It was quite an adventure driving my tank down 5 flat cars before it was tied down. When we got to Yakima, they didn't have an end platform to run to, so we had to turn our tanks on the flatcar and roll off the side to the unloading dock. One of the other drivers almost went backwards off the flat car and would have ended up on the main track. Fun days.

Ron Evans
Golden Valley, AZ

The trees! Crazy load but nothing out of the ordinary for back then, probably.
The 2nd photo reminds me of a military train I seen about 3-4 weeks ago. All the tanks (older Abrams) were painted in woodland camo and all looked decommissioned--future airplane targets or razors? It came from CA somewhere; it had two pushers mid-train and an ETD. Weird but cool.

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