Freight Car Friday #38 – FURX Coil Steel Gondolas

Today’s post features additional coil steel cars leased to Canadian Pacific, and commonly seen carrying steel coils eastward from Essar Steel Algoma over the Huron Central to interchange with CP at Sudbury.

These cars with FURX reporting marks are part of a group of 100 cars leased to Essar Steel Algoma from First Union Rail, the rail leasing and financing arm of First Union Bank. These cars were originally built by Alstom in 1999 as part of NOKL 380601-380850 series.

Officially the NOKL reporting marks are registered to the Northwestern Oklahoma Railroad, but in reality cars with the NOKL reporting mark are owned by First Union and leased to other railroads. Some of these NOKL (like these three here) have been re-marked to FURX and SMW (another First Union managed mark). I’m not sure why First Union sometimes transfers cars between their various marks (FURX, NDYX, NOKL and SMW) but I’m sure there is a organizing system to this in their accounting department and may or may not have something to do with whether a railroad or private operator is leasing the cars.

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Three photos taken by myself on two separate visits in 2013.

Recently, a group of these FURX/NOKL cars have been rotating through Ontario Northland Railway’s car shops in North Bay for inspection and repairs prior to lease return; they seem to be largely being replaced by the cars leased from CIT Group featured last week.

One thought on “Freight Car Friday #38 – FURX Coil Steel Gondolas

  1. EDIT: I found a lease memorandum on the US Surface Transportation Board website, and these FURX cars are from a group of 100 cars in the range FURX 380601-380995 (non-inclusive) leased directly to Essar Steel Algoma from First Union Rail in 2010.

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