Freight Car Friday #50 – CN 557636

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Chris van der Heide

CN 557636 is one of several of these double door CN boxcars shots in the same train in August 2004 at Sault Ste. Marie.

Part of series CN 557440-557739 built in 1974 (and identical sister series 557300-557439 built the previous year), these 52’6″ I.L. cars were built for lumber and forest products service and when new had the main sliding door painted green as a colour coding to indicate this assignment. (Here’s one in 2006 with the original paint including the green door intact.) With modern computerized systems this indicator is no longer needed and most of these cars gradually had the doors repainted the same brown as the rest of the car.

For modelling in HO scale, Kaslo shops produced (produces?) a resin kit for this type of car. (I have two on my shelf to be built up and put into service.)

This car and many other double door boxcars in the train are likely loaded with either plywood or OSB from mills at Hearst or Limer.

Freight Car Friday #49B – HS Woodpulp Boxcars

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Chris van der Heide

A bonus extra post for today’s Freight Car Friday feature.

These cars bearing HS reporting marks are also common mixed in with the CP wood pulp service boxcars. These cars are leased to CP for wood pulp service by GE Railcar Services. These cars are a wild variety of seemingly random small sub-groups of cars from various builders (the above car is an FMC, while the bottom car is built by Berwick and coupled on both ends to other HS cars built by ACF) making any sort of even basic guesses as to their heritage impossible.

Most of these cars are older (early 1970s built) “plate B” cars rebuilt to raise the roof and extend the inside height from 10’6″ to 11’0″. All feature the distinctive carbody vents marking their assignment to wood pulp service. The Berwick car below also has reinforcing panels added to the car ends, as does a CP car coupled to the left of the HS 61554 above.

The top photo of a freshly shopped HS 61554 was taken in July 2015 at Hawk Junction, while the below photo of HS 61213 is at Sault Ste. Marie in August 2004.

Additional leased cars bearing short line reporting marks SLGG, OAR, BR and YVRR (the former two being more common in 2004 and not so much seen now, and the latter two coming on the scene more around 2012 or so) are also commonly mixed in to the wood pulp fleet.

Freight Car Friday #49 – CP Woodpulp Boxcars

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Chris van der Heide

A pair of modern examples of Canadian Pacific boxcars in wood pulp service at Sault Ste. Marie on July 12, 2015, arriving back in Canada from Michigan to head back to CP via the interchange at Franz.

The top car was built new for CP in 1998 by Greenbrier’s Trenton Works in Trenton, NS. The bottom car’s history is a little more obscure. An early 1970s design from Pullman-Standard, the car’s original owner before coming to CP is unknown. It would have been repainted and renumbered into its current identity in 2001 (and probably rebuilt to raise the roof and add an additional 6 inches to the interior height of the car at the same time).

The flat plates on the sides of both cars are protective covers for vents in the carbody. These vents are typical on modern cars in wood pulp service to allow moisture in the product to escape.

Conrail Lumber Loading Reference Guide

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Chris van der Heide

Many thanks to Ryan Krengel for sending this in to me to add to my archive of lumber load information. Ryan is a professional locomotive engineer for CSX in Illinois, and he offered to send me these photocopied pages of a supplemental pocket reference produced by Conrail for their workers and customers with diagrams of how to load and secure lumber on flatcars.

The guide contains about 20 pages (originally about 4×6″ size) of neat little sketch drawings of several variations of loading and securement methods for different sizes of wrapped lumber bundles, with details of things like what size lumber to use for the vertical stabilizers, stakes a guide rails, and how the bundles are strapped together.

Altogether just a gem and a great resource for studying how lumber loads are secured.