AC 238156 is one of 96 “new” pulpwood cars that were acquired by Wisconsin Central in late 1995 for service on the Algoma Central Railway. These 66′ inside length bulkhead flatcars were acquired second-hand from CP Rail and rebuilt with side stakes for pulpwood.
This car was photographed in Cochrane, Ontario on July 16, 2013 heading empty back to Hearst with several other AC and WC marked pulpwood flatcars for interchange back to CN.
This old QGRY (Quebec-Gatineau Railway) boxcar was originally built in 1964 by Hawker-Siddeley for Canadian Pacific and amazingly enough in 2004 still carries its original as-delivered paint job, when the majority of these cars were repainted CP Rail throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Photographed in the former ACR Steelton yard in August 2004, this car was probably loaded with pulp or paper from the pulp mill at Espanola on the Huron Central Railway (Huron Central and Quebec Gatineau are both subsidiaries of Genesee Rail One Canada), interchanged to CN to travel to destinations in the midwest United States.
CP (ex-CPAA) 207289 50′ boxcar in the former ACR Steelton yard, August 19, 2004.
Most likely loaded with paper or woodpulp from the pulp mill at Espanola, interchanged to CN to head into the midwest United States, or possibly provided to the St. Marys Paper mill in Sault Ste. Marie.
Cars like this were previously also a common sight hauling baled pulp from mills on the north shore of Lake Superior south over the ACR from Franz.
This Canadian Pacific gondola is one of a series outfitted with coil steel bunks and normally has a protective fiberglass cover applied to it to protect the steel coils (you can see some similar covered cars in the background) but here the cover is missing and you can see into the interior and see how the coil bunks and bracing are designed.
CN and CP both supplied a lot of cars for steel loading at Algoma Steel, so covered gondolas like this would not have been an uncommon site in the Algoma Central yards in Sault Ste. Marie, and CP traffic to western Canada would have been interchanged at Franz.
This car was photographed on July 30, 2014 in the CP yard at Sudbury so it would actually be on the way to Sault Ste. Marie for a load of steel coils.
These three old 48′ gondolas photographed in behind the Algoma Steel tube mill at Sault Ste. Marie/Steelton in August 2004 are former Algoma Central cars originally built in 1947 by National Steel Car in series AC 3501-3850. Most of their original lettering has been obliterated but traces of the bear logo is peeking through on all three cars. The 128 below appears to a late 1950s brown repaint.
