10 Obscure Railcars Explained In 10 Minutes!

rail cars some of us see them every day and while they can be interested sometimes there usually ain't too much going for them that's because all we're saying is just average everyday Rolling Stock but what about the Obscure experimental or specialty stuff the rail cars at the bottom of the iceberg that can carry thousands of gallons of molten metal or start World War III get ready to learn all about these and much more as we go over 10 obscure rail cars in 10 minutes [Music] let's start off small with the scale test car these little rail cars are kept at a very specific weight usually anywhere from 25 to 50 tons and are used to calibrate loading scales coal grain wood chips and much more is all measured and shipped by weight so the scales that measure these Goods as they're being loaded or received must be very precise to ensure no money is lost and its scale test guards that help keep these weigh-in devices in line it's important that stcs ain't handled too rough because it could throw off their precise weight if you ever see a scale test car in transit it'll usually be at the end of a train or on a flat car just to keep it from being shaken around too much however some scale test cars will be disguised as typical pieces of Rolling Stock such as Hoppers or boxcars so keep your eyes peeled for them stepping it up a notch size wise we take a look at single Bay whale belly Hoppers these interesting rail cars came out in the late 60s and were used by railroads such as the CB and Q BN scl and CSX their purpose was to hold dry bolt Commodities such as plastic pellets sugar flour cement mix you name it while they look like a typical gravity Hopper from the outside they actually have quite a complex unloading system inside is elaborate the air ducts that operates at 50 to 80 psi now it was basically impossible to find any information on just how this unloading system works but I imagine it either worked similarly or exactly like an air slide Hopper's unloading system where air is used to fluidizes the cargo so it can simply flow out the bottom several of these whale belly Hoppers survived today hauling cement mix for dragging cement up in Maine speaking of whale bellies I give you the whale belly tanker the largest tank car ever made just like The well-bellied Hoppers this gargantuan tank car was made in the late 60s it can hold a stagger and sixty thousand gallons which is roughly twice the capacity of even the biggest tank cars you see today the aptly nickname railwell was made by g-a-t-x as an experiment and was supposed to haul substances such as anhydrous ammonia or liquefied petroleum gas however this Behemoth never even saw Revenue Service because at 97 foot long it was simply too big to be reliably used and in 1971 it was donated to the National Transportation Museum in St Louis Missouri where it still resides today because the railway was such a massive failure and the fra was starting to regulate the length of rail cars it ended up being the only one ever made instead of making rail cars as obnoxiously large as possible what if you shortened them and Daisy chained them together well that's exactly what Santa Fe did with their Fleet of super hoppers in the early 90s Santa Fe sought to make grain Transportation even more efficient so they had three of these articulated Hoppers built and boy did they work great they were extremely lightweight due to their aluminum construction and carried 30 percent more grain than five normal Hoppers combined which saved thousands on fuel costs however loading and unloading them was cumbersome due to each Hopper's short in length but that didn't stop them from being used all three super Hoppers would continue to see Revenue Service until 2017 when they were finally retired after 26 years on the rails even though two were scrapped one remains in preservation at the Oklahoma Railway Museum and is set to be restored speaking of efficiency let me introduce you to Southern Pacific's vertapac Auto Wrecks it's the late 60s and Chevy is designing the Vega a car meant to cost no more than two grand however shipping the Vegas from the factory to the Pacific coast by typical means would be too costly making for an inflated price out west so SP and GM got together and designed the vert-a-pack a rail car specifically made for carrying Chevy Vega's long distances while normal Auto racks could only carry 18 cars these could carry 30 which slash shipping costs because the Vegas were shipped upright fill ports and reservoirs for the car's fluids had to be moved so all the liquid state contained and oil baffles were added to keep the engine from flooding along with several other modifications but after the Vega was discontinued SP scrapped all the verta packs since they were too Niche to be used for anything else on the topic a niche purpose-built Rolling Stock let's take a look at torpedo cars these very strange rail cars carry many tons of molten pig iron around foundries and steel mills and come in a wide variety of sizes inside they're lined with thick heavy duty refractory insulation to prevent damage to the car's outer shell and keep the metal hot they must be preheated and completely dry before receiving any molten metal but once they're loaded these cars can hold that molten metal for hours at a time unloading the torpedo car is quite interesting usually cars are anchored in some way and the whole torpedo rotates to dump its molten contents the cars must be anchored because when the torpedo rotates it drastically changes the car's center of gravity which risks the railment over the years torpedo car designs haven't changed much and they're still widely used today now let's take a look at the biggest Revenue Service box cars ever made these hogshead tobacco cars were designed to compete with the trucking industry and bring tobacco back to the rails they operate off the same Principle as a super Hopper and Rail Whale where bigger equals more efficient one car carried roughly a hundred Hogs heads of tobacco and had ten thousand cubic feet of capacity with a super cushion frame for smooth writing they were so big that even with the 10-foot doors wide open they were still too dimly lit inside so each one came with several skylights for better internal visibility tobacco wouldn't know these Giants carried because they were well suited to haul any lightweight bolt commodity you could think of like cotton Furniture tires Etc Southern was the only railroad to build these Monsters And while several were used on NS they were eventually taken off the roster and scrapped thankfully at least one survived it's on display in Bramwell West Virginia also did you know a boxcar could be turned into a caboose because that's exactly what happened with Great Northern x181 better known as the hutch this one-of-a-kind king-size Caboose started life in 1924 as a 50-foot boxcar and was rebuilt into this Frankenstein in early 1953 specifically for use on Rural Branch lines the hutch was put to work on the Hutchison local in central Minnesota for many many years it doubled as both the Caboose and boxcar using its massive storage compartment to haul lcl's or less than car load orders from The Roots various businesses and to make things even cooler this unique Caboose was almost always pulled by an equally unique nw5 eventually though the hutch was taken off the local and later taken out of service altogether sometime in the 70s or 80s today it sits in Devils Lake North Dakota living a new life as part of a sports bar now let's look at one of the most imposing box cars out there this is a peacemaker rail Garrison and its sole purpose was to carry and launch an MGM 118a Peacemaker ICBM these mobile launch sites were dreamed up in the late 80s as a result of the Cold War and would be just one part of an elaborate pre-made train set the plan was to have 25 trains with two missiles each stationed around the country at various military bases and at the drop of a hat these missile trains would enter the U.S rail network all at once making it nearly impossible for the Soviets to pinpoint where our icbms were the missile train in their 42-man Crews were very meticulously planned out and tested but just as the trains were getting ready to be made in Mass the Cold War ended this lone rail Garrison prototype is only one of two ever made and since 1994 it's been on public display at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio of course a video about obscure rail cars wouldn't be complete without the largest rail car in the world this is wecx 801 a snavel car purpose built for hauling immensely heavy oversized cargo unloaded it's over 230 foot long and with the right cargo it can be as long as a football field this is because the snavel's load is carried in between the two huge lifting arms so the length of the car changes with what's being carried and if certain cargo can't support a structural load a giant bridge will be installed for it to rest on wecx 801 also has an elaborate hydraulic system that allows it to shift its cargo at low speeds in order to avoid obstructions and because of this thing's size it has a max speed of only 25 miles per hour empty and 15 miles per hour loaded if you want to learn more about schnabels and all their intricacies I have a video all about them the Link's in the description now there are plenty more obscure rail cars out there and we'd be here till next Tuesday if we tried to cover each and every one but hopefully I was able to shed some light on at least some of the world's lesser-known Row in stock if you know of any exceptionally strange rail cars that weren't mentioned in this video please tell us in the comments thanks for watching if you all enjoyed this video consider checking out some other ones of mine also maybe pass Yourself by the merch shop anyways till next time

Channel: Southern Plains Railfan

Views: 157,955

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Id: D14Is_gcvfA

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023