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railcar barges and connections to floats

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railcar barges and connections to floats
Posted by RichAB on Sunday, October 23, 2011 9:00 AM

I was interested in the 14 page special on moving railcars on water. Can anyone tell me exactly how the barges were secured to the floats for loading/unloading? Thanks in advance.

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Posted by dehusman on Sunday, October 23, 2011 4:47 PM

Ropes.

Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com

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Posted by DSO17 on Sunday, October 23, 2011 6:41 PM

     There may have been other arrangements, but a YOUTUBE search for "eastern shore railroad" came up with a video showing steel bars about 3" square being shoved out from the end of the bridge into sockets on the float to hold the vertical alignment.

     A YOUTUBE search for "railroad carfloat" came up with a video NYNJRAIL-unloading second carfloat: Pt1 that shows one of a pair of hawsers that were thrown over cleats on the float and pulled tight by windlasses on the bridge (from :50 to about 1:50 in the video) to keep the float from moving away from the bridge.

     These are the ways I remember the old Reading carfloat at Pigeon Point DE worked, but, as noted above, there may have been other methods. It looks like the Eastern Shore uses splice bars on the rails, but don't recall seeing that at Pigeon Point.

     Hope I got the nautical terms right - I have enough trouble trying to remember railroad terms.

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Posted by tomikawaTT on Sunday, October 23, 2011 6:54 PM

A little nomenclature.

Car float.  Watercraft (barge, unpowered) with three railroad tracks on the open deck.

Platform lighter.  Watercraft (barge, unpowered) with two railroad tracks flanking a covered, floor-level platform on the centerline.

Apron.  Adjustable connection between a car float/platform lighter and shoreside tracks.

The OP seems to have mistaken the watercraft (which was never, ever called a , "Barge") and the apron.

Chuck (Long-ago NY maritime type modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

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Posted by desertdog on Sunday, October 23, 2011 6:57 PM

Here is a link to a site that covers Alaska Railbelt Marine in great detail, including a video of how they secure the cars to the barge deck for the trip between Seattle and Alaska.

http://www.oil-electric.com/2009/10/boxcard-go-to-sea-6-part-2-of-2.html

 

John Timm

 

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Posted by cuyama on Sunday, October 23, 2011 7:07 PM

The car floats might be secured to tugboats by ropes, but ropes alone typically were not enough to secure the car float or ferry to the float bridge

In many (most? all?) locations there were mechanical means of securing the car floats to the float bridge.

On the east coast, pin toggles were used in some places after the car float was drawn tight to the float bridge via winches.

From this webpage:

Santa Fe car ferry operations in the San Francisco bay area used a similar approach based on driving wooden large wooden stakes through and into pockets on the car float and floatbridge. This is seen in The Warbonnet Third Quarter 2001 issue, page 32. (published by the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society

Different systems were used in other locales, but many seemed to involve driving a pin or wedge through pockets in both the car float and float bridge. This is something like the way the pin in a door hinge goes through the loops on both sides of the hinge to secure it mechanically.

As far as terminology, different terms were used in different places. It seems that most often the floating things with railcars on them were called car floats or car ferries (if self-powered). 

Byron

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Posted by faraway on Monday, October 24, 2011 3:09 AM

About in the middle of the page are some good photos how the connection at the NYNJR is done in Brooklyn (it is a long page).

http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/nynjr.html

Reinhard

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Posted by Ron High on Monday, October 24, 2011 7:01 AM

Go to this site ,it will tell you in great detail about the development of carfloats and the loading process with explanations and diagrams includes links to videos .  There is a n awful lot of information about the rail marine operations in New York.It is also an outstanding resource for freight railroading in New York an awful lot of information about the isolated terminal railroads and their operations with photos diagram and written information.including personal comments from some of the railroaders that worked there.

http://www.freightrrofnyc.info/

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Posted by Ron High on Monday, October 24, 2011 7:24 AM

Go to this site ,it will tell you in great detail about the development of carfloats and the loading process with explanations and diagrams includes links to videos .  There is a n awful lot of information about the rail marine operations in New York.It is also an outstanding resource for freight railroading in New York an awful lot of information about the isolated terminal railroads and their operations with photos diagram and written information.including personal comments from some of the railroaders that worked there.

http://www.freightrrofnyc.info/

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Posted by RichAB on Monday, October 24, 2011 8:51 AM

Thank you for correct nomenclature.

RichAB

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Posted by RichAB on Monday, October 24, 2011 9:03 AM

 

Re: railcar barges and connections to floats (sorry about incorrect nomenclature)

 

To all of you who responded to my query, a warm thank you. All of my questions were answered, and more importantly, you've given me clues on how and where to search. The quick and informative responses were greatly appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

 

RichAB

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Posted by BATMAN on Monday, October 24, 2011 12:50 PM

tomikawaTT

A little nomenclature.

Car float.  Watercraft (barge, unpowered) with three railroad tracks on the open deck.

Platform lighter.  Watercraft (barge, unpowered) with two railroad tracks flanking a covered, floor-level platform on the centerline.

 

Chuck (Long-ago NY maritime type modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

Chuck

Up here in Vancouver there are barges with five tracks, that hold five forty foot boxcars on each track. Do these bigger barges have a particular name? I always thought I would like to scratch build one of these one day. 

They can be seen on Google earth around the Vancouver waterfront. Photo's of them use to be on the Seaspan website photo gallery.

 

                                   BrentCowboy

Brent

"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."

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Posted by richg1998 on Monday, October 24, 2011 3:42 PM

Couple of links that where not clickable.

http://www.oil-electric.com/2009/10/boxcard-go-to-sea-6-part-2-of-2.html

http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/nynjr.html

This makes it a little easier for those who do not understand copy and paste.

Ricch

If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.

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