Circus Ramps

[greyhounds]

Does anyone of you know if there are any "Circus Ramp" TOFC intermodal terminals still in operation in the US?

Bonus points for where and on what railroad.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I've wondered about that too ever since CP started up their Xpressway(?) service a few years ago. Haven't checked to see if CP's still running that operation, but it is a ro/ro service. I know Trinity (the rail car builder) even came out with a 7 platform articulated ro/ro flat a while back, perhaps in anticipation of other NA railroads going after the non-reinforced trailer TOFC market.

One of CP's guys described it to me back then. Their terminal drivers had developed the skill of backing double trailer combo's onto the flatcar consist (which saved on the time it would take to back those trailers one at a time). One of them was rumored to have even managed to back a triple trailer combo as a stunt. And since these were dry vans, they were in trailers connected by dollie, not the b-train trailers.

I had drawn up a way to load those trailers forward style, which would allow an easy loading of triple trailer combos, not to mention negating the possibility of a foul-up during the backing process for doubles. I labeled it as a "parallel side loader" using conventional intermodal terminal equipment. However, I could not convince the CP folks to provide a non-disclosure agreement so I could lay it out for them, and the idea remains in my hard-bound journal stack.

It could be that the non-reinforced trailer TOFC market just isn't as big as the railroad thought, and has subsequently stagnated or shrunk. Last I heard BNSF had developed a way to lift non-reinforced trailers onto conventional spine cars without risk of damage to such trailers, so perhaps circus style loading is an anachronism at this point (at least to railroad managment).