This question occured to me while I was re-reading this early 1960s French Rail-freight brochure (I got that link a while ago, maybe from RMWeb)*
If you search on that document for "Remorques porte-wagons" (no quotes), in that section you'll see images and a brief description (in french) about this "Trailer Wagon" service - it is basically described as a method of bringing rail-cars (wagon) to industries that it would be impractical to install a siding to, this method being to load a revenue move rail-car onto a low-deck trailer (equiped with rails**) from the rail-head, and then truck the rail-wagon to the destination (off-rail) facility.
Nowadays this would be done using containers, and since in that 1960s brochure the prior two sections describe various true container service (tanks, grains, dry-goods, bulk), even back then that sort of service could be done via containers. My question is - was this trailer-wagon service popular? somewhat common? rarely used? or was it just that one tank car of asphalt that one time?*I remember that image of a "tank car on road trailer" from my childhood in the 1970s - saw it in a small pocket-sized paper-back book about railroading (Golden Book series?) - the book may have been older, our local bookstores back then were not cutting edge (as opposed to now, when they are non-existant).
**Looking closely at the images, it looks as if the sideframes of that trailer serve as the rails - in that case the trailer would pretty much be a piece of panel track on rubber tires.
Deutsche Bundesbahn also provided a similar service for sites that had too little traffic to justify building a siding. There was a pictorial in TRAINS in the mid to late 1960's (in the "Would You Believe It?" series) showing how the process was done.
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