Fat Alice

[edblysard]

And they bring their own Jeep Liberty service SUV with them.

[BaltACD]

Schnabel car in action

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[edblysard]

Highrailed ahead of this from the city docks all the way out of Houston...there is even a website dedicated to this movement.

BNSF sent a brand new Dash9 to us just for this move.

[Shadow the Cats owner]

Murphy my husband is saying your talking about the Maus tank and yes she was going to be a beast.  Think 200 tons on land powered by a U-boat engine with 1500 HP a 128mm Main gun a 75 mm secondary gun flamethrower in the rear and several 20mm guns for close in defense.  There is one of these monsters that does exsist it was captured at the factory by the Soviet Union and is at their tank museum.  The British got another unfinished hull and their 32 pound gun could only dent the armor.  The Russian 122mm the best gun they had could not penetrate it.  How did the Russians get it home they Drove it home from Germany.

[mudchicken]

(1) The engineering departments of the Class 1's and a few of the 2's, 3's and 4's have extensive records and computer routing programs to handle High/wide/heavies on the main tracks and major sidings. No BIG load goes anywhere without coordination between engineering, mechanical and operating forces and the consignee. The big wildcard will always be the industry track the load comes out of and any yard the load encounters. (Our guy in the swamp knitting sweaters for the gators right now has some stories.)

Certain bridges, while normally rated for 263K-286K-315K, can accomodate a heavier load under controlled circumstances. The tradeoff is the railroad may be shortening the service life of the bridge because of the excess flexure caused by the load. While the marketing and operating guys might want the load, the bridge engineer and the Chief Engineer may kill the deal. (seen a few of those rhubarbs)

(2) The Meridian & Bigbee rocket motor fail was ironically a bridge under rehab with an FRA Bridge inspector that was either there or just left. An awful lot of fuel was fed to the regulatory FRA 214 fire after that incident. Ironically, there are still shortlines dragging their feet on the bridge issue, either because they can't afford it or they have zero expertise on staff and think they (operating bubbas mostly) know better. The regulatory compliance clock is about to hit zero, by the way.

 

SAPOHS = Stop And Procede On Hand Signals

[BaltACD]

True outsized loads are exhaustively measured and plotted against all the clearance data that exists for the route of the load.  Specific handling restrictions are issued for each load.  On CSX clearance measurement vehicles operate over territories at least yearly, and more frequently if necessary to keep up with changes happening on territories.

I recall a number of years ago, a load was recieved through the Port of Baltimore and destined to a desination on the then Norfolk Western.  To move the load both N&W and B&O assigned power and a 200 ton Wreck Crane and associated tool cars to bracket the load and be in position to rerail the car should it derail.  The load was delivered to destination without incident.

[Murphy Siding]

     I worked at an airport during Christmas break from college. We had a big front end loader that was made by Fiat-Allis. Everybody just called that piece of equipment Fat Alice. It was big, heavy and could be difficult to work with. I was reminded of Fat Alice the other day.

      I was reading a book the other day about a great big tank that the Germans were trying to develop during World War 2. One of the roadblocks was that the tank would weigh about 220 tons- 440,000#. It would be so heavy that it couldn't be moved by rail. In addition to the bridges, it was said the weight would destroy all culverts and switches and tend to break the rails and ties. That seemed a little far fetched but maybe not by much.

      When a heavy load is sent on one of the Schnabel rail cars, does someone do a preliminary check that the track and infrastructure are up to the task all the way to the destination? Isn't that where there was a failure on some NASA parts in Alabama?