Sometimes trains wobble and yep sometimes they do fall down. We often hear on the news about train derailments and sometimes how people from this or that town had to be evacuated. I recently had the privledge of working with Southwest Salvage moving a number of grain cars that had gone off the tracks near Newdale, Manitoba, Canada.

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The experience would have been a lot better had Mother Nature deemed to allow the temprature to rise above -39 degrees but she had a bee in her bonnet and so we worked in tempratures that ranged between -39 degrees on the first to -51 degrees the second and -45 the third day. These tempratures mean that exposed flesh can freeze in as little as 3 minutes

When the tempratures get this cold the challanges one normally faces grow exponentally as your equipment doesn't want to work properly and your are covered with enough layers of clothing that movement becomes limited. Everything you do must be done with minimal exertion for moving too fast can cause you to start sweating and at these tempratures that can mean freezing to death.

But even with this in mind you have to keep at it as these loads are all oversize and therefore you are restricted in time of travel to daylight hours and at this time of year sunrise to sunset is not all that long.

I quickly jumped out of my truck and snapped this picture so that you might see what one of these loads looked like.

(click on thumbnail to see larger image)

The cars were up to 60 feet long like this one and on a flatdeck were 15 feet 9 inches to the top and were 14 feet 2 inches wide. Though they were only 40,000 pounds having them extended off the back of this 53 foot trailer 9 feet ment that a tri-axle trailer had to be used. Also due to the height, back country roads had to be used as the overpass clearances on the main roads were too low.

All in all the experience was a good one though as Dean and his crew were great to work with and the environment not much different than the days when I used to work in northern Canada in the winter.

Links of Interest

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Publisher: James E. Jeary
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Keywords: railcar, derailment, oversize loads

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