by Justin B
I was snooping around UP's Tidewater Sub and I happened upon a trio of apparently forgotten box cars (a UP yellow/gray "map" car, and an MKT and an MP car with both still in their original paint!) and they had some interesting cargo. There were boxes of "single shot crucibles", and many boxes of a brown putty like substance formed into bricks, manufactured by RailTech. Does anyone know what these things are used for? There were dates of Jan 2000 on most of the boxes, and judging by the condition of the cargo and the rails, that stuff had been sitting there since oh say, Feb 2000. I'm thinking this was MOW stuff used for rail welding and had been forgotten by UP. The rails on the Tidewater Sub are all jointed, so perhaps UP was planning on replacing the joints with welds, but since the only traffic on the line is a local freight and some unit grains, they decided it was not worth the effort.
