What do these freight cars carry?

[Yellowspoon]

While riding on the California Zephyr near the Utah/Colorado border, I went by a train with over 40 of these cars. Of note is that half of each car is about 18 inches taller than the other half. Also of note, the cars appear to be married pair with three trucks for every two cars.

[Sir Ray]

Look like trash trains to me - probably MSW (municipal solid waste - household trash), as C & D (Construction & Demolition) often (not always) goes by Gondolas while MSW nowadays goes by sealed container.
Outside chance it could be dried solidified sewage, which used to be spread on farmland as fertilizer, but not sure how much of that business is still going around (there were complaints of too much concentration of heavy metals in the sewage-turned-fertilizer).

[Eliphaz]

Could be MSW or hazmat - contaminated soil or some such going for treatment and burial.
Too bad you can't make out the placard.
here's a photo of a slightly different configuration on another forum
http://www.nscale.org/forum/attachment. ... 1275232096
There are N and HO scale models of these cars available, but I cant seem to find a link to them right now.

The high-low-low-high arrangement is necessary to obtain equal weight distribution over three trucks.
in the linked photo you can see that each tuck supports two containers.


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John Perkowski

[wis bang]

There is a contaminated soil facility in Utah. They had 20' boxes that looked like that that were transportable on roll offs & container chassis. We worked w/ them hauling contaminated dirt from a site in NJ to the railhead in Kearny.

They had a rolloff trailer that would bring in 2 emptys at a time & drop them on the ground. We would lift them onto our 40' drop frame chassis designed for 20' tank containers, have them filled and hauled them to the railyard where they were popped and placed on the spine cars for the trip to Utah.

[slchub]

Those my friend carry radioactive dirt from Moab. You passed those cars at Brendel (Crescent Junction, Utah). Google Crescent Junction, Utah and you will see the new facility used to load/unload the cars that was recently built. Take a closer look at the side of the containers and notice the placard?

Here is some more info. on the subject.

http://www.wise-uranium.org/udmoa.html

Isn't it nice to know (or don't know) what you are passing as you enjoy the desert southwest? And I have to pass by here two times a week on #5/6.

[Yellowspoon]

Those my friend carry radioactive dirt from Moab. You passed those cars at Brendel (Crescent Junction, Utah). Google Crescent Junction, Utah and you will see the new facility used to load/unload the cars that was recently built. Take a closer look at the side of the containers and notice the placard?

Here is some more info. on the subject.

http://www.wise-uranium.org/udmoa.html

Isn't it nice to know (or don't know) what you are passing as you enjoy the desert southwest? And I have to pass by here two times a week on #5/6.

Sorry, I can't read the placard. My anti-shake camera was following the background, not the rail cars.

Yep, that's gotta be it. Using Google, I can see the facility about 2 miles ENE of Crescent Junction. The tracks are about 200 feet north of the CZ tracks and blurry cars look about the same size/color as my photograph.

[slchub]

Well, not "read" the placards, but see them as a visual clue that "something" NOT good is within the confines of the container. No MSW has placards on the side of the car like these do.

Scary thought. When I worked freight before heading over to Amtrak we would switch out cars in Roper Yard in SLC headed for Envirocare (now EnergySolutions) with the same type of cars. You'd do your best to try and give a nice smooth joint when coupling up the cars but inevitably with the remotes (RCL's) you would get a good good joint and you would get a nice amount of dirty dirt dust flying around in the air to breath in.

The RR is one big Superfund site.