Autoracks

As a young child in the mid to early 90's, I can remember quite a few autoracks going up and down the Delmarva secondary. I definitely don't see these anymore. Does anybody know where they went or came from? Was there an assembly plant or distibution center in Salisbury or some other town? IIRC, it seemed like there were too many to be headed to any one dealership.

They came from Ford's Norfolk plant, which was recently shut down (within the last 2 years or so). They primarily made F-150's.

The Eastern Shore RR Museum in Parksley, VA has some video of trains with blocks of 5-10 autoracks heading north. I think there were also scenes of the racks being unloaded at Cape Charles.

I think the tunnels in Baltimore on Amtrak and CSX prevented them from moving that way, so they were floated across the bay......

Wow, when I typically think of autoracks, I think of 100 car unit trains running up the NEC and not 5-10 cars poking along at 10mph on a shortlike like the ESHR.
Thanks!

"RDG467"
I think the tunnels in Baltimore on Amtrak and CSX prevented them from moving that way, so they were floated across the bay......

CSX has an auto rack ramp in Jessup. The Howard Street tunnel has sufficient clearance to accommodate the movement of auto racks and TOFC cars. The gantlet track that use to be in the B&P tunnel to accommodate tall freight cars was removed after fright trains were embargoed from the NEC.

Thanks for the info about the CSX tunnel.

I should have been more specific and noted that since the loads originated on the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line (majority owned by NS), they probably didn't want to interchange them with CSX and cut them in on the rate, so the cars went to the Eastern Shore (now Bay Coast) and over the water to Cape Charles rather than taking a roundabout trip on NS or using CSX.

Here's a link to a good rail map of the Norfolk area which shows the location of the Ford plant and the interchange with the Bay Coast. http://www.npblrr.com/map.html