Noticed two cars coupled together in the yard this afternoon. Both were lettered for the USRA. The fluted sided passenger car was named RESEARCH. The second "car" was a red flat sided something..... looked like it had some type of unusual diesel locomotive trucks. It rode pretty high off the ground. The lettering on it was gold and said UNITED STATES RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION.
They are AAR Track Load test cars. The coach is the office car that the information from the odd looking brick piece is sent to for analysis. As for "The Brick," It started life as an SD45X on the Southern Pacific. It would later be retired and heavily modified to have 2-axle trucks for better turn radius. If you look in the middle of the brick, you'll see another wheel that is retracted from the rail. when testing, this wheel is dropped and exerts various amounts of pressure to the rail on both curves and straights to look for weaknesses in the rail and track structure.
These cars are only used in testing on Metro-North. They are operated by NJ Transit crews and stored on NJ Transit property. Didn't think they were still around.
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