That is an interesting car for sure, have never seen a flat car set up like that for moving lumber.
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| Posted by Mike on July 4, 2013 | |
This is a 310K car, or 310,00 lbs (155 tons) loaded, which is the current highest weight limit for North American freight cars. The current standard is 286K, or 286,000 lbs. (130 tons). These cars were built in 2003 for CP Rail. I finally saw my first one in person in New Castle PA about three weeks ago. It was an AOK former CP car just like this one. It, however, was not loaded to the maximum capacity of the car, like the one pictured is. It had about 8 less bundles of lumber. Alot of the North American rail network can not handle 310K cars.
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For what it's worth, an "AOK" reporting mark denotes a car that's actually owned by Greenbrier Leasing. Greenbrier pays a royalty fee to the Arkansas & Oklahoma for the use of their reporting mark. There are a few other companies that do this as well... NOKL (First Union Rail) EEC (GE Capital) and others.
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Very cool, a first for me!
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That's a lot of load for four axles.
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I am surprised that they did not build these with three axle trucks then they would be just about legal anywhere with their 310K capacity.
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