Hey all you train people, I saw a train in Indiana on Wednesday that blew me away. Maybe someone can tell me what it was and post a few picts.
I was at a red light in Huntington, IN and was about 50 yards from a rail crossing. The train consisted of what looked like regular highway semi-trailers hooked nose to tail and they were not sitting on flatcars like a normal piggy-back setup. Instead they seemed to be supported on a 4 wheel truck where each pair joined together and there was no railcar underneath. The train was doing at least 50 mph and all I could see was about 2 trailers as they popped out from behind the buildings on both side of the street I was on, so it was hard to do a detailed study as they flashed by.
All the way back I kept wondering how they could pull a long train at all if they were standard lightweight boxes, how could they brake the whole thing, etc, etc.
So today I finally got a chance to Google it and found some references to "train of trailers" but they were mostly patent descriptions with no pictures. However these do describe what I saw ......"Novel highway trailers can be mounted on railtruck assemblies to form a train of highway trailers, the railtruck assemblies including a conventional railtruck which supports a novel intermodal adaptor. The novel highway trailers include a forwardly extending tongue and coupling structure at the rear to which may be secured the tongue of a following trailer and the intermodal adaptor of a railtruck assembly". Other references are similar.
This implies these were not standard highway trailers so they could be built rugged enough to hold up, provide brake air lines, etc which answers my questions.
So does anyone out there have some pictures of this type of train, and where they are in service?
TIA
I was at a red light in Huntington, IN and was about 50 yards from a rail crossing. The train consisted of what looked like regular highway semi-trailers hooked nose to tail and they were not sitting on flatcars like a normal piggy-back setup. Instead they seemed to be supported on a 4 wheel truck where each pair joined together and there was no railcar underneath. The train was doing at least 50 mph and all I could see was about 2 trailers as they popped out from behind the buildings on both side of the street I was on, so it was hard to do a detailed study as they flashed by.
All the way back I kept wondering how they could pull a long train at all if they were standard lightweight boxes, how could they brake the whole thing, etc, etc.
So today I finally got a chance to Google it and found some references to "train of trailers" but they were mostly patent descriptions with no pictures. However these do describe what I saw ......"Novel highway trailers can be mounted on railtruck assemblies to form a train of highway trailers, the railtruck assemblies including a conventional railtruck which supports a novel intermodal adaptor. The novel highway trailers include a forwardly extending tongue and coupling structure at the rear to which may be secured the tongue of a following trailer and the intermodal adaptor of a railtruck assembly". Other references are similar.
This implies these were not standard highway trailers so they could be built rugged enough to hold up, provide brake air lines, etc which answers my questions.
So does anyone out there have some pictures of this type of train, and where they are in service?
TIA
