Listers: To expand slightly on a recent thread regarding EL's cwr cars / train, WNYP pulled a cwr train into Wellsville yesterday afternoon, around 5pm (IIRC). It was stored on the passing siding on the north side of town overnight and I heard it leave town today around 8 this morning. C430 #431 was on the west end and one of the C424's (I don't recall the #) was on the east. On my way back from Olean around 2 this afternoon, I detoured through Belmont and caught it around Belvidere. I took a few pictures of it and the siding in Belvidere where there is a large amount of ballast stored for use on the ground. I'll post the pics later tonight or tomorrow when I get a chance to pre-screen them. I will apologize ahead of time for the poor quality that is likely, as the pics were taken on my cell phone, which was the only camera I had (I wish I had thought of taking my real camera with me before I left town). I also have a picture of the remaining Erie concrete phone booth that's present near the Belvidere siding, which will be a bit far, as I took it from the shoulder of the highway and didn't have the benefit of my real camera's telephoto. It was interesting to observe the rail train in action. The C424 was not coupled to it and I'm not sure where it was. The C430 was doing all the work, to put it mildly. It was interesting to hear it, if it was not in notch 8, it was awfully close and really straining to just get the cars moving (and keep them moving) to drop the rail. It would be interesting to find out what the weight of the rail and the cars are to see how hard the loco was working. My rough calculations show that a 1/4 mile section of cwr would be 440 yards long and at 130 lbs or so per yard would result in each section weighing 57.2k lbs or 28.6 tons. If it was 140lb per yard rail, then the respective numbers are 61.6k lbs and 30.8 tons per rail. I don't recall how many racks there were or how many rails were on each rack. But for rough calculations there might have been 5 racks and lets say 6 rails per rack. With these assumptions, the weight of the rail is 1.7 mil. lbs. (130 lb / yd) or 858 tons or 1.848 mil or 924 tons (140 lb / yd). I don't know what the weight of the cars is or the apparatus at the end that assists with placing the rail on the side of the ballast profile, so it's hard to get the other component to see what the total tonnage of the train is. Whatever, its a pretty heavy load for a 3000hp loco. It's interesting to note that in 2003, when the placed rail east of Wellsvile and between Andover and Tip Top, the cwr train had a WNYP C430, a former CR SD 60 and an NS C40-9W. 10,800 hp vrs. 3,000! Regards, Chris The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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