There's a small yard on the SW corner of our town. Occasionally, they bring in this train of living quarters that I assume are for people that are working on the RR tracks in the area.
Kind of interesting. I caught it on google earth.
On the bottom side of that yard, there used to be two sidings where I'd load vehicles from AM General onto rail cars for transport. 5 ton Army trucks that got brought in and refurbished for a government program that was quite successful and saved the taxpayer a bunch. They basically got new trucks for 2/3 the price of new. We also loaded new HUMVEEs and small Postal Service vans.
They all went on flat cars. We'd order in about 20 cars. They'd drop them off. Then we had to lock the brakes on the last one at the ramp, then use pry bars to move them closer together so that we could lift and install steel plates by hand between the cars and pin them down on one car. Then lock the bakes on that car, and move on to the next. Those plates aren't light!
But I could do it by myself back then. Sometimes I'd do the entire train while the others went and picked up a load of vehicles. I won't lie. In summer, it sucked!!
Then we'd drive them on and chain them down. The government guys would show up, take inventory, check the chains and binders and safety wires, and magically the train would be gone and a new batch of empty cars would appear.
Other days we'd drive them to other towns and different railroads.
Just another part-time job I had in my youth.
