# Don't see this very often...



## hoscale37 (Nov 20, 2011)

An industrial siding here in Cincinnati had some covered Gondolas in it. I came across these older Gondolas that are now owned by Northern Oklahoma Railroad (NOKL) that were formerly Chicago Short Line Railway cars. 

The cool thing about this is that here are two sequentially numbered Gondolas right next to each other. NOKL 318296 and NOKL 318297 

I know that I haven't seen this before; maybe you have- but I thought it was pretty cool...


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## THE TYCO MAN (Aug 23, 2011)

What are they used for?


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## tkruger (Jan 18, 2009)

THE TYCO MAN said:


> What are they used for?


Coiled steel primarily. They have a cradle in the bottom to keep the rolls centered. The cover holds them down. Also the raw steel is protected from the elements. Safer to transport and easier to load and unload than a flat car is for the same item. There are also gons with flat covers that are used for anything and everything that is shorter than the walls of the gon.


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## Gansett (Apr 8, 2011)

There's a yard that runs parallel to RT 95 in Providence. Earlier this year the yard was of full tank cars, by full I mean 82 cars and a second track with roughly the same amount behind the first. Hey I was doing 65 and counting rail cars so I might be off a car or two. But they appeared to be new, with no graffiti, and numbered sequentially.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

tkruger said:


> Coiled steel primarily. They have a cradle in the bottom to keep the rolls centered. The cover holds them down. Also the raw steel is protected from the elements. Safer to transport and easier to load and unload than a flat car is for the same item. There are also gons with flat covers that are used for anything and everything that is shorter than the walls of the gon.


The cover doesn't hold anything down. It just protects the load from the elements. The steel coils are held down simply by their own massive weight, and internal restraint bars inside the car prevent the coils from shifting.

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=nokl318265&o=nokl

Those yellow covers are fiberglass and wouldn't do much to restrain a coil of steel if it decided to go anywhere. Also some types of steel can be and are shipped in cars without covers.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

hoscale37 said:


> two sequentially numbered Gondolas right next to each other. NOKL 318296 and NOKL 318297
> 
> I know that I haven't seen this before; maybe you have- but I thought it was pretty cool...


I've ended up shooting plenty of sequentially numbered cars on separate occasions, but once I did shoot a pair of NDYX covered hoppers that were sequentially numbered and coupled together.

I've also on occasion caught cuts of brand new cars being shipped from the factory, and these tend to be sequential or almost so. (e.g. cars 1-10 might be released at the same time, but they could be coupled out of order, or maybe 1-5 and 11-15 ended up being finished before 6-10 which get shipped a week later)


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## ktcards (Sep 22, 2012)

cv_acr said:


> The cover doesn't hold anything down. It just protects the load from the elements. The steel coils are held down simply by their own massive weight, and internal restraint bars inside the car prevent the coils from shifting.
> 
> http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=nokl318265&o=nokl
> 
> Those yellow covers are fiberglass and wouldn't do much to restrain a coil of steel if it decided to go anywhere. Also some types of steel can be and are shipped in cars without covers.


Back when I spent a summer working in a steel mill we loaded cars like this only the covers were made of steel, And the coils weighed as much as 35 tons each, but that was 50 years ago.

Ray


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