Alan;



They were commonly placed on crosswise 4 by 6's (or similar) so one could get
cables or chains under the load, and then blocked with stacks of wood blocks
nailed together in as high a stack as necessary to secure the load from
lateral or endwise movement. The AAR loading rules go into much detail on
how to secure each type of load. If the crates were tall, or had a high
center of gravity, they would put pieces of wood up the ends and put
diagonals up against them to prevent it from tipping. Steel-floored gons had
to have cribbing installed since you couldn't nail the blocks to the floor,
and were much more complicated to secure many loads in. This was why some
railroads did not have a lot of steel-floored gons, even though they were
probably more durable. Some shippers insisted on wood floors.



Elden Gatwood



________________________________

From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Monk
Alan
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 5:31 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: RE: [STMFC] Biggest thing ever transported by rail? . . . up to May
1958



Hmmm... strictly speaking, it's not a single *load* though.

When broken down into it's constituent parts, it required something like
5 or 6 separate trains to move Dora from place to place (plus a train
for the security battalion, a train for the flak batallion, a train for
the engineers....)

When set up in the firing location, it sat on a pair of curved parallel
tracks and was moved up and down by a pair of specialist low-geared
diesel locos.

I am tempted by the 1:35 kit though... and I've seen a website for a
scratchbuilt one-SIXTH scale model too.

(IMHO largest 'rail mounted' load would be a complete Saturn V on the
'railroad' linking the VAB and the pad ^_^ )


Onto more list-relevant matters :)

When crates were loaded into gons, how was the load restrained from
sliding along or across the gon?? Ropes? Chains? Chocks/blocks??

I've got a couple of gons which I want to load with crates, but I've yet
to find a pic looking down into one so loaded.

Cheers,
Alan,
London, UK