Coal Cars-Part 3 Dedicated "Packerland" Trains

The third category of coal cars commonly seen passing through the Wadena area are the solid sets of leased cars that serve various Wisconsin power plants. These include trains serving the Weston 4 powerplant near Weston, the Alma Station near Alma, Wisconsin, operated by Dairyland Power Cooperative, and Columbia Energy Center near Portage, Wisconsin.

The unique things about these trains is that they normally operate with almost solid sets of identical cars. The other trains passing through the area, as we have seen in previous posts, usually have mix of cars, even if they carry the same or related reporting marks. Occasionaly you will see a Becker train with a pretty solid set of newer BN cars but most of the MERC trains are a dog's mix nowdays.

The newcomer to this area in this group are the WPSX cars. I am speculating to some degree but I do know that Weston 4 is a new Wisconsin Public Service-owned power plant, recently put into service, and that coal demand at that complex has therefore increased. Apparently this is the most economical route to feed this enhanced demand as the trains are now a regular visitor on the Staples Sub. These cars are of various ages but they all are a similar style. Here is an older one:


And a couple that appear to be newer. By the looks of the reporting marks, the first one might have carried someone else's initials at one time.




Pretty boring. Not much variety there, is there?

Well, for a lack of variety, no train can beat the DAPX trains that serve the Alma powerplant. These blue-ended gons operate in solid sets, with only one exception that I am aware of. Here is a shot of one of the Dairyland cars.


Even with the lack of variety, they are still one of my favorite trains. As much as any train I see, they have a defined purpose. They exist to haul coal to a given power plant, period. With all the wondering you can do trackside it's nice to know for sure where something is going sometimes.

And there is one small bit of variety. They aren't all exactly the same. A few, I don't know how many, but a few of these cars are equipped with rotary couplers on both ends. I have one shot that I pulled from a video I got at Frazee earlier this year.


The quality is not very good but hopefully you can see the blue bands on both ends of this car. It's the spot in a train where the cars switch from having rotary ends one way to the other way. There must not be quite enough to satisfy the need, though, because the lone interloper I have caught in these trains is a DEEX car with double rotary ends, seen here.


The final Wisconsin bound trains are the COLX trains that serve the power plant in Portage. They are normally pretty much solid COLX cars, although you will see more variety both in cars that carry those marks and in other cars on these trains than the other two. Here are some examples of COLX cars.




Not a lot of variety other than different number series and amount of weathering. But it's enough for these trains to win the "non-uniformity" award for any of the "Packerland" trains.

Next time-the oddball cars.

Jim

Coal Cars-Part 2 DEEX/DETX Cars

In my first coal car post I discussed what I see along the line for BN/BNSF cars. They are probably in a neck and neck race for numerical superiority on the west end of the Staples Sub with privately owned cars carrying DEEX and DETX reporting marks used to service the Midwest Energy Resources coal terminal in Superior, Wisconsin.

Midwest Energy Resources, or MERC as I usually refer to it, is a coal transshipment facility with the capability to handle 25 million tons of coal annually. Basically, they unload unit trains of coal, and load the coal onto lake boats for delivery to end users further down the Great Lakes shipping system. You can learn more about the operation here.

My connection to MERC is as a railfan watching numerous trains traverse the Staples Sub between Dilworth and Staples, where they enter the Brainerd Sub for most of the remaining trip. My own estimate is that there are probably about 4 loaded eastbound and 4 empty westbound trains each day. I have nothing scientific to base that on, just a guess resulting from how many trains I see pass through the area. If it is wrong, it is probably too low.

The trains usually consist of a mixed bag of cars, mostly a combination of DEEX and DETX marked gons, but with a bunch of oddballs thrown in as well. You will see FURX, CRIX, GEMX, MBKX, NCUX, and others as well. I will cover some of these "oddballs" in a future post.

The most common DEEX cars are probably this style car:


I wish I was more familiar with the builders and could give more concrete information. I think that this style car has been built by different manufacturers, and I know that they have been built over quite a long time period as I see many different build dates on them. This particular car is part of one of the newer series, the 060xxx cars that I see fairly often. Here is another older example:


Also, I have no idea what the numbering system is, as I have seen cars of this style marked DETX with very low numbers:


Also, 11xxx is not a complete series. Here is another car in that number series that is of a totally different style. If you look at the "bathtub" on this car you can see it is angled up the middle as opposed to level all the way across. It also looks like the reporting mark might have been changed from DETX to DEEX at some point.


Another "bowed bottom" car.


Now on to another more unique car. This one is often seen in many different trains as it appears many of them were built with rotary couplers on both ends. You can see that both ends are marked with yellow, which I have concluded must indicate they have rotary couplers on both ends. I didn't realize if for a long time but every unit coal train I see has a double ended car in it somewhere and the rotary ends of the cars ahead of and behind it are reversed. I have no idea why, but since I have started watching for this I have never seen a train without this trait. Now I know someone will prove me wrong, but I have not found an exception yet. Sometimes the rotary reversal is very close to the front or rear of the train, but it is always (or almost always) there. So here is the famous car I speak of.


Most of these cars do not have rotary couplers on both ends, through. Here is an example of a more common version. This is a very common car in MERC trains.


Not quite as common, but still not unusual, is the aluminum hopper with rotary couplers. These will be seen running free along with the gons in some trains, while at other times you can find solid sets of them. I believe that the solid sets are delivering to the Hallet dock in Dulth, where they don't have the capability to dump the solid bottom cars.


A couple of intersting points about this car. First, they stick out in the train due to the high ends of the hopper bottoms. I suspect this leads to the second peculiar trait. When you see them loaded in a train of gons, the coal sticks up quite a bit higher. While from the ground you often can't see the coal heaped up in the gons, in the hoppers it is very visible.

As I said earlier, there are quite a few other oddball cars found in these trains. Next time, I will try and cover the unusual or less common cars found in coal trains on the Staples Sub.

Jim

Coal Cars-Part 1 BN/BNSF Cars

Ever since I moved to Wadena in 2004 I have been watching coal trains shuttle back and forth between power plants or the MERC terminal and the mines out west. At first, they all look the same, but as time goes by you start to notice detail differences.

The first batch I want to take a look at are the BN/BNSF cars. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that these cars are used to serve the Becker plant, some of the moves to the MERC terminal in Superior, and can be used to fill out almost any other coal trainset that moves on this line.

I'm not an expert on car classes or manufacturers. One of the purposes of this post is to try and learn something about identifying the various cars I see.

First up is my personal favorite BN car. These little cars just look "husky" and tough to me and I really like to see them included in a consist. There is one similar DEEX car that does not have open ends and I like that car as well, but this is my favorite.


I keep expecting to see them fade away, as they have been around for quite a while as evidenced by the "BN" reporting marks and paint job. However, at least one of them has been repaired and repainted into its old road number recently. I shot this within the last couple of weeks.


It appears these cars will soldier on at least a while longer.


Another old car that I really enjoy seeing is very common on the EVIL trains that serve Laskin Energy Center-the classic BN steel hopper car.


These cars are also frequently seen in a string of aluminum gondolas, as at least some of them are equipped with rotary couplers on both ends and connect strings of cars that have the rotary ends reversed.

Recently there have been some other hoppers showing up on these trains that I believe the BN must have gone out and obtained for this service second handed. Here is one example, shot a few weeks ago passing through New York Mills loaded in a train of all hopper cars:



The more modern coal gons have a wide variety of paint jobs and heralds, ranging from what must be almost the original to the latest "wedgie" logos. Here are a few examples.








I think the four cars above are all basically the same, with different paint jobs reflecting the era of purchase or repaint. If there are obvious differences, help me out and give me a heads up. Thanks!