- PRR F22 "Battleship Gun" flatcars
Load(s) Carried: Naval guns, steel beams, bridge parts, other long goods.
Used: 1910s-1970s
Since the Pennsylvania Railroad served both a wide variety of steel mills, manufacturing plants, and the Philadelphia Navy Yard, they needed a specialized flat car just to carry large naval guns. Naval guns. They came up with these little shorties. The idea was to distribute the weight across multiple cars, and then have a pair of idler flats as they're known to allow a train to pull more than one gun and a consist along with other freight cars. They also found use hauling long fabricated steel components like bridge, girders, cranes, and other special machinery for decades.
- Dept. Of Natural Resources Fish cars
Load(s) carried: Fish!
Used: 1893-1940
Wisconsin own two of these cars like the one pictured above to restock lakes with fish for sport fishing. These well-loved cars hauled the fish in milk cans to be dumped into lakes all around the state. Luckily, this car survives today in pristine restored condition at the mid-continent railroad museum in Wisconsin. I highly suggest you go visit it!
- Atomic Energy Commission Nuclear Cask car
Load(s) carried: Nuclear waste from submarines, ships, power plants
Used: 1970-Today
Both the US Navy and the atomic energy commission needed a safe way to haul nuclear waste which is both very heavy and very dangerous. So in the 60s they pioneered a variety of techniques using depressed center flat cars to haul nuclear casks of waste to specialize sites all around the country. Later on they developed this car above, which is specifically designed to haul a very large casket of nuclear waste. The central cylinder can be lifted out with a very heavy overhead crane and put directly into storage. The car itself has a large well in the center to hold it and is kind of like a bridge with freight car trucks on it.
- Atlantic Coast line ventilated boxcar
Load(s) carried: 🍉 Watermelons! (With the ventilated doors open) and any other types of goods woth the solid boxcar door closed.
Used: 1910s-1960s
While the idea of ventilated refrigerator car dates back to like the 1860s, the Atlantic Coast Line built a bunch of specialized ventilated cars for their melon service, back in the late 1910s. They had a sturdy steel under frame unlike their predecessors, so they lasted far longer than their completely wood & truss rod under frame cousins, which were all outlawed from interchange before 1940. These cars, with their cheery yellow paint in revenue service into the late 60s hauling melons towards major cities and then regular manufactured goods back south.
