8 53am tucson time fema train held up by amtrak heading east empty again like always last spotting was in cochise nov 22th 08 and dec 23rd 08 empty then too. In tucson the 27th of nov confirmation it was fema cause of the aerial view from a pass over bridge (houton) all these sightings heading west. well i dont give a hoot what anyone says you see them jump on and check out the locking devices on both sides 5x12x2 is the cell sizes (3x3) so get your pass port and leave

ok i saw 3 of the train cars from the first picture on the first page of this post. my boss saw them to, in fact he pointed them out and said something about them looking like luxury suites. i was in granite city il and spotted them on rail line that runs parallel to route 3. they were parked and attached to a long line of normal looking rail cars. also it is common for trains to park on thses tracks. i saw them saturday feb 14 early in the morning and they were not there today.

Not another one of these FEMA prison car threads........AGAIN!!!!! Threse kind of threads get old and fast. Come to think of it, I can't really think of how many threads that I have seen about this topic. Anyways on to the destruction.......

What these pictures are of are automobile carriers, otherwise known as autoracks. The means of an autorack/auto carrier is to transport either import or export automobiles either to port or from thr ports to distribution centers across the United States and Canada. These cars can actually transport automobiles from the assembly plants to the distribution centers. However, with the auto makers in so much financial trouble as it is. It's nothing to see a hundred to two hundred of these behemoths parked on either sidings or in the rail yards. There are tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of these cars that are just sitting there that are not being used in revenue service. The exact figures I don't really have but I'd say it's somewhere around fifty to sixty thousand of these autoracks that are setting idle in rail yards. All of this being due to the recession that we are in.

Another thing that most people don't understand about these cars is that these cars are designed for large loads. Hence the length and the large capacity that these cars have to handle. A regular 89' 4" bilevel autorack can handle several different variations when it comes to automobiles. One variation can hold six full-sized family sedans. Another variation can hold four to six sport utility vehicles. The third variation can hold no more than eight compacts. On the other hand. As for the chains that you see in the pictures. Those chains are what secure the automobiles into place while in transit. They way these chains work is that the chains are actually fastened to the chassis of the automobiles. Even though these chains are designed so that it keeps the automobile in place. These chains also safeguard the automobiles from receiving damage while in transit.

Just my .15$ worthless cents to add.

ATS' Resident Railfan G.F.400 is out.

Good luck Gimmefootball, nobody here wants to listen to anyone who actually knows what these cars are for, or who actually works with them. A star to you for the noble try.

Maybe tonight I'll get ordered up for a trainload of dissenters going to a prison camp.
Nah, most likely just a junk freight....

[edit on 15-2-2009 by md11forever]

hey Gimmebreadandcircus i mean football...

what do they do with these boxcars once there are no cars to deliver because the auto industry goes bankrupt and flops?

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Originally posted by prevenge
hey Gimmebreadandcircus i mean football...

what do they do with these boxcars once there are no cars to deliver because the auto industry goes bankrupt and flops?

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These cars are owned by Trailer Train Corporation and leased by the railroads through Trailer Train. The cars themselves are basically in a float pool. Which means, what cars you need you keep out of storage. What cars you don't need get put into storage until they are needed again. Since these cars are not owned by either the railroads or the Federal Government, they have no say as to these cars being put into storage.

these do not look like the ones for cars. i live near train tracks. i get stopped by trains often, i know what automobile train cars look like and theses are not them. i agree i should have went over to them and taken pictures of the insides, but lets face it after never seeing one of theses type of train cars in my life and being a member of ats i didn't want to push my luck so to speak. so i kinda remember when this thread was created and i remember thinking maybe this is a whole lot of nothing until the other day when i saw them, my boss saw them....and he immediately thought they were for people. you know another weird thing about them is they don't have graffiti on them either, which if you see train a lot its highly unusual.

Originally posted by some_stupid_name
you know another weird thing about them is they don't have graffiti on them either, which if you see train a lot its highly unusual.

good observation.

maybee the PTB will hire some kids to 'ghetto thm up' to seem like they've been more 'used' rather than been 'stored'...

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kansas city south was the name on the side of the cars this time and there had to be somewhere between 15 to 20 of theses rail cars. one had trace amounts of graffiti on it. most had patches of fresh paint where you might normally see graffiti. it was 4-4-2009 same tracks as the last sighting.