Unusual rail transporter

[velotrain]

Poking around for photos of rail transport cars / trains, I came across something I hadn't seen before.  Usually, no matter what the car type - 5200, 6000, 7000, they were virtually always in pairs, with neatly stacked 25 meter rails spanning both of them.

 

Then I saw a very mixed load of rails, some of them longer than the car, on a Chiki 7000 with a pair of Chi 1 (or similar) 4-wheel flats on the ends to accommodate the overlong load.  Fishplate holes on two of the rails caused me to think that these were old rails that had been taken up from somewhere.

 

 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6n6hFPU8AUQJKk.jpg

 

from https://twitter.com/i/web/status/840478740136120320

 

 

http://mawasya-tetudo.main.jp/keishiki-fc-nagamonosya.html

 

Many rail transporter images - I'm interested in the first two after the full train photo.

 

 

I also found a photo of a Ji 8100 type, about the length of the Chi 1, but with an all-steel body and a rotating rail support. 

 

https://tinyurl.com/m52lujs

 

This site has info on a number of "long cars", including an interesting mixed wood load on a Tiki 300 / Tiki 303.

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www8.atpages.jp/tamesanfc/ryuti_nagamono.html&prev=search

 

 

I was curious how common the short - long - short combo is seen, or is it something that has disappeared with the change in the millennium?

 

 

[cteno4]

8100 looks like the cars that come in the little green max mow kit.

 

Jeff

[velotrain]

Tomix makes a 2720 and 2721, which are identical except for the removable load - currently sold out most places.

 

The 8100 is so short, I'm wondering if the rails were just suspended between two cars, so it could accommodate varying lengths - sort of like logging disconnects.

[kvp]

The short-long-short seems to me as an impovised setup once they figured out some of the rails will be too long for both the long car or the two coupled shorts.

 

I've seen short cars like the 8100 in use, but for long rails. A really long rake of such cars were coupled, sometimes with normal flatcars in between having slide bars only. I think the photo even has the corner of one such car on it. The idea was to create a long rake that deviated very little from the track centerline to avoid overtwisting the rails on S curves (turnouts). Short cars are good in this and they were available in large numbers.

Edited May 6, 2017 by kvp