Huntsville-Madison County Railroad Moves 350,000 lb. transformer
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ย. 2024
- Watch as a huge transformer is delivered to its new home in Huntsville, Alabama. See what it takes to wrestle this thing into position as it has to be cut from its special flatcar!
A blast from the past...Those intersections in the background were replaced by an overpass system and HMCR finally have some new engines. Huntsville is growing exponentially. Thanks OP...
.
Yep Bird spring rd area
@@tullywebster1417 Thanks, has the Parkway not become a 70 mph zone? Holy cow!
I love the part at 6:00. That was a great and unusual catch~!
Very interesting. Good to see rail being used to transport difficult/unusual loads. I also like the use of gravity. Practical railroading, excellent.
Oh wow, that was pretty neat, thats something u don't see everyday, thanks for sharing this video 👍
Not to far from my home town, and the area I uber in . Thanks Beefstew for sharing this
That loco driver REALLY likes the horn, lol.
they get off on that. just like firetruck drivers
The H&MC's ROW has many crossings in a heavily populated, high vehicular traffic area, It runs parallel to the main N-S highway through Alabama's fastest growing metropolitan area
Some cities have banned the use of locomotives using their horn in their city limits. This is a classic example of why.
@@r.w.7232 which is unsafe.
@@davidschick6951 It is what it is
it was originally the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis RR, this line went on a barge when it got to the Tennessee River, the other side of the river in Guntersville is where the line started again and ended in Gadsden, AL.
A fine video of a roll-by runaround at the end. Personally I would have tucked the engine in the hole and let the car roll by on tangent track for a couple of reasons, but these guys know their track better than I do so they probably have their reasons too.
I practice a gravity drop runaround two to three times a week and I hate how the rules have changed to make it "safer" though it feels more dangerous being safe. One rule that changed is the act of "bottling the air" is outlawed. On a gravity drop, busting the air on more than two cars is much safer than setting a handbrake on just one car in the cut.
I tried working for a railroad before i started in the trucking industry. There were too many safety rules that made the work slow, more stressful and a lot less efficient. The work we'd do in 12 hours as a two man crew should have been done in 4 or 5. I remember watching the local crews in town as a kid to run around the cars on the fly, and what a cool show that always was. Once and a while the cars wouldn't quite clear the switch and the locomotive would get stuck behind the cars and they'd have to use the poling pockets to inch the cars back far enough for the loco to get out of the hole. They would also hop on and off the cars while the train was moving, and did it safely. They'd switch the cars in the small yard and let em roll down each track on there own to save time. None of that is allowed anymore. The job wasn't fun because of all the rules. Hats off to you for hanging on. I love being on the road and not having to worry about really anything except when i need to eat, take a break or sleep. I love seeing trains when I'm driving. They always bring a smile to my face, together we move the freight through out our country.
@@jschmid When I started which feels like a lifetime ago but it's been 20 years now, every rule we had was written in blood. Everything was done as a matter of common sense and safety. But as you might be well aware of, common sense isn't so common anymore. People would drive off a cliff now if the signs told them to go that way and then expect compensation because they did not survive the crash at the bottom of the ravine. Because of this same mentality, railroads have gotten pretty adamant about covering all their bases when it comes to ensuring safety at least in the sense of their own liability. I have watched these rules change over and over again not as a result of someone getting hurt, but because of the argument of liability.
No doubt the skilled, trained worker will be able to perform the job quicker, safer and more efficiently but I feel like we have changed from a trade of pride in our work to a trade of entry level cycling and rotation.
The act of mounting and dismounting moving equipment has been reinstated in the region I work in now but when you cross the Mississippi river, they are still holding on to the idea that the motion is too much liability. I can imagine that will get flip-flopped around a few more times before I have the chance to retire. Meanwhile the other thing that plagues our job is the elimination of the human element. Several Class ones are fighting hard to allow single person crews on mega-trains running 15,000-20,000 ft, all with DPU power in the middle. It sounds great on paper when you give a skilled engineer a solid, tested train that works correctly and 8-10 hours of green lights on the track. But if any of those elements fail, you have got a hole that will sink the titanic of operations. In the last 7 years that I have been operating under these conditions, I can count on both hands the number of times everything has run smoothly and no trains were delayed that day, this is even with 2-man or even 3-man crews running. PTC will not make this any easier. PTC is a band-aid on a broken leg and the broken leg is the private industries being driven by greedy executives who don't give a darn about the future of railroading. Rather they are just concerned about the future of their stock portfolio.
@@SD40Fan_Jason Having worked for UP for a bit over 18 years now (scary as that is to think about...) I can attest to most of what you've said. From my own personal experience I see new crew staff as people going through a revolving door. People join with all the hope in the world then realize it's not the job they expected it to be just to quit or inevitably break one of the ever changing rules and get terminated. Even more so with how difficult it is to get any union protection in your earlier days of being hired on.
PTC helps to solve the crew shortage problems most class-1's have had over the years by ironically compounding the reasons why the shortages existed to start with - most people can't take the job.
They assume it's going to be the real life version of some computer game. Let them walk a mile or two in the dead of night, half asleep, in the rain and cold, carrying air hoses looking for an explanation as to why we just unexpectedly lost our air, knowing the clock is ticking, and with the paranoia of knowing you're all alone out there in the dark and you'll see whose going to last and who won't. Even more so when they realize it's going to be this way day in, day out, and the camaraderie they are banking on to get them through the job isn't there. You're on your own. So get used to learning how to handle/fix things without help because you're half paranoid to ask for it to start with for fear of tipping management off that maybe your not worth the companies time.
Get used to living with the fear of knowing any screw up is your last day on the job and even if you don't screw up, you still might be furloughed with no guarantee of ever being reinstated. Add in always being away from home and the friction that can cause if you have a family plus the mental/physical issues that fatigue can cause, and the stress of knowing you have to get that rest to not screw up and get terminated yet can't sleep because of that same stress and you'll end up dreading the phone ringing. That's usually when new people suddenly stop showing up lol
You live your active career off of rule books written by people who don't have your pride or best interests in mind. They don't care if the job isn't fun, if you can't get enough rest, if you're stressed out, if your marriage is suffering because you're always gone, or any other non company related issue. You are to be a ever adapting machine that never faults and is easily programmed and reprogrammed as new policies are instated not for efficiencies sake, but for shareholder/the financial departments peace of mind. You aren't there to do what makes the most sense or what would be most efficient, but rather you're there to do what you're told to do.
Yes the job has it's perks. It - CAN - be fun. But it's no different then being in the military. I always tell new hire on's to never forget it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. You're 100% committed no questions asked or you're gone, simple as that.
I'm lucky in that my wife and kids have incredible understanding and have helped me to make it this long. A deep rooted passion for the industry (regardless of how bad it can be at times) goes a long ways too. That's why despite how terrible myself and others will make it sound, we stick around. I view it as it takes a special kind of crazy to want to do this stuff lol
ClawdyaTube don’t think they can demand compensation if they didn’t survive the trip off the cliff. Just saying.😂
That is one very big piece of machinery !!!!
Браво за това, че се използва железопътен транспорт...!!! 🤩😍Ех, за съжаление не можа да бъде доставен този силов трансформатор до тяговите електрически под станции, но дори и така чрез комбиниран транспорт, с шосеен, и така заслужава адмирации...!!! Интересно ми е колко е висок този силов трансформатор...?!? 🤔🧐😳Това едва ли, би могло да се побере в габаритите на натоварването на електрификация на железопътен транспорт...?!.? 🤔🧐😳Браво, просто невероятно...!!!
Wow! The cars really bring it to scale.
EMD SW 1000 locomotive. OLD. The last ones made in '72. Designed to be a yard switcher. Looking at the track late in the video, it's a miracle there was no trouble. Corman would have had a heck of a time rerailing 350K lbs. (big grin)
I wouldn't ship 350 lbs down that rail by the siding (I know the engine weighs more that, I'm just saying as bad as it looked
incorrect. its a sw9 that was built for the LV
Nicely done
Not far from my house! Wish I’d seen this coming through! Those Energon cubes are bigger than I thought!
Ha! Cause it's a transformer.
chaotic boi225 I’m glad someone got it! lol
that is amazing. and interesting. good catch
awsome catch
In the Uk we would have had that thing on a lorry with endless queues of traffic for days. Shows us how we should be moving freight. Oh sorry Beeching ripped up the railways. Bloody wonderful foresight our politicians have.
A rather half - baked observation.
There's a parallel road for a few miles called "L&N" so I would surmise that the Louisville and Nashville is part of the genealogy,
It was now CSX , and NS are the main roads in the area
If you really like train horns and crossing signal bells, this video is for you. When the video repeats from the beginning after 1:30 I had to bail.
No doubt a bit over the top with that horn
@@Mullikia not really.
We had one of them roll in here in Wolcott Indiana. Except ours was 600,000 lb. About twice as long as this one. They used for the wind turbines going up here. You should of seen the trailer they used to haul it after they got it off the train!
Awesome video!
Every so often, I’ll see CSX haul one of these down or up the Henderson Sub.
We see those often during spring on the UP in Orange County, CA going to Edison in Westminster.
I saw this on the truck going south on I-65 on 12/14.
watching from Brazil ... Great!!!
Beautiful
what railroad owned the HMCR before they did?
Harlan Bassham L&N
Harlan Bassham they also share with Norfolk Southern
I don't know why I find this so interesting but I do.
bellboy407pooppppp
Is that OSHA approved, the men on the moving car,also climbing the ladder while in motion.Doesnt seem safe to me
I love the part
I have seen 8933 in action once
Why all of the long horn blasts??
FRA rules - whenever approaching a crossing - 4 horn blasts. 2 long, 1 short, 1 long.
Who is the mfr. of the huge transformer??
Do they only use a 1 man crew?
What do you mean, there was an engineer and two people standing on the flatcar, whom I can only assume to be a conductor and a brakeman.
must modify my low bed flat cars to take the transformer I just built for my outdoor g scale set. See on you tube the 6 different one I have built so far KENDRA TRAINS TRANSFORMER
that was probably a decent revenue for this shortline
Yes. Also clearance is wider and taller than a roadway so they can scoot these big bricks right down the track without having to cut utility lines or traffic signals out of the way, saving on the expenses there too. Those guys working the train probably got a nice check in their Christmas stocking that year if that company did bonuses. I forgot what bonuses were these last few years...
That showed yard men don't get to blow the horn that much.You can tell.
Locks like an ex LIRR MP15AC
Cant find a 16 wheel lowboy in HO any more.
Why would they build the train engine like that? How can the engineer even see the tracks?
He sees down the side.
No clevis on the loading straps. Seems sketchy but whatever, it worked I guess.
The woven ones are stronger. I've only used a clevis when there is a through-hole for picking the load.
As a flatbedder, and heavy haul, it all depends on the lift points.
Those lift points looked a bit overkill, if you ask me.
large you make a good point. Too, the heaviest thing ive ever picked is ~4 tons with a bridge crane so I dont have much experience with a move that big.
@@honkykong4672 I've never seen a 4 ton bridge crane.
Everything I've seen and used was around the 20-50 ton range.
I did an equioment move in Ohio once, 60,000 lbs.
My tractor and flat was rated for about 50k on the deck.
They were literally moving it from one building to another, about 1 block.
They were concerned about overloading.
The rating is at highway speed, so, no prob. Only going to be going about 7mph, if I'm lucky.
I have to back it that entire block.
The second piece was a lot bigger, about 50 tons.
Same deal.
Did I want help tying it down?
Double take...
Why do that? As slow as I'll be going, and on an aluminum deck?
Plunk it on there, and it will get to the other building.
The other crane had a scale rigged up on the crane.
Yep, 50 tons.
They gave me $100 cash to move the equipment, but the actual load that was hauled off only weighed about 12,000 lbs.
Like it wasn't even there....
They used ENORMOUS clevises to loft those pieces, there were no built in hooks.
Also, they used two cranes to load it, they were rated at 30t.
The second one was rated at a ridiculous amount, over 100k.
Controlling THAT load in the air was a lot of fun!
Nice
Imagine some Idiot plowing into that thing? The car would F*cking EXPLODE!
Man, I'd really like to take that train horn and stick it right up the train engineer's arse. I'm so tired of that excess racket day after day after day. Enough already. Hell, maybe I should find where these guys live, buy a train horn, and run it for hours every day and night.
Good golly. Think you could use your horn a bit more? Sheesh.
Its a railroad rule.
WHY did they back the flatbed onto the siding, then tow it away? Should have just hooked it up from the get-go and been on their way...
I seriously doubt that unit weighed 350k.
A standard loaded rail car can weigh up to 286000. No biggie.
Bob W - that’s not true at all. Also, a regular lowboy is not going to be able to carry 350k, as they showed a small crane loading the transformer.
I agree.That crane couldn't handle a 150 ton lift, especially without more counterweights.
I work for the company that makes these transformers. Yes, they really do weigh that much. The one in the video is one of our "small" ones. We build transformers up to 700 kv and can weigh up to 400 tons. You have to realize what is in these transformers. There is probably 60 tons worth of copper windings in the one in the video.
Winding operator
Hyundai Power Transformers USA.
caudleryan123 oh man. There’s going to be all kinds of bs people on this video. Since you work for this company and this is one of your small ones, feel free to give me the make and model of this unit.
You dummies that continue to support the wild claim of 350k pounds, you’re just as stupid as the person that made this video. I am experienced in transportation and the vehicles they are using in this video. I do know the GVWR of these vehicles. Since I know that, I know what the maximum of the weight this unit could be.
try to stop that piece when stupid people try to go around you.
He is laying on that horn an obnoxiously long time. SMH
i live in huntsville i'm 31 yrs old been here all my life they drive so crazy here he have lay on the horn like that
@@neatlawn2707 some towns have banned the use of locomotive horns in their city limits.
@@r.w.7232 i under stand that but not here i stay bout 5 mins away from where this video was made . trust ppl drive so bad here i have train horns on all my cars and trucks
i bet that he wouldn't be able to stop that heavy thing in time if someone did jump in front, so he had to lay on the horn as insurance.
@@fakiirification No, even railroad Engineers will tell you that that is excessive. And you also have to keep in mind that some towns have banned the use of train horns altogether.
I know they have to sound the horn at grade crossings, but jeez! Too much!
Not really.
Some under educated person that knows absolutely nothing about cranes, either is lying or trying to deceive the watchers of this video, IN THAT NO WAY IN HELL DOES THIS UNIT WEIGHT 350,000 POUNDS, MAYBE AT BEST 35,000 POUNDS, AS THERE IS NOT A ROADWAY COMPLIANT CRANE IN THE WORLD THAT CAN LIFT 350,000 POUNDS, NO WHERE! SO PLACE THE PROPER WEIGHT IN THE TITLE!
Liebherr LTM 1500 8.1 Road Crane 500 Ton Cap.
maybe the gross weight, the car plus the load. You right. No single crane will lift 350K lbs. That truck didnt have near enough axles to carry 350K over public roads.
@@alvinsykes6969500 ton crane = 1,000,000 LBS capacity, That can Easily lift 350,000 lbs (175 ton) load within the maximum reach of the cranes lifting limits.
@Don Michael You've obviously never worked nuclear. I've seen a rubber-tired BOMAG 550-tonner that had to move at least 250 miles on public roadways to get to its destination to lift a cask. Typing in all capitals is the equivalent of shouting. It is very rude.
Don Michael: You are very uneducated when it comes to weight. This is a 350,000 lbs transformer. It's a fact not up for debate. Typical rail cars alone can weigh over 280,000 lbs when loaded. This railcar has a couple of extra axles to accommodate the 350,000 lbs transformer, plus the weight of the rail car itself. So it's probably 410,000 lbs in grand total for the transformer and rail car.
Rail cars can hold a lot more weight than a semi truck can. A typical rail car can carry 3x as much weight as an 18-wheeler.
it doesnt weigh that much, i think you mean 35,000 pounds
It does weigh 350,000 lb. I moved a transformer that weighed 880,000 lb from Texas to Iowa.
@@markhaas9265 your full of shit !
@@BobL84 look again, it's bigger than you think and full of copper
This is a 350,000 lbs transformer. It's a fact.
I built that transformer. Our factory cranes can lift 1 million pounds.
The little engine that could.
Great video!