Text 8 Wagons for carrying automobiles

Motorcars are typical example of freight having a low specific weight compared with the space occupied.

This is a growing traffic because the supplies of automobiles going to the countries far from the place of manufacturing are such as to make it necessary to carry them rather by rail than by road.

Every year hundreds of thousands of motorcars are carried for distances of more than a thousand kilometers, resulting in a new traffic situation owing to the economic expansion or to increasing technical progress.

The design of a two-level car specially adopted for carrying automobiles is as follows: the bottom low loading deck in the centre has to be raised by small end places, generally movable, to facilitate loading the vehicles.

For the same reason the top deck has inclined ends to make it possible to load the vehicles on the deck.

Very often the loading floor is replaced by channels sufficiently wide to take the various gauges of vehicles. Special arrangements of these channels make it possible to carry the smaller cars in two rows and the larger in one row. Besides this tow-level car there exist “flat car-three-level” which is over 90 feet in length and can transport as many as 18 new automobiles between assembly plants and receivers.

Wagons for containers

The solution of the railroad problem which has given the most positive result is the transportation of freight in containers. It is a progressive method of delivering freight from “door-to-door”.

These units are of different types, with or without wheels, detachable, isothermic, etc.

Generally they can be loaded on ordinary flat wagons, arranged longitudinally or transversely, according to their dimensions and their loading stowing devices.

One special category of containers requires specially adapted wagons which, however, enable them to be loaded and unloaded faster.

These wagons are fitted with transversal slides on which the containers, which are loaded and unloaded transversely, can slide.

Intermodal containers travel by rail, road or sea from “door-to-door”. Shippers get advantages in costs and increased efficiency. Modern container handling equipment transfers sealed containers from carrier to carrier.

Study the following words and combinations:

Exercise 1 Answer the following questions:

1. What do Canadian Railways have at their disposal?

2. What kind of cars is intended for frozen food and dressed meat?

3. Is the four axle wagon used as refrigerator wagon for journeys lasting several days?

4. What wagons do combine the advantages of wide openings of open wagons, and protection?

5. What is a new wagon launched by Greenbrier Europe and DB Cargo, Germany?

6. Where are usually bulky loads transported?

7. How can hoppers be flushed out?

8. Transportation by means of what wagons tends to increase?

9. What are the new tendencies of transportation by tank wagons?

10. What for do we need low-loading wagons?

11. What wagons are used to transport cars?

12. What is the solution of railroad problem?

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