12-20-2008, 03:12 PM
Russ Bellinis Wrote:I'm not familiar with barge traffic on the Mississippi River. Out here in So Cal we have a company that loads trucks and trailers, mostly semi trailers, on barges to haul goods to Santa Catalina Island. they take loaded trailers over and bring back the empties. The next day they repeat the process, or it may be every other day they run over. Do they put rail cars on barges on the Mississippi to move to another port up or down the river? Would loaded rail cars be put on a barge in St Louis for example to go to Minneapolis, or is everything break bulk loading?
Well. I can't say I have ever seen anything about taking rail cars up or downriver from Minneapolis by carfloats. But they did have quite a few different kinds of interesting barges back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s:
Grain (in the background - sliding covers): http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresour...eid=102086
(I am not sure what the closest barge is carrying - maybe some kind of machinery or crates or some such thing)
Coal: http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresour...geid=76889
Oil: http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresour...eid=151380
Shipping containers: http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresour...eid=163371
Btw - it just struck me that you may only see half my plan, since the forum truncates some pictures - here is a link directly to the plan:
http://home.online.no/~steinjr/trains/mo...ouse40.jpg
Smile,
Stein