Rail-Car Cleaning Facility

[Justinmiller171]

When Most People think of a car-cleaning Facility, they usually think of a massive facility inside of a yard. I thought this too until I was visiting my grandparents and my grandpa showed me this interesting facility not to far from were they live.

Unfortunately this is the best picture I have of it right now:


It is a Car cleaning facility in the middle of farmlands, far away from any freight yard, this facility is also small enough that it could fit on a model railroad with little compression. Whenever I go to my grandparent's house, I can hear the geep switching the facility for about 10-20 minutes, so I know it gets switched regularly.

Is it a rare thing for a car-cleaning facility to be this far away from a freight yard? If anybody has any knowledge about this it would be interesting to know.

[torikoos]

Hey there's something I haven't seen before, good suggestion :-) !

[Gary S]

Justin, any more info on this? Can you get some photos?

[Russ Bellinis]

That pic is kind of fuzzy, but it looks like covered hoppers. Logic tells me that a railroad might well clean grain hoppers near the farm areas where the silos that they load out of would be found, rather than doing it miles away at a yard. Especially since many types of freight car might never be cleaned beyond sweeping out the dunnage. If a car isn't hauling food products, chemicals, or something else that needs to be kept clean and pure, there is no reason to do more than sweep out a car and throw away the dunnage. I remember at the rail symposium I went to in preparation for repairing refrigeration units on rail cars that someone asked the car maintenance supervisor from BNSF how often that washed the reefers. These reefers were operated by Tropicana to haul cases of Tropicana Pure Orange Juice. He said never.

[Justinmiller171]

That makes sense about cleaning covered hoppers near where they are used, Every time we drive by there all of the cars are covered hoppers. My grandpa knows someone who works there are he says that they remove the graffiti, and Sandblast the outsides of the cars, I don't know if they clean the insides out or not, I will have to find out.

Sorry about the photo, I got it using Bing maps, I will try to get some photos of it from ground level when I go down there again.