Double Stack Container Well Cars

Double Stack Container Well Car Roster

Key to any modern Class One Transportation portfolio is domestic and international container traffic. The intermodal trend moved from a curiosity and potential new traffic segment aimed at making rail competitive to highway trucking to an industry changing wave that now dominates any rail market discussion. Georgia Road committed to this market early on, signing on the very early American Presidential Lines (APL)land bridge trains linking the Far East and Europe through a US cross-country rail link in the 1990s. These crack “Eagle Flyer” APL Contract trains set bloomed into several Southeastern and Seaboard region inland and ocean-going ports such as the APL port in Atlanta and SeaPath 1 facility in Charleston, SC at the repurposed and idled Charleston Naval Yard. From this beginning, Georgia Road developed its QuickSilver Intermodal Service subsidiary to handle the logistics, fleet management and marketing of the Georgia Road service routes for all intermodal services and terminals.

Domestic cross-country container service grew out of these international services as the railroad industry worked to regain traffic lost to highways and fill out trains. By the early 2000s, the combined international and domestic containerization of rail traffic in general had eclipsed all other market segments.

While QuickSilver Intermodal handles all facets of getting containers from terminals to customers and return, Georgia Road is responsible for the proverbial “heavy lifting” of providing equipment and moving for its QuickSilver Intermodal Service arm. As with most North American railroads, Georgia Road relies on pooled railcar fleets from TTX Corp and private car leasers. However, in volatile markets, Georgia Road has acquired a large fleet of container handling equipment to ensure its customers do not experience car shortage during growth opportunities and demand spikes.

Well Cars–Automotive Parts Service

View of recently refurbished Twin Stack double stack cars at Dale Yard Car Shops show the first two units of the Triple Twin Stack cars rebuilt to move foreign ISO automotive parts containers from ports to inland RASC service centers.
Full view of the whole three-car trainset of a typical Triple Twin Stack well car set. Georgia Road bought several dozen sets of ex CSX Sealand Thrall Maxi-Stack five units sets. The five unit set was reduced to three unit sets and the container bulkheads were reconfigured to 20ft and 40ft ISO containers only. The seemingly odd configuration allowed specific combinations of 20ft nad 40ft containers together to all for fixed numbers of builds per three-car sets. As the markings indicate, these units were designated strictly for the Automotive Service and represent the modern Auto Parts railcars purpose built for the business.
With the cessation of pulpwood “stickwood” handling in favor of tree-length service, 1970s-80s era SEICO pulpwood rack cars were surplus and in large supply. Always looking to utilize existing resources, Georgia Road reconditioned the cars not remaining in pulp and timber service for novel uses, including conversion to container carrying cars. The bulkheads were cut down to allow easier loading by container cranes with 20ft and 40ft container cradles added. These cars were placed in regional “slingshot” trains between major terminal hubs and regional feeder ramps.

Well Cars–Transcontinental Dry Van Service

Georgia Road needed to vastly improve its intermodal railcar and container fleet through the 2000s, specifically the burgeoning domestic container market. The result was the addition of brand-new heavy duty stand-alone intermodal cars that could hold up to the rigors of transcontinental service and at the same time accommodate the expanded fleet of insulated dry van 53′ containers being purchased by QuickSilver Intermodal. This Husky Stack car represented the epitome of the fleet and could be seen all over the USA, Mexico and Canada.