THE 80'S PT 8

This week, we conclude our look at Hillsdale in the 80's...

Since Hillsdale was -and still is- on one of the AP&W's east-west intermodal routes, it's appropriate that the final look involves -what else- a west bound intermodal. During the 80's, the AP&W, like most railroads, used high-horsepower four-axle locomotives for this service, like this GP50/GP40-2 set.Twenty-five years later, most of what you see in this train -including GP50 4087- has been retired. GP40-2 2450 was sold in 2005, and now is part of the CEFX lease fleet.

As the train passes through, the mix of international and domestic containers is evident. The red car represents one of the first double-stack cars built; the end bulkheads are designed to keep the top container in place. Once the railroads figured out that the interbox connnectors used to stack the containers on a ship also work on railcars, they moved to the design of the yellow car -and found a huge weight saving gain.

During the 80's, American President Lines (APL) operated 'land-bridge' service between the two coasts. It wasn't uncommon to see entire trains comprised of nothing but APL containers! While those trains didn't travel over AP&W rails, as seen here, a fair amount of APL traffic still traversed through Hillsdale; note that APL even had its own railcar fleet! During the late 90's, APL's domestic container fleet was taken over by PacerStacktrain, but the distinctive red eagle still graces the sides of most of its international fleet.

More APL containers, this time from its domestic fleet. 53' containers were introduced during the early 90's, and APL was one of the earliest operators. APC was also part of APL, and they, too, owned stack cars.

And from the red, white and blue of the APL containers to the red, white and blue of the upcommming holiday! A trio of  GE ES44AC's roll around the curve into town in the present day with a special, patriotic paint scheme! Stay tuned next month, as we look at the "America" units!