HL06

The "borrowed" (leased) Canadian National SD40-2 is back in town...

CN 5289 rounds the curve with HL06; the local for the area heating oil distributor. A covered hopper provides the head-end buffer protection behind the engine.

Rolling past loaded gons of steel and pipes, the short tank train passes through Hillsdale Yard with  eight loads of its own.

And "Tank-Train" it is! More commonly seen on the West Coast, the tank cars are special GATX equipment, designed for rapid loading and unloading of an entire string of cars. An inert gas is piped into one end of the string, and the contents of the cars are pushed out the other end via the connecting hoses.

The interconnecting hose between two of the cars. Being able to load/unload the entire string at one time, instead of just one car at a time, is the big advantage of these cars. Which is why the oil distributor has set up its operations to make good use of said ability!

On the other end of the train is the caboose, staying with the engine as they go back and forth during the day. No longer a rolling hotel, it still provides the required rear-end protection for the train.

And one of the companies that get oil  from the distributor? Snake Oil! Fall is on the way, and early customers are taking advantage of the low pre-season prices to stock up for what is expected to be another rough winter. HL06 normally runs from late August through late March on a weekly basis, maybe twice more in April if the weather stays cold, then disappears for the summer. While the train delivers 184,000 gal of heating oil at a time, it goes fast when Snake Oil and the other  oil companies in southwest Pennsylvania start filling up the oil tanks of homeowners looking to stay warm on cold, snowy nights during polar vortexes!.