History I thought this was interesting -- Vertical Car Shipping

...You realize you're correcting a post that's almost 3 years old now, right?

 

We should further discuss the economics of adding another/or several conventional railcars vs. R+D, designing and building a totally different railcars. In addition, the modified railcars required the train to take totally further routes in order to avoid the low bridges that the conventional cars could pass under.

Probably not one of gm's better ideas.

 

How did they get them to the railyard then? When I worked for an outfit that moved brand new Fords, we drove those cars right off of the end of the line and on to Torrence Avenue and then down to the rail yard a few blocks away. TM

 

Yeah, chevy was too cheap to install some iron liners in the cylinder bores.. That's why they burned oil...

 

Don't laugh. If it wasn't for the vertical car shipping GM tried out on the Vega, we wouldn't have that trusty annular oil pump on the front of all LS series engines. They used it to keep the oil inside the engine while it was being shipped. The battery and coolant tank were also equipped with offset filler and vent caps specifically for vertical shipping.. If I'm not mistaken (and I have been in the past) the name GM applied to the vertical shipment method was called "Verti-Pak". And as far as I know, only the Vega was shipped this way.

 

I know this is an old thread, but while reading it I noticed many posts about how expensive it would be to make new rail cars, bla bla bla! this didn't cost the railroad or GM jack shit, with rail subsidies the way they were it all would have been a write-off paid for by those of us that were working for a living back then.
BTW I loved Vegas, I could kick their asses with my stock Pinto 2 liter, when Ford went to the 2.3 it became as big a piece of shit as the Vega.

 

I drive my beat up rusty '75 Cosworth Vega almost daily. My favorite car. fun to drive, handles great, not another one in the county.