Remember
the Chevy Vega? This is how they were
shipped.
Until the early 1960s, automobiles moved by rail were carried in boxcars. These were 50 feet long with double-wide doors. Inside was room for four full-sized sedans on a two-tier rack - two raised up off the floor on a steel rack and two others tucked in underneath them. This protected the cars during transport but wasn’t very efficient, as the weight of four vehicles was far less than the maximum weight a boxcar that size could carry. When 85-foot and 89-foot flatcars came into service, it was possible to pack a total of fifteen automobiles in one car on tri-level auto racks. But it still didn’t approach the maximum allowable weight for each flatcar.
When Chevrolet started
designing Vega during the late
1960s, one of the main objectives
was to keep the cost of the car down
around $2,000 in circa-1970 dollars.
At the time, the freight
charge for moving a loaded
railroad car from the Lordstown,
OH assembly plant to the Pacific
coast - the longest distance
cars produced at Lordstown would
need to travel - was around
$4,800. Since the Vega was a
subcompact, it was possible to
squeeze three more cars on a
railroad car for a total of
eighteen, instead of the usual
fifteen. But that still worked
out to around $300 per car – a
substantial surcharge for a
$2000 car. If only Chevrolet
could get more Vegas on a
railroad car, the cost per unit
of hauling them would go down.
The engineers at GM
and Southern Pacific Railroad came
up with a clever solution. Instead
of loading the cars horizontally,
the Vegas were to be placed
vertically on a specially designed
auto-rack called the Vert-A-Pac.
Within the same volume of an
89-foot flatcar, the Vert-A-Pac
system could hold as many as 30
automobiles instead of 18.
Chevrolet's goal was to deliver Vegas topped with fluids and ready to drive to the dealership. In order to be able to travel nose-down without leaking fluids all over the railroad, Vega engineers had to design a special engine oil baffle to prevent oil from entering the No. 1 cylinder. Batteries had filler caps located high up on the rear edge of the case to prevent acid spilling, the carburetor float bowl had a special tube that drained gasoline into the vapor canister during shipment, and the windshield washer bottle stood at a 45 degree angle. Plastic spacers were wedged in beside the powertrain to prevent damage to engine and transmission mounts. The wedges were removed when cars were unloaded.
The Vega was
hugely popular when it was
introduced in 1970, however it
quickly earned a reputation for
unreliability, rust and terrible
engine durability. When
the Vega was discontinued in
1977, the Vert-A-Pac cars had to
be retired as they were too
specialized to be used with
anything else. The Vert-A-Pac
racks were scrapped, and the
underlying flatcars went on to
other uses.
Until the early 1960s, automobiles moved by rail were carried in boxcars. These were 50 feet long with double-wide doors. Inside was room for four full-sized sedans on a two-tier rack - two raised up off the floor on a steel rack and two others tucked in underneath them. This protected the cars during transport but wasn’t very efficient, as the weight of four vehicles was far less than the maximum weight a boxcar that size could carry. When 85-foot and 89-foot flatcars came into service, it was possible to pack a total of fifteen automobiles in one car on tri-level auto racks. But it still didn’t approach the maximum allowable weight for each flatcar.
Chevrolet's goal was to deliver Vegas topped with fluids and ready to drive to the dealership. In order to be able to travel nose-down without leaking fluids all over the railroad, Vega engineers had to design a special engine oil baffle to prevent oil from entering the No. 1 cylinder. Batteries had filler caps located high up on the rear edge of the case to prevent acid spilling, the carburetor float bowl had a special tube that drained gasoline into the vapor canister during shipment, and the windshield washer bottle stood at a 45 degree angle. Plastic spacers were wedged in beside the powertrain to prevent damage to engine and transmission mounts. The wedges were removed when cars were unloaded.
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