A Coil Car interlude.

Coil cars are a big part of traffic on the Plymouth Industrial Park. The main customer at the end of the spur is Olympic Steel. A big steel distributors with two warehouses. One receives steel coils, the other receives steel in sheet form. Pre Covid the facility was receiving multiple coil cars of steel daily. It was not unusual to see 10 or more cars delivered to the premises at a time. When I retired and left my place of work, deliveries were two or three times a week. 

There are many different styles of coil cars. The variety being down to the design of the protective covers. I was so amazed by the different styles that I started photographing them. Here’s just a few of them to illustrate the variation.

This is the Thrall Protector car. Only 60 were made.
These were made in HO scale by ExactRail

A more traditional single cover from the Southshore Railroad.

A mix of covers on this twin cover car. Santa Fe and Illinois Central
These traditional styles of car are made by several manufacturers

This rusty, battered cover is from the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern RR.
This is a style of cover known as "hex top"

The Reading Railroad merged into Conrail in 1976

The other side of the Reading car shows this old Reading Lines logo

The Union Pacific has several modern styles of cover. 
This is extremely boxy and very unstreamlined

Another unusual boxy, UP style. 

This Coil car was almost brand new out of the paint shops when
I caught it at Plymouth Industrial Park

The UP still has many old, ordinary covers in service.

All railroad cars are a target for graffiti, and I thought that this piece of work
was outstanding

If there's interest I can share more of my coil car images.