Longest, heaviest
Port cargo sets another North American record

Grandmaison Studios Photo

(above) A 65-car train-including 14 12-axle cars-leaves Duluth-Superior for it's destination in northern Alberta

Another North American rail record has been set by a cargo shipped via the Port of Duluth-Superior.

Logistics experts who assembled the massive haul say November's multi-railroad load from Duluth's Clure Public Marine Terminal to northern Alberta broke a two-year-old record for the longest (more than 4,000 feet) and heaviest load of special-project cargo.

(left) Workers prepare one of the rail car beds for its special cargo.

Most of the train's cargo was manufactured in Italy and arrived aboard the aptly named Jumbo Vision, a Dutch ship owned by the Jumbo Company of Rotterdam. Lake Superior Warehousing Co., Inc., operator of the general cargo facilities at the Port Authority-owned terminal, oversaw offloading of the vessel.

Fourteen 12-axle railcars were part of a 65-car train that carried, among other things, seven heavy-walled cylinders — technically called high-pressure reactor vessels — ranging from about 400 to 520 tons. An eighth piece weighed about 250 tons. The biggest components were about 80 feet long and 14 feet wide.

"This shipment broke a record set in November 2000 when Jumbo's vessel Fairlift brought 56 pieces of Japanese built equipment through the Port for a similar project in northern Alberta by Shell Canada," said Ed Clarke, Calgary, Alberta, senior logistics coordinator for Syncrude UE-1.

Syncrude is one of several companies extracting oil from the northern Alberta tar sands near Fort McMurray. Syncrude handled the project in conjunction with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Company, Canadian National Railway, Rail Link America and Athabasca Northern Railway.